Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society

Studies in Rural Culture

by Jack Temple Kirby

Jack Temple Kirby charts the history of the low country between the James River in Virginia and Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. The Algonquian word for this country, which means 'swamp-on-a-hill,' was transliterated as 'poquosin' by seventeenth-century English settlers. Interweaving social, political, economic, and military history with the story of the landscape, Kirby shows how Native American, African, and European peoples have adapted to and modified this Tidewater area in the nearly four hundred years since the arrival of Europeans. Kirby argues that European settlement created a lasting division of the region into two distinct zones often in conflict with each the cosmopolitan coastal area, open to markets, wealth, and power because of its proximity to navigable rivers and sounds, and a more isolated hinterland, whose people and their way of life were gradually--and grudgingly--subjugated by railroads, canals, and war. Kirby's wide-ranging analysis of the evolving interaction between humans and the landscape offers a unique perspective on familiar historical subjects, including slavery, Nat Turner's rebellion, the Civil War, agricultural modernization, and urbanization.

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

Reviews

[Lucian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful combination of agricultural, ecological, social and economic history, as well as folklore. The broad scope of the book appears seamless, and it is possibly one of the most holistic histories of place that I have read, wisely limiting itself to a very specific and relatively small geographic area. Much of the history is told from the perspective of prominent observers who provide some of the primary sources for the book. These are overwhelmingly white plantation owners, scholars, businessmen, but the book attempts by alternate means to provide just as detailed accounts of black maroons, slaves and poor white farmers, who did most of the physical work of altering the land.
The writing is simultaneously accurate and detailed as well as lyrical. Maps and photographs accompany artwork and poetry from the region. I think the book would interest southerners in general, or even people entirely unassociated with the region due to the unique and compelling style of conveying history.