Great Plains Book Club discussion
Coffee Klatch Annex
>
The Greater Plains: Rethinking a Region's Environmental Histories
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
Dr. Isern, that is very interesting! Have you read Rothberg and Rabb's "Climate and History"?. Its the anthology that made climate a topic historical inquiry and includes the major critique of the field by De Vries. O'Grada has a series of Articles "Debating the Little Ice Age" that may be helpful as well if you have not read them.
Mod
We have much to talk about! I'm reading on the topic and will fetch in the titles you mention that I haven't yet used.
While I agree that historians collectively need to deemphasize disaster and abuse, I struggled with some of the details in the text. The opening essay takes pains to use historical climatological terms like "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Climate Anomaly." While those are perfectly fine forms of analysis, one should be familiar with them before their use. Historical Climatology started in 1983 and since then the two periods of "Little Ice Age" and Medieval Climate Anomaly" have been debated. The date ranges of each are debated and need some defense. (I had to debate that a famine in 1741 was impacted by the LIA because some contend it ends shortly after the Late Maunder Minimum [1690s]). Similarly some of the central evidence of the field, proxy data from ice cores and tree rings, have been dismissed since their inception by Jan De Vries, and more recently by Cormac O'Grada who contend that the LIA never even happened. But the terms as used in the opening essay are borrowed from the popular writer Brian Fagan with no consideration of their origina or accuracy.
Secondly, the collection is organized into themes of grasses, animals, water, and energy. Again this is well and good, but it is not consistent. The theme of water comes under the title of agriculture. I am well aware that water is central to agricultural issues, but it terms of providing benchmarks for readers the stated themes that divide the essays in the introduction should line up with the section titles and come in the same order (they do not in the text).
Outside of those pet peeves of mine, the work does contain gems. Some essays analyze Metis kinscapes in the development of bison hunting brigades while others interpret the role animals play within Indigenous kinscapes. They invite the reader to view human-animal relationships as a kind of technology in a fascinating way.
Many of these essays encourage thinking outside of traditional boxes that academics find themselves in. It was both refreshing and rewarding to read despite my initial lamentations.