Articles
Some Like It Hot: Mediterranean Societies at the End of the Little Ice Age
by Andrea E. Duffy
This article explores human responses to the climatic conditions of the late Little Ice Age (1850–1880s) in the Mediterranean world. Around the globe, the nineteenth century heralded the retreat of the Little Ice Age (LIA) and the arrival of the Anthropocene. Although the concept of the LIA has seen nearly half a century of research, scholars have paid little attention to the environmental and social consequences of its retreat in the mid- to late nineteenth century. This study maintains that the end of the Little Ice Age was significant, nuanced, and complex. It brought warmer and dryer conditions as well as periodic extreme weather to the Mediterranean zone, and these characteristics contributed to the rise of commercial agriculture and the decline of mobile pastoralism. The combination of climatic pressures with local social, political, and economic factors, however, led to very different outcomes among mobile pastoralists. This article uses extensive archival research as well as paleoclimatological data to map nineteenth-century climate change and to illuminate its impact around the Mediterranean, through case studies in Provence, northern Algeria, and southern Anatolia.
Spearfish: The Environmental Margins of a Northern Great Plains Apple District, 1882–1914
by John Henris
The unique nature of commercial apple culture in the Spearfish Valley of the Black Hills of western South Dakota between 1882 and 1914 adds regional depth to the larger historical narratives of irrigated industrial orchard production in the Intermountain West and Pacific Coast and on the Great Plains. Successful apple growing in this relatively small, ecologically and economically distinct region faced many geo-specific obstacles. Although the Black Hills provided shelter from winter winds, moderated temperatures, and provided enough water—at least compared to the surrounding northern plains—the Spearfish Valley would always be on the environmental margins of marketable apple cultivation. Commercial apple orchards survived during this period in precarious balance with humans and nature. Spearfish orchardists—for a time, at least—were able to overcome environmental constraints to forge a profitable regional marketing regime centered on the production of fall apples that operated within the larger seasonal ebb and flow of the great Western and Northwestern orchard districts.
California Dreamin': Rural Planning and Agricultural Development in Italy's Grosseto Plain, 1948–1965
by Nicola Gabellieri
After World War II, the Italian government launched an agrarian reform scheme to develop rural areas (1950–1965). The plan aimed to create small, highly mechanized farms for social, political, and economic purposes. Using the textual, statistical, and cartographical sources of the Agrarian Reform Authority's historical archive, this article examines the controversial debate over the reform outcomes, focusing on a limited area in southern Tuscany, the Grosseto Plain, as a case study. Analysis of initial projects and their changes over time demonstrates that the form of access to and ownership of environmental resources, as well as the resources used, influenced the implementation of the reform. The article also considers the problem of the real outcomes of state planning.
Fighting Poverty in the Fields: Legal Services and the War on Poverty in Rural California
by Doug Genens
From 1966 to the late 1970s, California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) helped farmworkers unionize, fight for safer workplaces, and create a more just farm economy. Studying CRLA as part of the War on Poverty's Legal Services Program allows scholars to rethink the parameters of this reform moment, as well as the centrality of rural places to the War on Poverty. Historians have typically seen the War on Poverty as weakened by its focus on culture, not structural inequality. In contrast, CRLA attorneys viewed poverty as a product of the political economy of California agriculture. CRLA linked the provision of legal services with interventions in the workplace as it sought to restructure an unequal system. Unlike other studies of legal services that stress the actions of lawyers, this article illuminates the role of farmworkers and the rural poor as well. It traces the development of CRLA, some of its major cases, its high-profile conflicts with Ronald Reagan, and, ultimately, the declining efficacy of its legal strategy. Nonetheless, CRLA's work reveals the importance of anti-poverty policy in addressing the farm economy, and the importance of rural struggles to the fate of the War on Poverty.
Book Reviews
Murphy, The Tudor Occupation of Boulogne: Conquest, Colonisation, and Imperial Monarchy, by John M. Collins
Miller, Entangled Lives: Labor, Livelihood, and Landscapes of Change in Rural Massachusetts, by Eric C. Stoykovich
Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, by Jacob A. Bruggeman
Miller, This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent, by Keith Makoto Woodhouse
Blevins, A History of the Ozarks, Volume 1: The Old Ozarks, by Megan L. Bever
Köll, Railroads and the Transformation of China, by Fengfeng Zhang
Enstad, Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism, by Tore Olsson
Nystrom, Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture by Vincenza Scarpaci
Jensen-Wallach, Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America, by Leni Sorensen
Chandler & Powell, To Raise Up the Man Farthest Down: Tuskegee University's Advancements in Human Health, 1881–1987, by Hayden McDaniel
Hild, Arkansas's Gilded Age: The Rise, Decline, and Legacy of Populism and Working-Class Protest, by John H. Cable
Marina, From the Grounds Up: Building an Export Economy in Southern Mexico, by Antonio Escobar Ohmstede
Barraclough Charros: How Mexican Cowboys are Remapping Race and American Identity, by Rebecca Scofield
Blac & Freitas, Big Water: The Making of the Borderlands Between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, by James Patterson
Coppess, The Fault Lines of Farm Policy: A Legislative and Political History of the Farm Bill, by Emily Prifogle
Zeide, Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry, by Sarah Wassberg Johnson
McKenna, Livestock: Food, Fiber, and Friends, by Frank Whitehead
Rankin, Catfish Dream: Ed Scott's Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta, Kelly Kean Sharp
Miller, Building Nature's Market: The Business and Politics of Natural Foods, by Robin O'Sullivan
Eskridge, Rube Tube: CBS and Rural Comedy in the Sixties, by Margaret Weber
Previous Issues
94.1 (Winter 2020)
93.4 (Fall 2019)
93.3 (Summer 2019)
93.2 (Spring 2019)
93.1 (Winter 2019)