Reviewed by:

• Atlantic Environments and the American South ed. by Thomas Blake Earle and D. Andrew Johnson
• Tycho de Boer

Atlantic Environments and the American South brings together contributions stemming from a 2016 symposium at Rice University that explored "the intersection of Atlantic, environmental, and southern historiographies" (p. 2). These fields, Thomas Blake Earle and D. Andrew Johnson explain in their introduction, "developed in response to specific contexts and certain questions that have largely forestalled cross-field pollination" (p. 2). Broadly speaking, the editors contend that historians of the Atlantic world have not sufficiently centered the environment in their "multivalent, sociocultural histories" of slavery and empire; the history of American South, understood as part of a circum-Caribbean or a British Greater Caribbean, provides a useful geographic lens through which to view that central role (p. 3). The collection does not propose a paradigmatic approach to such an intersectional history. Instead, its sections—"Slavery and Climate," "Slavery and Landscape," "Empire and Infrastructure," "Empire and Expertise"—suggest more nuanced understandings of the ways different peoples, rival empires, and competing epistemologies interacted with one another and with different, shifting environments to shape [End Page 326] the American South as both a distinct region and a node in the networks of exchange that constituted the Atlantic world.

Bradford J. Wood, for example, argues in "Ocean Graveyards and Ulterior Atlantic Worlds: The Experience of Colonial North Carolina" that our axiomatic understanding of "the Atlantic Ocean as a means of connection" does not apply to North Carolina, whose treacherous coastline prevented the colony from establishing those connections that drove large-scale environmental change elsewhere and gave rise to the concept of a larger, interconnected Atlantic world (p. 113). Frances Kolb shows in "Profitable Transgressions: International Borders and British Atlantic Trade Networks in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1763–1783" that the Mississippi River, designated a boundary between empires, instead fostered multidirectional exchange and movement in the borderlands of the Lower Mississippi Valley, with small Indigenous polities known as petites nations rejecting exclusive loyalty to either Great Britain or Spain when it came to trade. Sean Morey Smith shows how authors promoting settlement in the British colonies relied on various theories regarding hot climates and health, not just the "old ideas of latitudinal climate zones," to hail the "salubrious" qualities of England's overseas possessions (p. 21). Elaine Lafay notes in her chapter how planters in the antebellum South concerned themselves with proper ventilation of their own dwellings and those of their slaves, yet resisted slaves' attempts to improve their drafty quarters or enjoy the "fresh air" they equated with freedom and autonomy (p. 38). Environmental aspects of planters' control over slave labor also inform Hayley Negrin's chapter on Native women, whose traditional roles in crop cultivation the English disparaged as uncivilized but whose labor they nonetheless sought forcibly to employ in their fields, and Keith Pluymers's chapter on Bermuda, where the sought-after expertise of Afro-Bermudians was crucial to the development of both tobacco cultivation and slavery. Melissa N. Morris highlights the importance of Spanish and Indigenous crops and expertise to the rise of Virginia's tobacco culture, further stressing the exchange of environmental resources and knowledge among diverse peoples and places within the circum-Caribbean. Matthew Mulcahy's chapter on drought challenges notions of this world as singularly hot, wet, and plagued by hurricanes and shows how droughts severely impacted island populations and often spurred slave resistance and rebellion.

Peter C. Messer's closing chapter on "The Nature of William Bartram's Travels," while somewhat incongruous, nevertheless underscores this collection's useful contribution to the scholarship: just as the nature of the American Southeast resisted classification according to the rigid taxonomies of old and prompted William Bartram to evoke the sublime and make it known on its own terms, so do the essays in this collection suggest fresh new ways that environmental history can...

审核人：

• 大西洋环境和美国南方版。托马斯·布莱克·厄尔（Thomas Blake Earle）和D.安德鲁·约翰逊（D.Andrew Johnson）
• 第谷·德布尔

大西洋环境与美国南方汇集了赖斯大学2016年专题讨论会的成果，该专题讨论会探讨了“大西洋，环境和南部史学的交集”（第2页）。Thomas Blake Earle和D. Andrew Johnson在介绍这些字段时解释说，“这些字段是针对特定情况和某些问题而开发的，这些问题在很大程度上阻碍了跨领域授粉”（第2页）。从广义上讲，编辑认为，大西洋世界的历史学家没有将环境充分集中在奴隶制和帝国的“多价社会文化历史”上。美国南部的历史被理解为加勒比海或大不列颠加勒比的一部分，它提供了一个有用的地理视角，可以用来观察这种中心作用（第3页）。该馆藏没有提出这种交叉历史的范式方法。取而代之的是，“奴隶制与气候”，“奴隶制与景观”，“帝国与基础设施”，“帝国与专业知识”等部分对不同民族，敌对帝国和竞争性认识论彼此之间相互作用的方式提出了更为细微的理解。具有变化中的变化环境[结束第326页]美国南部既是一个独特的地区，又是构成大西洋世界的交流网络中的一个节点。

例如，布拉德福德·伍德（Bradford J. Wood）在《海洋墓地和空前的大西洋世界：北卡罗来纳州的殖民经历》中指出，我们对“将大西洋作为一种联系方式”的公理理解不适用于北卡罗来纳州，北卡罗来纳州海岸线险恶阻止了殖民地建立那些导致其他地方发生大规模环境变化的联系，并提出了一个更大的，相互联系的大西洋世界的概念（第113页）。弗朗西丝·科尔布（Frances Kolb）在1763年至1783年的“违法犯罪：下密西西比河谷的国际边界和英国大西洋贸易网络”中指出，密西西比河指定了帝国之间的边界，相反，它促进了下密西西比河谷边界地区的多方向交换和流动。 ，小国在交易时拒绝对英国或西班牙的专属忠诚度。肖恩·莫里·史密斯（Sean Morey Smith）展示了促进在英国殖民地定居的作者如何依靠各种有关炎热气候和健康的理论，而不仅仅是“纬向气候带的旧观念”，以赞扬英格兰海外财产的“有益”品质（第21页） 。伊莱恩·拉斐伊（Elaine Lafay）在她的章节中指出，南方战前的种植者如何使自己的房屋和奴隶的住房获得适当的通风，却抵制了奴隶试图改善其通风状况或享受他们等同于自由和自治的“新鲜空气”的尝试。 （第38页）。种植者对奴隶劳动的控制在环境方面也使Hayley Negrin谈到了有关土著妇女的一章，他们的传统角色在农作物种植中被英国人贬低为不文明，但他们仍然努力地在自己的领域雇用他们的劳动力，而基思·普吕默斯（Keith Pluymers）关于百慕大的一章，那里非洲裔百慕大人广受欢迎的专业知识对两种烟草种植的发展都至关重要和奴隶制。梅利莎·N·莫里斯（Melissa N. Morris）强调了西班牙和当地的农作物和专业知识对弗吉尼亚州烟草文化的兴起的重要性，进一步强调了加勒比地区不同民族和地方之间环境资源和知识的交流。马修·穆尔卡希（Matthew Mulcahy）关于干旱的章节对这个世界的概念提出了挑战，因为这个世界异常炎热，潮湿和遭受飓风困扰，并表明干旱如何严重影响岛屿人口并经常刺激奴隶抵抗和叛乱。

彼得·C·梅塞尔（Peter C. Messer）在结束语中的“威廉·巴特伦游记的本质”上虽然有些不协调，但仍然强调了该藏品对奖学金的有益贡献：正如美国东南部的自然文化根据古老而又陈旧的威廉严格的分类法抵制了分类Bartram唤起崇高的崇高精神，并以自己的方式加以宣传，因此该系列的论文也提出了环境历史可以采用的新的新方法。