HSTAA 221
Nash
Spring 2009
Midterm Essay Questions
Only two of these questions will appear on the exam; you will answer one.
Read each question carefully. In all cases, you should provide specific examples to support your
positions. Where relevant, you should draw on material from both lectures and readings; failure
to do so will lower your grade on the question.
1. Historian Alfred Crosby has described the arrival of Europeans and their biotic baggage in the
New World as the most important biologic event since the last glaciation. Do you agree? Weigh
the evidence, both pro and con, for Crosby’s position and explain your own stance.
2. Typically we think of European settlement as bringing immense changes to the North
American landscape as settlers brought European modes of life to the “new” world. But the
environment itself always sets certain limits on the settlement process. What visions did settlers
try to impose on the North American landscape, and how did the local environments of New
England, the southeast, and the Great Plains respond to European (or Euro-American) settlement?
Would you describe the settlement process as one of “conquest” or one of “adaptation” or as
something else altogether?
3. There is a long tradition in American history of viewing the pre-Columbian landscape of
North America as “pristine.” As an environmental historian, (1) what evidence can you marshal
to challenge this claim; and (2) how can you explain the development of “the pristine myth” (to
use William Denevan’s phrase) among nineteenth-century Americans?
4. Traditionally the dominant interpretation of the decline of the buffalo has been a simple story
about the greed of white market hunters. How does your knowledge of environmental history
complicate that story? Outline the environmental history of the buffalo, and explain how that
animal’s disappearance affected the human history of the Great Plains.
5. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, Americans had begun to respond to the negative
effects of capitalist industrialization both politically and culturally. Compare and contrast two of
these responses. Discuss the contexts that gave rise to these movements, the groups they
engaged, and their most important political and social effects.
6. The years following European contact with the New World witnessed sharp declines in the
populations of native North American species such as the buffalo, the beaver, and several
varieties of fish (e.g., in New England). Discuss the specific reasons for these declines using two
examples drawn from lectures and/or readings. Was the decline of these species the result of a
unique set of factors in each case, or is it possible to discern larger patterns/causes that explain all
of these population collapses? Who were most strongly affected by each of these collapses and
how did those groups respond?
7. What was the Industrial Revolution, and how did it alter the lives and landscapes of (1) EuroAmericans in New England and (2) African Americans and Native Americans in the South during
the first-half of the nineteenth century (ca 1800-1850)?
HSTAA 221
Nash
Spring 2009
Midterm Short Answers
Six of these will appear on the midterm; you will answer four.
For each of the following, you should be prepared to identify, date (approximately, where
applicable), and describe the significance to U.S. environmental history.
Cahokia
Great Peace of 1840
U.S. rectangular land survey
Homestead Act 1860
potato
Iroquois beaver wars
environmental determinism
Slater Mill
Pacific sea otter
John Wesley Powell
usufruct rights
hydraulic gold mining
tidal rice cultivation
municipal housekeeping
Croton Aqueduct
Hudson River School
mixed husbandry
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Indian Removal
donkey engine
pristine myth