A01=James Winter
agriculture
Author_James Winter
britain
british history
Category=NHD
conservation
countryside
dredging machine
ecological damage
ecology
environment
environmental history
environmentalism
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
estate system
forest preservation
forests
great britain
green city
history
industrial blight
industrial britain
industrialization
lake thirlmere
landscapes
lowlands
moors
natural resources
nature
nonfiction
portrush
recreation
reservoir
roof garden
steam engines
thresher
victorian attitudes
victorian countrysides
victorian england
Product details
- ISBN 9780520229303
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 25 Feb 2002
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Nineteenth-century Britain led the world in technological innovation and urbanization, and unprecedented population growth contributed as well to the "rash assault," to quote Wordsworth, on Victorian countrysides. Yet James Winter finds that the British environment was generally spared widespread ecological damage. Drawing from a remarkable variety of sources and disciplines, Winter focuses on human intervention as it not only destroyed but also preserved the physical environment. Industrial blight could be contained, he says, because of Britain's capacity to import resources from elsewhere, the conservative effect of the estate system, and certain intrinsic limitations of steam engines. The rash assault was further blunted by traditional agricultural practices, preservation of forests, and a growing recreation industry that favored beloved landscapes. Winter's illumination of Victorian attitudes toward the exploitation of natural resources offers a valuable preamble to ongoing discussions of human intervention in the environment.
James Winter is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of British Columbia and author of London's Teeming Streets, 1830-1914 (1993).
