This unique collection of primary documents examines the evolution of concern about environmental degradation, pollution, and resource conservation in America from the Colonial period the present.
Front Cover.
Half Title Page.
Title Page.
Copyright Page.
Contents.
Foreword.
Preface.
Introduction.
Foundations of American Environmental Thought and Action.
1: Biblical Views of Nature and Humanity.
2: Virgil’s Pastoral View of Nature (c. 50 B.C.E.).
3: Christopher Columbus Inventories the New World’s Natural Resources (1493).
4: Jean Ribaut Discovers the Natural Abundance of Terra Florida (1563).
5: Baltasar de Obregon’s Account of the Riches of New Mexico (1584).
6: Thomas Hariot on the Death of Indians from a Disease Brought from Europe (1588).
7: William Bradford on Life in the Wilderness (1620, 1621).
8: Francis Bacon on Science and Technology (1629).
9: Regulating the Herring Run in the Town of Plymouth (1637, 1638, 1639, 1662).
10: Predator Control and Game Hunting Regulation in Rhode Island Colony (1639, 1646).
11: Thomas Hobbes’s Social Contract Theory (1651).
12: Pollution in Plymouth Colony Harbor (1668).
13: William Penn Contracts to Set Aside Timbered Lands (1681).
14: John Locke on Property and Labor (1690).
15: John Ray on Gardens and Wilderness (1691).
16: Jonathan Edwards on God and Nature (1739).
17: Peter Kalm on Land Management (1753).
18: William Blackstone’s On the Rights of Things (1765-1769).
19: John Bartram on Reclaiming Florida’s Wetlands (1767).
Politicians, Naturalists, and Artists in the New Nation, 1776–1839.
20: Thomas Jefferson on Agrarianism and Industrialization (1785, 1816).
21: James Madison on Population and Property (1786, 1787/1788).
22: Philip Freneau’s Noble Savage (1788).
23: William Bartram on the Human Impact on the Environment (1791).
24: Benjamin Rush on Saving the Sugar Maple (1791).
25: The Founding Fathers on the Care of the Land (1793, 1818).
26: Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).
27: Meriwether Lewis on the Slaughter of Buffaloes (1804-1806).
