Enlightenment's Frontier : The Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Environmentalism / Fredrik Albritton Jonsson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Albritton Jonsson, Fredrik, Author.

Series:

Lewis Walpole series in eighteenth-century culture and history.

The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Environmentalism--Scotland--History--18th century.

Environmentalism.

Enlightenment--Scotland.

Enlightenment.

Scotland--Intellectual life--18th century.

Scotland.

Highlands (Scotland)--Environmental conditions--History--18th century.

Highlands (Scotland).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (365 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Enlightenment's Frontier is the first book to investigate the environmental roots of the Scottish Enlightenment. What was the place of the natural world in Adam Smith's famous defense of free trade? Fredrik Albritton Jonsson recovers the forgotten networks of improvers and natural historians that sought to transform the soil, plants, and climate of Scotland in the eighteenth century. The Highlands offered a vast outdoor laboratory for rival liberal and conservative views of nature and society. But when the improvement schemes foundered toward the end of the century, northern Scotland instead became a crucible for anxieties about overpopulation, resource exhaustion, and the physical limits to economic growth. In this way, the rise and fall of the Enlightenment in the Highlands sheds new light on the origins of environmentalism.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Enlightenment in the Peat Moss

1. The Moral Geography of Scotland

2. Natural History and Civil Cameralism

3. Improving the Scottish Climate

4. Alternate Highlands

5. Rival Ecologies of Global Commerce

6. Larch Autarky

7. Coal Exhaustion in 1789

8. Overpopulation and Extirpation

9. Wasteland Island

10. "A Stationary Condition for Ever"

Conclusion: The Ghosts of the Enlightenment

Maps

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

0-300-16374-6

OCLC:

865160332