Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England

by Richard W. Judd

In this innovative study of the rise of the conservation ethic in northern New England, Richard Judd shows that the movement that eventually took hold throughout America had its roots among the communitarian ethic of countrypeople rather than among urban intellectuals or politicians. Drawing on agricultural journals and archival sources such as legislative petitions, Judd demonstrates that debates over access to and use of forests and water, though couched in utilitarian terms, drew their strength and conviction from deeply held popular notions of properly ordered landscapes and common rights to nature.

Unlike earlier attempts to describe the conservation movement in its historical context, which have often assumed a crude dualism in attitudes toward nature--democracy versus monopoly, amateur versus professional, utilitarian versus aesthete--this study reveals a complex set of motives and inspirations behind the mid-nineteenth-century drive to conserve natural resources. Judd suggests that a more complex set of contending and complementary social forces was at work, including traditional folk values, an emerging science of resource management, and constantly shifting class interests.

Common Lands, Common People tells us that ordinary people, struggling to define and redefine the morality of land and resource use, contributed immensely to America's conservation legacy.

Genres: Local History, Environment

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

Reviews

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the chapters on local fisheries made my eyes glaze over like a week-old cod, I loved when this book dove into issues regarding class and the rural vs urban environmentalist movements. The chapters specifically regarding tourism and its impact on farmers in northern New England were the strongest. I found it interesting and rather amusing that so much of the "quaint New England" stereotype was manufactured for urban tourists coming up for some R&R. I had hoped that the book would dive into urban institutions as well as commercial interests, but unfortunately Mr. Judd did not address the Appalachian Mountain Club in New Hampshire or other early environmental groups. This book focused on the legislation and fight between rural people, corporations/commercial entities, and their governments. I guess I'll have to find my history of the early AMC elsewhere.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

read (most) for class, legal studies 430 law and environmental history! Judd is smart and those poor farmers make me sad :( i love a good bottom-up conservation movement!