Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

by Bathsheba Demuth

A groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology since the dawn of the industrial age.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Environment, Science, Nature, Russia, Academic

Audiobook

First published August 20, 2019

About the author

Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian at Brown University, specializing in the United States and Russia, and in the history of energy and past climates. She has lived in and studied Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Floating Coast is billed as an environmental history, but it is also much, much more. In exploring how humans interact with our environment, Demuth takes a deep dive into the industrial dynamics of the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia. If you had told me that this book contained descriptions of gold mining in Alaska, or 20th century industrialized whaling, I may have given it a pass. It would have been my loss.

Bathsheba Demuth has divided this book into chapters exploring different aspects of the sea, coast, and land; from whales to walruses to reindeer to rocks and back again, covering the time period from 1848 to 1990. She is clearly an incredible historian and refracts her research through a broader discussion of how energy cycles through life forms, and how our politics (capitalism, communism) intersect with nature. We also live the experiences of massive upheaval of Yupik, Chukchi, and Iñupiat communities on both sides of the Bering Strait. The 19th century decimation of whales and walruses spelled starvation for many. The repercussions are ongoing.

Oh, to have lived in a world where the sea was teeming with whales. We know not what we do, but only because we refuse to examine our history.

[Greyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A prior reviewer called this book "beautiful" and that's exactly what it is, though I wouldn't have been able to put my finger on that adjective myself. It is beautiful for the prose and for the care Demuth takes in guiding us through the incessant human, animal, and environmental changes in northern Alaska and eastern Russia.

Maybe I am not reading the right books, but it feels like only in the last 2-3 years have 'serious' academic writers taken it upon themselves to make their books not only carefully researched and informative, but also lyrical and available to small personal interjections by the author (Stony the Road is another case of this). It is a welcome change from the on-high authority (and/or simply dry writing) of so many older histories.

I suppose the subject nature of this one makes it niche by default, but I'll be recommending it heartily for anyone remotely interested in the recent human history of the sub-Arctic and the "sensory immediacy" of the Tundra.

[Ben Goldfarb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Began 2020 by finishing the fabulous "Floating Coast," an environmental history that wears its erudition lightly. It's bracing—industrial whaling sounds like hell on both cetaceans and humans—but indispensable for anyone who cares about the Arctic.

[Tom Stanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a short review, everyone should read this book. As a friend of mine once said it's "an absolute blinder!"

I'll be writing a full review in Issue 3 of The Pilgrim magazine, out in September 2019.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that is not “about” indigenous sovereignty because it is a solid collection of evidence about the importance of indigenous sovereignty.

[RJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and challenging book that seeks to illuminate and break through the narratives of productivity, time, economics, and governance that have shaped the Arctic for the past two centuries. After Cronon's "Changes in the Land," probably one of the most important environmental histories to deal with the way that ideology shapes and distorts ecology in colonialist settings. Demuth deftly touches on certain themes and trends in academic literature by and about Indigenous peoples, and does a notably skillful job of allowing the concept of non-human persons to permeate the work without ever getting into the (often tedious) academic theory around this topic. She does an equally skillful job of treating all of the nations that share and/or occupy Beringia - Americans, Russian, Yupik, Inupiat, and Chukchi - with equal gravity, and allows them equal weight and agency in the telling of history. This is a book that treats its subject holistically in a way that is far too rare in the current era, and that treats writing with a joy and lyricism that is far too rare in current academia.

Recommended for anyone interested in Cold War history, Indigenous issues, the Arctic, whales, human-animal relationships.

[Cas · Rating 4 out of 5]

wow… more environmental histories please, though this one is so incredible it might feel like little else can measure up to it. demuth is a master of her craft.

i think this book makes me believe that you can be a bit woo-woo and also a marxist. that’s dialectics.

[Jonas · Rating 5 out of 5]

in (manchmal etwas überkandidelter) wunderschöner Sprache geschriebene Geschichte der Beziehung zwischen Pflanzen, Tieren und Menschen in der Beringstraße, SO VIEL gelernt, krasse Perspektivwechsel (Wale geben sich den Jägern zum Töten hin, die Jäger geben das Fleisch den Bedürftigen, so gehört sich das - Grönlandwale haben sich gegenseitig erzählt, wie man Walfängern am besten entkommt und ihr Verhalten radikal geändert, Walrosse genauso), also perfekt, letztes Kapitel etwas lang imo, aber wenn ich jemals so über Natur schreibe wie sie schätze ich mich übermäßig glücklich

[Hank · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an amazing book....I hated reading it. Just like it says it is a history of the people living in Berengia on both sides of the strait. Unfortunately that also includes all of the exploitation of the environment that we humans are quite good at.

Part one and two: Lets start killing all the whales and walrus. I say start because there are more chapters to come. Early on we (humans) weren't all that great at it but we get better fast.

Part three: Lets add communism and try to herd reindeer. This part was less depressing for the animals and more depressing for the people.

Part four: Gold mining and adding capitalism to cultures that don't have much use for it and when it ulitmately fails, leave the people worse off. Fun.

Part five: Back to killing whales except now we are really, really good at it.

Demuth has written a truly amazing book filled with data from both sides of the dateline which I found incredibly intersting, particularly how the bolsheviks and communists tried to exploit Chukotka. The Russians were far more inept which meant they destroyed the environment less and the people more. Demuth writes all of this from personal experience having moved north of the arctice circle at the age of 18. Ok, not all since she started the story in the 1800s. Her writing is beautiful at times, I found myself savoring the first couple of paragraphs in every chapter where she evokes one image or another of arctic beauty, just before heading to the grimmer realities.

The epilogue was hopeful yet still very aware of human nature and how destructive it can end up. Whales seem to be in a better spot, walrus are much better, raindeer although in much smaller numbers without the incentives, still roam around, while gold miners are mostly doing their thing for tv shows. The impact of climate change looms which tempers the hope a bit.

The book suffers from a bit of information overload and some repetition but is extremely well researdched and written. I just had a hard time with the environmental costs.

The Russian parts and the reindeer herding were my favorites. I am not sure who to recommend this to but it really was an excellent book.

[Teddy Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Neither capitalist time nor socialist time fit the cycles of walrus life."

Very interesting appreciation of the ways in which different cultures, from American and Soviet to the Chukchi, Yupik and Iñupiat, interact with their environments and the different approaches they have taken to the fauna of the Bering Strait. Ultimately, it presents a beautiful story of how energy in the region is in flux, manipulated by humans in order to satisfy subsistent, industrial and/or ideological means.

Particularly I found the discussion of the Soviet Gulags in Chukotka to be profound, and how Beringia sits on an often forgotten, and quite different, Cold War frontier. The detachment that characterised U.S. and Soviet attitudes to the killing of whales, walruses, foxes, seals, deer and the like stood in stark contrast to the perspectives posited by the native Beringians. But what Demuth does not fail to do, is challenge every viewpoint; including the moral dilemma raised by allowing Natives to hunt endangered species but not allowing nations to do so.

Demuth refers throughout to this idea of changing energies, and particularly how each case involves enclosement of such energies. In this way, I found the case study of the Nome Gold rush to be very interesting, although admittedly at times throughout the book I did feel like I was losing interest. Personally, I was not a fan of the style of writing but that's probably just me.

[Andrei · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Beringia lähiajalugu" pole eriti mõjus müügiargument? Kuidas oleks: hingematvalt kaunilt kirjutatud esseistlik ülevaade kapitalistliku turumajanduse ja sotsialistliku plaanimajanduse laupkokkupõrkest traditsioonilise looduslähedase eluviisiga Beringi väina kallastel 19. sajandi keskpaigast tänaste tagajärgedeni välja. Ajalugu, mis ei räägi ainult inimestest, vaid keskkonnast ja keerulistest liikidevahelistest ökoloogilistest suhetest. Poeetiline ja nukker, selge ja jõuline. Imetlusväärne on ka autori suutlikkus hoiduda lihtsakoelistest tüpaažidest nagu kuri ärikas ja õilis metslane, näha selle asemel üle aastasadade, tuhandete kilomeetrite, rahvaste, riikide ja liikide seoseid, vastastikmõjusid ning loogikaid. 4.5/5

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the books Jeff Sharlet recommended from his extensive reading as a judge for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Bathsheba Demuth’s prose is precise, detailed, and often beautiful as she describes this region and the complex relationships between the land, the waters, the wildlife, the indigenous population, and the eventual colonial invaders of the Bering Strait.

[Aydan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really gorgeous, I think that this is a really amazing first book to get into environmental history (it was mine lol and now I want to read a ton more). Not only phenomenal prose, but super interesting and informative!!

[Michal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is just as incredible as I was told it would be, if not more. The way it talks about time, land, culture, and energy is so !!!!! Truly a delight to read and so obscenely important. Changed my life in ways I’ve yet to put a finger on but I will be recommending it to anyone who will listen.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant and completely gut-wrenching. Fusing scientific precision and poetic lyricism, Bathsheba Demuth has written a natural history that transcends its genre and its subject. Objectively a book about the Bering Strait, ‘Floating Coast’ is a call for us to wake up to a way of living that is both out of touch with the natural world and ultimately unsustainable.

“Fossil fuels freed the use of energy from human toil, allowing human history to seem separate from the rest of time. It wrote concern for cyclical life out of most calculations of value; cycles, after all, have a peak and a decline, a season for birthing and for dying. They invoke mortality. Ideas of ever-increasingly growth emphasize the life phase, as if we as a social body are permanent adolescents, hungry and rising, immortal. This made a new idea of liberty, release from the constraints of then matter that made us, and from precariousness of being.”

6 stars.

[Kulbhushan Suryawanshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best book on environmental history. The research is extensive and in-depth. By focusing on a place like Beringia the author is able to explore the effects of both, Soviet Socialism and American Capitalism on the marine and terrestrial life in this region. The book shows how both created problems not only for the environment of this region but also the local people. This is a must read book for anyone interested in Environment, Arctic or the commodification of nature.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more impressive natural histories I have ever read and a great compare/contrast on the divergent fates of each side of the straits under capitalism and communism and how both eventually failed in their various projects. Stylistically impressive as well as erudite.

[Ivana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written book.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

In what is easily the best book I’ve read this year; Demuth’s Floating Coast is a deep dive into the ways that differing economic and social systems have shaped the land in Beringia. And in Demuth’s telling, there is a stark divide between systems that view the land from far distant centers of power as a resource to be utilized and optimized versus locally based systems where the hunters are stakeholders in the land.

In the first category is Russia and the US. These are specifically, imperial Russia and communist collectivist USSR on one side of the Bering Sea and US-style capitalism on the other. Under these systems, the land and the creatures who dwell within it are seen as resources to be managed and turned into profit—whether for the collective or for financial shareholders. Either way, the name of the game is short-term optimization of the land—not long-term sustainability.

This is in direct contrast to the native communities, who have hunted the land for thousands of years and are stakeholders and stewards of the place. As is well-known, arctic peoples survive mainly on meat. You can’t grow vegetables in the far north and so the peoples there have developed a culture that revolves around hunting animals. This practice revolves around elaborate customs and beliefs that result in hunting that is sustainable and fair. That means, that people don’t take more than they can use (and they use the entire animal). Even now, on federally managed lands, native communities are permitted to hunt walruses. Hunting in Alaska is highly regulated, but as I was told by our guide (an Alaskan big game hunter himself) man remains the walruses’ main predator.
“The government can’t exactly dictate to the native people how and what they can eat when they’ve been hunting here for thousands of years. That would be colonialist.”

I was particularly interested in her focus on energy. As she puts it, “to be alive is to take a place in a chain of conversions.” For Beringians—the Chukchi, Iñupiat, and Yupik —creatures/minerals/ice the world were not transferable sources of profit-- but part of an interconnected world to which they were a part. To which they depended on for survival. Mutual inter-dependence and co-survival. I was really interested in the traditional myths she described in which humans become walruses or whale come forth to be killed when they felt the humans were worthy and deserving of their offering.

The writing is very beautiful. Nature listed it as one of their top science reads the year it came out and I think it has also won writing awards. It is an extraordinary book.

From the New York Times review: “To be alive means taking up our place in a chain of conversions,” Demuth reminds us. “In order to live, something, some being, is always dying.” After centuries of humans’ industrial energy consumption, what will be next to go? This summer, Alaska had its hottest days ever recorded. Seas are rising, habitats are disappearing, and extreme weather events are on the rise. As people act, the climate reacts. Only by understanding that link might we survive.

[Craig Werner]

An excellent environmental history of a region that's rarely given serious attention (though Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams will sit beside Floating Coast on my shelves). Demuth structures the history around the changing forms of resource extraction (of whales, walrus. foxes, gold, oil), emphasizing the impact on the indigenous people on both sides of the Bering Strait. One of her primary concerns is to show how both the American/capitalist and Soviet/socialist approaches to the economic "development" of the region have more or less equally destructive impact on the traditional cultures. Alongside that, she makes it clear that the cultures have and will (barring absolute environmental apocalypse) survived.

Learned a lot and the passages where she writes more or less from the perspective of the whales will stay with me.

[Laurie Jodice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this environmental history. The book is full of details and facts. Sometimes it felt like lots of facts all tossed in with some loss of context. But given how hard it used to be (in late 80s) to learn about environmental issues in Russia, this book was a huge research task and admirable accomplishment. I wonder why not much attention was given to commercial fisheries, including joint US and Russia activity in the later part of the 20th century (eg https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-x...) and more recent joint science ventures that were occurring, at least up until the recent Ukraine war.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was excellent and should be on the shelf of those who wish to understand the history of the climate crisis (a slice of it at least) and the ways in which major powers and major ideologies filtered the earth's finite resources through a lens of linear growth and expansion.

We have hit the ceiling, friends.

[Timothy Fewless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent academic book. The first I've had the time to read by choice in a while. I added this to my graduate school library.

[Anna Grace Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars but i'll round up. an absolutely stunning masterclass on environmental history. remarkable text. moving, beautiful, informative, accessible. quite literally exactly what i want in a book.

[Taylor Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful and enchanting book. The lyrical prose really captures the dynamic and wild place that is Beringia. I really enjoyed how each section of the book was based on a different resource. Also the juxtaposition of the Soviet Union and America was
Really well done. I want to visit beringia, but maybe I shouldn’t inflict anymore pain on the area.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not read this book — ahem — closely. I would probably have enjoyed it more if I had — she writes in a lyrical style rather different than a typical academic book, though she still has a clear argument and coherent direction. She balances the different aspects well and is a good storyteller. That said, I raised my eyebrows a few times when she writes about whales as though they are people (not metaphorically, I might add — I think she really means it). Example: "Their [the whales'] culture... became one of choosing not to die for the market. It was perhaps inadvertently, a political assertion." (43) Um, yes, insofar as whales make political assertions, I imagine they are inadvertent.

[JJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Demuth is such a wonderful writer! This book unfolds as a series of small stories, each centered around a particular aspect of Beringian environment -- bowheads, walruses, reindeer, tin, etc. -- and how these were respectively viewed by indigenous Beringians, American politicians/businessmen, and later, Soviet officials. Demuth suggests that the linear, progress-driven ideologies employed by Americans and Soviets alike were out of step with the non-linear, cyclical time of the natural Beringian world. Native Beringians, who hunted for shelter and subsistence, and held deep respect for the non-human creatures of their environment, understood how to live in such a dynamic landscape, whereas the capitalist and communist systems did not, to destructive effect. With these descriptions, and a folkloric style of language that anthopomorphizes whales, walruses, and reindeer, Demuth seems to be arguing that the global masses would be wise to learn from indigenous lifestyles, particularly in tackling the environmental challenges that the world faces today.

[Ylva · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

WOW

[Rebecca Hearne · Rating 5 out of 5]

s t u n n i n g

[Boyd Cothran · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating environmental history of the Bering Strait that presents a completely new way of looking at the region's past, present, and future. Although I would have liked a clearer, more consistent story, it is an impressive and beautiful book.