Wildness without Wilderness

Biogeography and Empire in Seventeenth-Century French North America

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12453038
AutoresChristopher M Parsons (autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume22
Fascículo4
Páginas643-667
Data de publicação2017-02-23
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironmental History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1084-5453 • E-ISSN: 1930-8892
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1093/envhis/emx026
OpenAlexW2600452267
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas29

If there is no word for wilderness in French, how did early colonists, missionaries, and explorers experience the environments of northeastern North America to which they came in the seventeenth century? This article returns to the French term for the nature that they encountered—sauvage, or wild—to suggest that French colonialism actively sought out those places and plants that could be identified as wild. These were invariably the product of Europe and North America’s shared geologic and evolutionary histories, related species of common botanical genera and families. In the encounters between French colonists and the plants they called sauvage, we can glimpse the emergence of a French colonial political ecology that identified the observable differences between American and European flora as wildness. Focusing on the opportunities to rehabilitate sauvage fruits and landscapes, empire itself was recast as a recuperative project that would redeem both indigenous peoples and American environments. The invisibility of this history without a careful attention to language suggests the need to reassess where and how we use words such as the “wilderness” to describe the experiences of communities that spoke (and still speak) other languages

Archaeology · Biology · Colonialism · Economic history · Empire · Environmental history · Ethnology · Flora (microbiology · Geography · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Wilderness · Wildness · Archaeology and Natural History · Botany, Ecology, and Taxonomy Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Ecology · History · Law