Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

First published in 1999, this book is a comparative history of the development of ideas about nature, particularly of the importance of native nature as a part of the culture in the Anglo settler countries of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It examines the development of natural history in the great nineteenth-century expansion of settlement. It explores settlers' adaptations to the end of expansion and scientists' shift from natural history to ecology. Finally it analyzes the diffusion of ecology through the Anglo world and to the general population as well as the rise of environmentalism. Addressing not only scientific knowledge, but also popular issues such as hunting, common names for plants and animals, landscape painting, and nature stories, this book explores the ways in which English-speaking settlers looked at nature in their new lands and at the place they gave it in their societies.