Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society (Studies in Rural Culture) - Hardcover

Kirby, Jack Temple

3.67

15 ratings by Goodreads

9780807822142: Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society (Studies in Rural Culture)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807822140 ISBN 13: 9780807822142

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995

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Jack Temple Kirby charts the history of the low country between the James River in Virginia and Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. The Algonquian word for this country, which means 'swamp-on-a-hill,' was transliterated as 'poquosin' by seventeenth-century English settlers. Interweaving social, political, economic, and military history with the story of the landscape, Kirby shows how Native American, African, and European peoples have adapted to and modified this Tidewater area in the nearly four hundred years since the arrival of Europeans. Kirby argues that European settlement created a lasting division of the region into two distinct zones often in conflict with each other: the cosmopolitan coastal area, open to markets, wealth, and power because of its proximity to navigable rivers and sounds, and a more isolated hinterland, whose people and their way of life were gradually--and grudgingly--subjugated by railroads, canals, and war. Kirby's wide-ranging analysis of the evolving interaction between humans and the landscape offers a unique perspective on familiar historical subjects, including slavery, Nat Turner's rebellion, the Civil War, agricultural modernization, and urbanization.

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Review:

Intriguing and highly readable.

"American Historical Review"

A charming book that fuses scholarship to art.

"Journal of Southern History"

"A thoroughly referenced, entertaining, and thought-provoking work.

"Choice""

This is ecological history with verve. . . . A human geography of a complex region.

"Agricultural History"

"Jack Kirby has written a beautiful, enjoyable, and valuable study about a little-known part of America.

"Journal of American History""

A thoroughly referenced, entertaining, and thought-provoking work.

"Choice"

Jack Kirby has written a beautiful, enjoyable, and valuable study about a little-known part of America.

"Journal of American History"

Synopsis:

A history of the American country between the James River in Virginia and Albemarle Sound in North Carolina. It combines social and political history with the story of the landscape, to show how Native American, African and European people have adapted to and modified the area in nearly 400 years.

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