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Book Review
| The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography. By John R. Wennersten. Baltimore, Md.: Maryland Historical Society, 2001. xix + 255 pp. Bibliographical references, index. Cloth $30.00.
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| The Chesapeake Bay, one of the world's finest and most productive estuaries, has been central to the life of Maryland and Virginia. Its history is rich with tales of daring and adventure, caring and greed. Today the bay is the subject of massive restoration efforts led by enthusiastic activists while still being faced with the same destructive exploitation that has threatened its viability over the centuries. John Wennersten's new history recounts episodes in the life of the bay that are useful in understanding both its history and its current condition. |
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The introduction provides an overview of the estuary in crisis today, as Wennersten writes, "under assault by commercial and industrial development, population growth, agricultural pollution, resource mismanagement, and political ineptitude" (p. ix). He notes that people spread throughout the large drainage basin in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia all contribute to the bay's current condition. The many tributaries of the bay, including the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and the James, bring the fresh water which mixes with the salt water from the Atlantic. Wennersten ties all these elements together in this newest of only several book-length studies of the bay's history. |
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The first half of the book deals with the period up to the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter One begins with American Indians, their food and hunting traditions, the explorations of Captain John Smith and settlements of the early colonists, disease exchange, relations among American Indians, Europeans, and Africans, the fur trade, and the beginning of tobacco culture. The second chapter presents an in-depth study of tobacco, the area's first cash crop, and the increasingly lucrative timber business. These two economic thrusts led to serious deforestation of the land along the shores of the bay and its tributaries, with a resulting decline in water quality. Chapter Three covers the growth of towns and other ecological transformations up to the time of the Civil War, including accounts of the appalling sanitary conditions that posed a major threat to public health. Unlike many histories of this period, especially colonial histories, which tend to concentrate on Virginia, Wennersten—a Maryland resident—emphasizes the Maryland experience, but does not ignore Virginia or the District of Columbia. He makes good use of published histories and notes the historiographical differences in interpretation. |
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Chapter Four, on the oyster trade, draws much material from Wennersten's earlier work, the lively and well researched Oyster Wars of the Chesapeake Bay (Centreville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1981). He documents how everybody's attempt to get as much as possible from "the commons" resulted in physical violence and the destruction of the bay's most valuable shellfish. He follows this with an informative chapter on early twentieth-century and pre-Earth Day efforts to manage the bay and includes useful material on several conservation pioneers, among them Reginald Truitt and Eugene Cronin. In concluding his study, Wennersten writes of recent efforts to fight environmental deterioration. One difficult decision to make when writing any book is what to leave out. In this case, it would have been helpful to include material on Chesapeake Bay clamming and more material on the very active contemporary movement to "Save the Bay." More maps and illustrations also would have been a nice addition to this highly recommended book. |
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This history of the Chesapeake is clearly written, with useful footnotes and a bibliographical essay. The lively style makes this a useful book for readers of all sorts: general readers, historians, environmentalists, and students of the environment and of regional history and ecology. |
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Suzanne E. Chapelle is professor of history and environmental studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to teaching the history of Maryland and environmental history, she volunteers with several environmental organizations. |
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