Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labor and White Leisure after the Civil War

摘要

Scott Giltner's Hunting and Fishing in the New South provides a fresh look at race relations, environmental history, and historical geography in the postbellum South. By racializing the study of post emancipation field sports, Giltner provides new insights into the development of game and fish laws in America's southern states. Hunting and fishing, Giltner shows, were staples of African American life before the end of slavery. They provided slaves with much needed supplementary food as well as a modicum of independence from their white southern masters, while generating little backlash from slaveholders. After the civil war, however, freed blacks' hunting and fishing was seen as increasingly problematic by white elites. As Giltner explains, the discursive equation of African Americans' hunting and fishing with labor instability and wildlife depletion was instrumental in the erosion of their hunting and fishing rights through targeted game laws. The book helps to trace the historic evolution offish and game laws in relation to slavery, post emancipation race relations, and the politics of land use and nature conservation. It will be of interest to historians, historical geographers, race theorists, and environmental studies scholars alike.