Land Hunger
Ohio and the Western Frontiers
Published on 27. May 2025
Book
Hardback
210 pages
978-0-8214-2635-7 (ISBN)
Description
In Land Hunger, Mansel G. Blackford explores the central role of land use in the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, and Euro Americans as the new nation expanded westward from Ohio to the Oregon Country. Blackford emphasizes how people adapted to new and changed environments and focuses on key themes related to environmental and frontier studies: the land-use interactions between Native Americans and outsiders, the influence of government policies, and the impact of earlier concepts about the ownership and use of land and water that continue to affect us today in the face of climate change.
The first part of the book delves into Euro American and African American settlement in the Ohio Country during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Driven by "Ohio fever" and influenced by a blend of pragmatic, romantic, and capitalistic ideals, tens of thousands crossed the Appalachian Mountains to settle and farm in an unfamiliar land. It was in Ohio and the Midwest that many Americans developed their views on land and the environment, and where the new federal government devised methods for surveying and selling claimed lands. Subsequent chapters analyze how Ohioans and others attempted to apply Midwest-born ideas and practices in the Oregon Country and the Great Plains-regions with significantly different environments-with limited success.
Land Hunger defines "frontiers" as zones of interaction between distinct groups of people, offering a broad interpretation of these contested spaces. The book explores how frontiers were depicted in fiction, where their portrayal helped establish their meaning and significance to incoming Americans. Blackford examines diaries, letters, and reminiscences, as well as a broad range of scholarly studies in this historical synthesis.
The first part of the book delves into Euro American and African American settlement in the Ohio Country during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Driven by "Ohio fever" and influenced by a blend of pragmatic, romantic, and capitalistic ideals, tens of thousands crossed the Appalachian Mountains to settle and farm in an unfamiliar land. It was in Ohio and the Midwest that many Americans developed their views on land and the environment, and where the new federal government devised methods for surveying and selling claimed lands. Subsequent chapters analyze how Ohioans and others attempted to apply Midwest-born ideas and practices in the Oregon Country and the Great Plains-regions with significantly different environments-with limited success.
Land Hunger defines "frontiers" as zones of interaction between distinct groups of people, offering a broad interpretation of these contested spaces. The book explores how frontiers were depicted in fiction, where their portrayal helped establish their meaning and significance to incoming Americans. Blackford examines diaries, letters, and reminiscences, as well as a broad range of scholarly studies in this historical synthesis.
Reviews / Votes
Land Hunger provides a sweeping overview of settlement in Ohio, Oregon, and the Great Plains. It is an incisive study of the interactions between White settlers, Native Americans, and African Americans and the environment. Blackford tells an important story of adaptation, failure, and success in the westward movement.(R. Douglas Hurt, author of Agriculture in the Midwest, 1815-1900) A seasoned and talented historian tells here the story of how a "lust for land" shaped white settlement in both Ohio in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the Far West and the Great Plains later in the twentieth century. Mansel Blackford blends together intimate details from diaries and rich historical resources to help us better understand the clash between Indigenous traditions of communal land management and the visions of white settlers who saw the natural environmental as a commodity to be transformed into material wealth. This is a wonderful book that connects histories of the Pacific Northwest and the Great Plains to stories of land conquest and commodification further east. It's also a story that helps those of us who live in these places better understand how we got here.
(Bart Elmore, author of Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet) Mansel G. Blackford is among the nation's leading business, environmental, and political historians. In this beautifully written book, Blackford explains the ways in which nineteenth century Euro Americans, persuaded of their inherent rights, took Native American lands starting in Ohio, across the plains, and then all the way to Oregon and Washington. Real estate speculation, Blackford determines, was baked into that westward movement. . . . Blackford's books, moreover, are always readable, powerful, deeply researched, and assignable. (Mark H. Rose, author of Market Rules: Bankers, Presidents, and the Origins of the Great Recession)
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Athens
United States
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
1 map
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8214-2635-7 (9780821426357)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Mansel G. Blackford is a professor emeritus of history at the Ohio State University, where he worked in the fields of business history and frontier history for forty years. He is the author or coauthor of a dozen books, several of which deal specifically with Ohio and midwestern history-most recently Columbus, Ohio: Two Centuries of Business and Environmental Change.