The Destruction of the Bison
An Environmental History, 1750–1920

A concise environmental history of the near-extinction of the bison from the mid-eighteenth century to the present.

Andrew C. Isenberg (Author)

9781108816724, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 March 2020

232 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.3 cm, 0.36 kg

'In the nineteenth century, in the short span of a few decades, the great bison herds that defined the Plains for thousands of years almost disappeared. No book illuminates the causes and consequences of that fateful development so eloquently or concisely as Drew Isenberg's essential, classic study, The Destruction of the Bison.' Louis S. Warren, University of California, Davis

For the last twenty years, The Destruction of the Bison has been an essential work in environmental history. Andrew C. Isenberg offers a concise analysis of the near-extinction of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than 1000 a century later. His wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study carefully considers the multiple causes, cultural and ecological, of the destruction of the species. The twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new foreword connecting this seminal work to developments in the field – notably new perspectives in Native American history and the rise of transnational history – and placing the story of the bison in global context. A new afterword extends the study to the twenty-first century, underlining the continued importance of this ground-breaking text for current, and future, students and scholars.

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The grassland environment
2. The genesis of the nomads
3. The nomadic experiment
4. The ascendancy of the market
5. The wild and the tamed
6. The returns of the bison
Conclusion
Afterword
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]