Writing Man and Nature (1864) in Italy: George and Caroline Marsh on Human-Environmental Relations

From Firenze University Press Journal: Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica

Etta Madden, Missouri State University

George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882), the first US Minister Plenipotentiary to the unified Kingdom of Italy, has been lauded for his career as a politician, statesman, and philologist. Those interested in political sci-ence and history have analyzed his correspondence and dispatches to assert how Marsh fostered US-Italian diplomatic relations. But he also is celebrated as a father of environmentalism, for having written Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864). A s the book’s subtitle indicates, its key theme is the human impact on the natural environment. Biographer David Lowenthal has explained that, alongside Charles Darwin’s famous Origin of Species, Marsh’s volume “was the most influential text of its time to link culture with nature, sci-ence with society, landscape with history.” More recently, the work has been seen as “the fountainhead of the conservation movement.” The book anticipated what we now refer to as the “Anthropocene” — that “epoch of geological time during which human activity is considered to be the dominant influence on the environment, climate, and ecology of the earth.” Although the Anthropocene period generally is considered to have taken off in the mid-twentieth century, some acknowledge that it began with the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. Marsh witnessed these changes first during his New England childhood and young adulthood and then later as he traveled, culminating in his 1864 publication. Growing attention to the Anthropocene and to Marsh’s work during the last two decades, manifested in part by reprint editions of Man and Nature, conferences and articles on Marsh, has been well-deserved. This essay contributes to these recent conversations in two ways. First, it rein-forces what Lowenthal has written about the impact of Marsh’s travels abroad — especially in Italy — but with added attention to how the theories of the human impact on the natural environment drew from these experi-ences. Additionally, though, and more important, it attests to the role of George’s wife, Caroline Crane Marsh, in this watershed publication. Without her partnership and assistance, George likely would not have composed the volume in its existing form. Caroline and George loved the time they were able to devote to what they both called his “work.” Although it may seem disconnected from George’s legation responsibilities, they both saw the creation of Man and Nature as part of their ambassadorial roles.To elaborate: without first-hand experience of the couple’s travels during George’s appointments as a statesman, his book would not have been written. In route to Turkey in 1850, where George would serve as US Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire until 1853, the couple observed varied agricultural practices and terrain throughout the Italian peninsula and witnessed Vesuvius’s eruption. The “geographical breadth and historical depth” of George’s knowledge of human interactions and environmental change was expanded through his Mediterranean and “Eastern” travels and in return through Sicily, where he observed Mount Etna and the surrounding volcanic soil. All the while, Caroline usually travelled with him. Although he made some expeditions alone, George preferred not to travel without her. Later, while serving in unified Italy, the couple planned and executed explorations of Italian mountains, valleys, plains, and deltas. In sum, Caroline contributed to his book work as a sounding board, proofreader, and indexer. And even before that, she instigated the writing. Coupled with the literal words on the book’s pages, Caroline’s extensive diaries and some of the couple’s letters provide insights to the volume’s composition, as I will note here. These sources also make evident that they discussed their observations of the environment and the works they read together, all contributing to what ended up on the page and influencing readers today. Their experiences abroad influenced what has come to be known as environmental science. As Sean Cocco has written about landscapes, noting specifically those around Mount Vesuvius, they “are of nature and the mind, sustaining myths that explain, empower, and identify cultures and peoples.” George Marsh’s book of “science” helped him to understand the vast history and cultures he experienced (on and off the page) during travels with Caroline. Writing the book helped him explain these ideas to himself, to his wife, and to his imagined readers. Meanwhile Caroline’s witness — especially of volcanoes, mountains, seas, and birds — and her journal entries deepened the myths she held in her mind and shared with her husband about humans’ relationships with the natural world.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rifp-1786

Read Full Text: https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/rifp/article/view/1786