Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia |  | Author: William J. Lines
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Seller: BonitaFlores
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1855561
Media: Paperback
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 347
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0820320560
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.71370994
EAN: 9780820320564
ASIN: 0820320560
Publication Date: April 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Taming the Great South Land is the first full-length landscape history of an entire continent occupied by one nation. It is also, in William Lines's telling, a brutal and controversial story. Examining the ways European society rapidly, radically transformed Australia's physical and human landscapes, the author writes candidly of repeated environmental devastationfrom the early slaughter of seals and whales to the destructive spread of sheep, through gold rushes and land settlement to British nuclear tests and the modern mining and timber industries. Lines shows how Enlightenment ideas of progress, economic growth, and development were reconstructed on Australian soil, and how the promise of the conquest of nature became a mockery in fact, resulting in the mass dislocation and destruction of indigenous populations. This shocking narrative, thoroughly researched and accessibly written, combines environmental, social, and political history to hard-hitting effect.
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| Customer Reviews:
a war against the land ? September 19, 2008
W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3)
The bombastic, triumphalist tone of the title is meant in sarcasm. The author describes in impressive detail how Australia was settled by the British. But instead of following the standard path of focusing on the growth of the cities, he looks instead at the farming sector. Along with how water and other resources were harnessed to feed the cities.
Much of the original environment was drastically altered, at least in the coastal regions where farms could be established. The non-native livestock and crops thrived. So too did species like foxes and rabbits and cane toads. The narrative is almost one of a war against the land.
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