| Settlers to the North Carolina backcountry sought to reconcile their desire for economic development with the manifold lives they lived in the very environment their exploitative efforts transformed. Capitalism, the system they helped develop to further economic development and embedded in the larger fabric of their lives, was therefore not an outside force invading the environment, but rather an economic system that was part of a larger, non-expandable ecosystem. Although not necessarily environmentalist and humane, the capitalist system that reshaped the environment was both environmental and human. Two intertwined capitalist developments brought about profound environmental change and reshaped environmental management in a rural society where widespread access to forests was a central aspect of social and economic life. The creation of an infrastructure of forest exploitation intensified multiple extractive practices and expanded the geographical range of exploitation. The need for arbitration between what evolved into competing forest uses led to the implementation of management systems that reconstituted a vast pine forest as a “corporate” entity—a controlled environment whose maintenance was essential to its sustained multiple profitability and liveability, even if such control diminished ecological diversity or restricted the freedom of use enjoyed by petty users. |
