The Countryside
Ten Rural Walks Through Britain and Its Hidden History of Empire
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
An Air Mail Editors’ Pick
Ten walks through idyllic scenery reveal rural Britain’s forgotten links to transatlantic slavery and colonialism—a “revelatory travelogue-c*m-exposé” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) that will transform our understanding of the English countryside and its heritage.
For centuries, the green fields, rugged highlands, and rolling hills of England, Scotland, and Wales have captured the global imagination as backdrops for the tales of adventure and seclusion that have become enduring symbols of British culture. But beneath the romantic perception of these rural locales—grand country estates, shoreline villages, and inland hamlets alike—is a past and present irrevocably shaped by British transatlantic slavery and colonialism.
Over the course of ten country walks, scholar Corinne Fowler explores the unique colonial dimensions of British labor history, from agriculture to copper-mining, coastal trade to factory work. One route explores banking history in Southern England and its link to slavery on Louisianan plantations; another uncovers the historical impact of sugar profits on the Scottish isles and 18th-century tobacco imports on an English port. Each walk not only offers a fascinating exploration of the heart of British rural life, but also exposes its inextricable connection to colonial activity in the farthest reaches of the British empire.
Accompanying the author on her walks are a fascinating group of people—artists, musicians, and writers—with strong attachments to the landscapes featured in this book and family links to former British colonies like Barbados and Senegal. Alongside these companions, Fowler illuminates the meaning of colonial history in local settings. Crucially, this is not just a history book but “a deftly critical, readable contribution to the historiography of empire” (Kirkus Reviews)—a compassionate reflection on the way we respond to sensitive, shared histories which link people across cultures, generations, and political divides.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Colonialism... affected the remotest corners" of Britain's landscape, demonstrates historian and curator Fowler (Green Unpleasant Land) in this revelatory travelogue-cum-exposé. Narrating ten walks through the British countryside, Fowler traces how a global web of slavery, indentured servitude, and resource extraction altered the country's "uplands, shorelines, valleys, lakes, villages and fields." Touring Berkshire, a county outside of London, she delineates changes brought about by East India Company officials who flocked there in the 18th century and spent their fortunes on gardens and landscaping. On Scotland's Isle of Jura, she tracks the flow of wealth from Jamaica to the prominent Campbell family, who used money earned in the trafficking of slaves, sugar, and tobacco to invest in Jura's flax industry and build up the red deer population by way of extensive enclosure. Visiting the Lake District, Fowler reveals that the home where William Wordsworth lived and wrote, with its gorgeous grounds, was underwritten by his brother John's involvement in the opium trade in Asia. The account transfixes throughout, but especially in Fowler's description of the backlash she faces for her research—in 2020, her study of how many of the country's preserved stately manor homes were funded by colonial exploitation became fodder for "culture war"–style attacks. This is a staggering look at some of the less-studied repercussions of colonialism.
