USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics

The United States in the Anthropocene

Gaetano Di Tommaso — 2024-04-18

This seventh issue of USAbroad aims to look at American history and politics through an environmental lens and reframe the United States’ upward trajectory as a world power in the context of the Anthropocene. In particular, each article offers a unique way to view the intersection of American history, politics, society, and natural resources, showing how the rise of US power—from the late 19th-century imperial project to 20th-century techno-politics—is inextricably linked to the natural elements.

The Sierra Club: Environmental Activism and US Empire, 1892–1900

Dean Clay — 2024-04-18

Formed in 1892, the Sierra Club (SC) is the oldest US environmental organization concerned with the environment within US borders and beyond. Yet, to date, the Club has not received much attention from historians. Using personal papers of SC members, government documents, and newspaper articles, this paper unpacks the Club’s role in important environmental issues, such as the sustainability of natural resources and the creation of national parks and commissions. It assesses the impact of its activism on these key events, on themes such as preservation, conservation, “wilderness” tourism, and the growth of the US empire.

Picturing the Migrant Father of the Dust Bowl

Paul Hutchinson — 2024-04-18

In the most iconic image of the 1930s American Dust Bowl—Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother—one figure is conspicuously absent: the father, the male figure in the family unit. The same can be said for our historical understanding of the Great Plains Dust Bowl, whereby an analysis of the role of manhood and masculinity, of the representation of men during an anthropogenic environmental disaster is largely lacking. In this paper I examine how men and patterns of gender at large were represented during the Dust Bowl through analysing the photographs of the federal Farm Security Administration (FSA).

Freedom From What? Environment and Population in W. Vogt and H.F. Osborn

Jacopo Bonasera — 2024-04-18

This essay considers the environmental and political discourse of prominent American scientists William Vogt and Henry Fairfield Osborn, concerning their best-sellers Road to Survival (1948) and Our Plundered Planet (1948). It is argued that by re-articulating the place of ‘population’ in environmental thinking, they both advanced a specific theory of limits and possibilities of individual freedom. Their public position in the most pressing debates of the time resulted in a critique of modernization and development and a specific understanding of planning as a tool to ‘write’ a different ‘history of the future’ of Western civilization.

Russell E. Train: The Man Behind Nixon’s Environmental Diplomacy

Leonardo Gnisci — 2024-04-18

Russell Train is currently regarded as the pioneer of American environmental diplomacy. He contributed, as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and first special presidential envoy for the environment, to putting environmental protection at the core of the American political agenda, giving adequate attention to the weight of public opinion and the claims of the increasingly influential environmental movement. He harnessed the environment primarily as a concrete tool for détente, raising awareness about the issue and encouraging effective countermeasures to start dealing with the adverse effects of human-induced pollution.

The American Presidency’s Discretionary Power in the Adoption of Bilateral and Multilateral Environmental Agreements: The Reagan Administration in the 1980s

Ludovica Di Gregorio — 2024-04-18

The power that the United States has been able to exert in international environmental agreements has not always worked towards establishing a better global environment mainly due to a clash of national and international interests. Through the analysis of the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), this essay aims to show how the presidential administrative capacities on the national level can lead to unexpected consequences on the international level. In this respect, this essay will focus on two important topics—the Montreal Protocol and the U.S.-Canada bilateral relations—which led to remarkably different outcomes, albeit starting from similar premises.

The Nuclear Anthropocene and the Myth of Containment in the U.S.

Davide Orsini — 2024-04-18

International expert agencies and the nuclear industry concur that nuclear technology is necessary to solve both energy and climate crises. This argument is based on the still-alive ideology of containment, a set of discursive and material practices that aim at isolating nuclear technology from the environment. Based on a brief discussion of recent nuclear decommissioning cases, the article argues that containment is a myth invented to expand commercial nuclear applications. It describes the emergence of containment strategies through the illustration of three strategic regulatory turns in the US: the Price-Anderson Act, the development of siting criteria, and the establishment of radioprotection standards.