Frontiers and Food Systems in the Age of Revolutions

My proposal seeks to draw connections between the revolutions of the Atlantic World and the equally powerful environmental revolutions occuring in continental North America. The political-economic transformations that shook coastal cities also reverberated in the reorganization of food production and (indirectly) grass consumption. Livestock frontiers would come to dominate Native and Euro-American environments across the continent in the coming decades as political revolutions erupted in the Atlantic. The Mexican Revolution, for example, initiated corresponding ecological revolutions in North America, transforming the food systems along its northern borders—regions that would later attract American farmers and ranchers inheriting land use practices forged during the age of revolutions. Thanks to these political upheavals shaking the Atlantic World, millions of large herbivores now grazed on a substantial portion of North America. Political independence brought regional and global demands for hides, food, leather, tallow, and coerced labor. These markets relied upon the extensive use of grasslands, which acted as energy reservoirs for new food systems emerging during the Enlightenment. My paper thus highlights deep interconnections between imperial objectives and land use practices. It also brings the West into the web of connections spun in the Atlantic World. Finally, my work aims to similarly explore the powerful impacts of the Mexican Revolution on the landscape of what would become the western United States.