Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in the American South
Episode: David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Host: Brandon Jetta
Guest: Dr. David Silkenat, Senior Lecturer in American History, University of Edinburgh
Date: December 8, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores Dr. David Silkenat’s groundbreaking book Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South. The conversation delves into how the environment and the institution of slavery were deeply intertwined, shaping not only the Southern landscape but the lived experiences of enslaved people over two centuries. Silkenat discusses his research process, key themes of the book—including soil depletion, deforestation, and the violence of environmental exploitation—and the ongoing legacies of these dynamics today.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Motivation and Origins of the Study

• Background of the Author

  • Dr. Silkenat is a historian with a diverse focus on Southern history, previously addressing topics like social life, surrender during the Civil War, and more.

• Why Environmental History? ([04:54]–[07:39])

  • Sought to challenge himself by engaging with new methodologies.
  • Influences included the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the intersection of environmental devastation and racial injustice.
  • The Black Lives Matter movement and the climate crisis heightened his interest in the connections between environment, race, and history.

  “It caused me to really think about these questions of environmental justice, the ways in which the populations, especially in the south, that suffer the most from environmental destruction... are very often people of color.” —Dr. Silkenat, [06:47]

Research Approach and Sources

• Centering Enslaved Voices ([08:21]–[09:44])

  • Primary reliance on fugitive slave narratives, WPA interviews, and first-person accounts by enslaved people.
  • Supplemented with writings of enslavers (e.g., Edmund Ruffin, Thomas Jefferson) and observations from scientists/naturalists visiting the South.

  “I wanted to... privilege the voices of the enslaved and formerly enslaved... try to look at them through an environmental lens.” —Dr. Silkenat, [08:21]

• Charles Ball as a Central Figure ([10:41]–[14:03])

  • Ball’s narrative provided unique insight due to his movement through different regions and acute environmental observations.

  “What makes his narrative interesting is... he was enslaved in a variety of different locations... He has a naturalist's eye.” —Dr. Silkenat, [12:19]

  “He draws both implicit and explicit connections between the brutality of slavery on people... and the brutality of this institution upon the land.” —Dr. Silkenat, [12:53]

Environmental Transformation & Slavery’s Violence

Soil Degradation and Expansionism ([16:56]–[22:45])

• Beyond Tobacco: Cotton’s Impact

  • While soil depletion due to tobacco is widely taught, cotton cultivation was even more destructive.
  • Enslavers treated land as disposable, continuously moving west to exploit new frontiers rather than maintain or rejuvenate exhausted soils.

  “Enslavers... started to really see this land not only as a source of great profit, but as land that could be used up and then replaced.” —Dr. Silkenat, [18:49]

  “Wars that the United States wages to acquire new land... is driven in part by this insatiable demand by enslavers for further land further west.” —Dr. Silkenat, [21:51]

• Personal Consequences for the Enslaved

  • Environmental exploitation led to forced migration, separation of families, and grueling work clearing land for new plantations.

  “Gangs of enslaved people... clear cut land to create new plantations... Mourning for not only the forest that's lost, but also the brutality that's embedded within that.” —Dr. Silkenat, [23:27]

Forests, Swamps, and Maroon Communities ([25:25]–[33:31])

• Dual Understandings of Wilderness

  • Forests and swamps served enslavers as obstacles to “progress” but were sites of refuge, resistance, and subsistence for the enslaved.
  • Maroon communities thrived in inaccessible swamps; forests were essential for religious and social gatherings, hunting, and escape.

  “There's ways in which these wild spaces, if you will, were tremendous venues... if you want to become a maroon... swamps are great places to do that.” —Dr. Silkenat, [27:12]

• Deforestation and Exploitation

  • Turpentine extraction: intensive, brutal work for enslaved labor, ultimately destroying entire forests for short-term profit.

  “They do this knowing that that kind of intensive extraction is going to generate them a lot of profit, but it's also going to kill the tree... this entire industry basically self destructs.” —Dr. Silkenat, [32:09]

Rivers and Water Management ([35:55]–[42:49])

• Rivers as Opportunity and Threat

  • Rivers were vital for transportation and plantation productivity but threatened enslavers with unpredictable flooding.
  • Levee construction—built and constantly maintained by enslaved labor—created new environmental dangers by raising the riverbed above the surrounding land.

  “Enslavers describe the vigilance you need in watching your levies with the same kind of language they use for the vigilance... for a slave revolt.” —Dr. Silkenat, [39:09]

• Disproportionate Suffering

  • When disaster struck (levee breaches, floods), enslaved communities bore the heaviest losses—losing homes, possessions, and families—while plantation owners often recovered or relocated.

  “The people who he enslaved have to have these, you know, series of catastrophes... they lose their property and they lose their families and their homes.” —Dr. Silkenat, [42:49]

Severe Weather & the Unequal Burden ([44:09]–[47:29])

• Hurricanes: then as now, the South was hurricane-prone, but in the past, enslaved people suffered the most due to vulnerability of their housing and lack of warning.

• Climate impacts were not “climate change” per se, but the institution of slavery exacerbated the ecological and human devastation of storms.

• First-person accounts—for example, an enslaved person's view of the Last Island Hurricane—bring immediacy to these tragedies.

  “The accounts we have are very often that the houses of enslavers usually survive those storms intact, but the slave quarters don't... the fragility of those structures and the people living in them are very vulnerable.” —Dr. Silkenat, [44:43]

Secession, Expansion, and Unsustainability ([48:38]–[51:53])

• Environmental Ruin as a Driver of Expansion and War

  • Planters’ willingness to abandon ruined lands drove relentless westward expansion—fueling the politics of secession and Civil War.

• Little Concern for Long-term Sustainability

  • While a few advocated for crop rotation or fertilization, most planters ignored sustainable methods for faster profits.

  “People read those journals and then don't do any of it... Like they sort of strike me as sort of like fitness magazines: People get them and they say, oh, I know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm going to go have a cheeseburger anyway.” —Dr. Silkenat, [50:18]

  “They are thinking in the 1850s about expansion beyond... Cuba, Mexico, other parts of Latin America... what's the next frontier for them.” —Dr. Silkenat, [51:07]

Emancipation & Environmental Knowledge ([52:05]–[54:45])

• Enslaved People’s Expertise

  • Their intimate knowledge of the environment aided escape, resistance, and support for the Union army.

  “The knowledge that enslaved people had about the environment helped them both to escape from bondage, but also how that helped them to be... aid the Union war effort.” —Dr. Silkenat, [53:13]

• The End of Mobility and Rise of Sharecropping

  • After emancipation, land use shifted: mobility decreased, fertilizer use increased, and both black and white Southerners redefined their relationship to the land.

  “Fertilizer was widespread... in the antebellum south it was very rarely used simply because there was always ways in which you could acquire new land... As the south becomes the region that uses the most fertilizer... that reliance signifies a very different kind of relationship to the land.” —Dr. Silkenat, [56:22]

• Land Ownership and Black Southerners

  • Post-emancipation, African Americans asserted claims to land they had worked—but systematic land redistribution mostly failed to occur.

  “They tell him, look, what we want more than anything else is the claim to the lands that we have worked for generations, that we feel that our labor entitles us to that.” —Dr. Silkenat, [57:22]

Contemporary Relevance & Lessons ([59:19]–[64:38])

• On “Presentism” and the Role of the Historian

  • Silkenat defends making connections between past and present. The scars of slavery’s environmental legacy still shape Southern landscapes and inequities.

  “If what we write, what we research, doesn't have any resonance with the present, then, you know, why bother?... The scars on the land, to use the title, you know, these are scars that were inflicted during two centuries of slavery, but... take a long time to heal, if they ever heal at all.” —Dr. Silkenat, [61:49] & [62:22]

• Racism and Environmental Crisis are Intertwined

  • Places suffering most from environmental disaster often overlap precisely with the geography of slavery and racial injustice (“Cancer Alley” in Louisiana as a prime example).

  “If we look at the places in the south right now that are struggling the most with environmental challenges... and you sort of map onto that the history of racism and slavery, those things are connected.” —Dr. Silkenat, [62:44]

  “As we're finding out now, we don't really have another place to move to that's viable as of yet. So maybe we should really do more to make the place we're on more sustainable.” —Brandon Jetta, [64:01]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Planter Mentality:
  “Once you tell somebody that they have the authority over another human being... it shouldn't come as a surprise that those same people have a relationship to land and to other kinds of property that is exploitive and violent.” —Dr. Silkenat, [14:19]

• On Sustainability:
  “Sustainability never enters into their mindset. Right. It's just like, let's just go and get as much as we can and move on.” —Brandon Jetta, [33:31]

• On the Legacies of Slavery:
  “We’ve not done a great job taking care of [the planet] and we've not done a great job of dealing with the legacies of centuries of racism. And I think we need to deal with those and many other problems if we want to survive.” —Dr. Silkenat, [64:50]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:23] – Introduction by Silkenat: project origins, motivation
• [06:47] – Race, Hurricane Katrina, and environmental justice
• [08:21] – Researching through fugitive slave narratives
• [11:01] – Charles Ball: his life and legacy
• [16:56] – Soil degradation: tobacco and cotton
• [18:49] – Enslavers’ land-use mentality and expansion
• [25:25] – Forests, swamps, maroon communities
• [32:09] – Turpentine forests: brutal extraction and environmental ruin
• [35:55] – Rivers, levees, and environmental catastrophe
• [44:09] – Hurricanes, vulnerability, and disproportionate impact
• [48:38] – Expansion, secession, and sustainability
• [52:05] – Emancipation, environmental knowledge, and the Civil War
• [56:58] – Postwar land relationships and fertilizer
• [59:19] – Environmental lessons for today
• [62:22] – Lasting scars and the challenge to heal

Conclusion

Scars on the Land fundamentally reframes the history of slavery through an environmental lens, revealing the intertwined devastations of people and place wrought by the slave economy. Silkenat urges us to recognize the long reach of these historic choices—not only in landscapes but in social and racial inequalities that persist. His message is both clear-eyed about the past and fiercely relevant to the current crises of environmental justice.