Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South

from, white Europe. Despite Verney’s insights into the American imperial machine, the benefits of this system for white people are little explicated. Sometimes the discussion hints at middleand upperclass enthusiasm for imperialism, though beyond exploring popular engagement Verney does not extrapolate the economic rewards of empire for these classes and is comfortable with leaning on his bibliography for such claims. More could also be said on competing conceptions of empire within the United States. The culmination of Verney’s account tells us how the U.S. secured the respect of other imperial nations, particularly through Arctic exploration and the search for Sir John Franklin, but there is little acknowledgement of dissent, at times tantalizingly hinted at, against a U.S. eager to spread its mastery across the globe. What is nonetheless clear, whatever refuge one took in empire, it was only available to those who were white, and though Verney explores various imperial motivations there emerges a shared and dynamic framework that made sense of the world through a white gaze. Whether the pretensions were genteel or democratic, scientific or commercial, proslavery or antislavery, Verney’s account of antebellum maritime exploration offers a novel and intriguing investigation into an American collective imagination that was fundamentally imperial.