[Sci-tech-public] FRIDAY: SEAH Seminar at MIT

[Margo Collett]

MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History

  "Popular By Their Misery: The British Response to a Colonial Disaster, 1825"

Alan MacEachern
Professor of History, University of Western Ontario

In 1825, a huge forest fire swept across the British colony of New 
Brunswick and parts of Maine, wiping out communities along the 
Miramichi River and killing hundreds.  The Miramichi Fire is the 
largest recorded forest fire on North America's Eastern seaboard, and 
perhaps the largest in Canadian history.  News of the disaster 
quickly reached Britain, which launched an extensive relief 
effort.  People were greatly moved by the thought of a poor white 
society, made up largely of recent British immigrants, living on the 
edge of a vast wilderness, experiencing a holocaust of unprecedented 
ferocity, and, having survived, looking forward only to the loss of 
livelihood and a cold Canadian winter.  But it is clear that British 
interest in the disaster also reflected very pragmatic concern about 
what this fire would mean for Britain's own wood supply, and called 
into question British dependence on the colonies.

Friday, October 26, 2007
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095
Corner of Amherst and Wadsworth Streets, Cambridge
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