The Industrialist and the Mountaineer

The Industrialist and the Mountaineer - Paperback

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The Industrialist and the Mountaineer
  • The Industrialist and the Mountaineer
The Industrialist and the Mountaineer - Paperback

The Industrialist and the Mountaineer - Paperback

by Ronald L. Lewis
$26.99
$26.99

Book Overview

by Ronald L. Lewis (Author)

-In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia---

Back Jacket

In 1897 a small landholder named Robert Eastham shot and killed timber magnate Frank Thompson in Tucker County, West Virginia, leading to a sensational trial that highlighted a clash between local traditions and modernizing forces. Ronald L. Lewis's book uses this largely forgotten episode as a window into contests over political, environmental, and legal change in turn-of-the-century Appalachia.

The Eastham-Thompson feud pitted a former Confederate against a member of the new business elite who was, as a northern Republican, his cultural and political opposite. For Lewis, their clash was one flashpoint in a larger phenomenon central to US history in the second half of the nineteenth century: the often violent imposition of new commercial and legal regimes over holdout areas stretching from Appalachia to the trans-Missouri West. Taking a ground-level view of these so-called "wars of incorporation," Lewis's powerful microhistory shows just how strongly local communities guarded traditional relationships to natural resources. Modernizers sought to convict Eastham of murder, but juries drawn from the traditionalist population refused to comply. Although the resisters won the courtroom battle, the modernizers eventually won the war for control of the state's timber frontier.

Author Biography

Ronald L. Lewis is Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair and Professor of History Emeritus at West Virginia University where he taught for many years. He is the author of several books, including Aspiring to Greatness: West Virginia University since World War II (published by WVU Press) and Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920. He lives in Morgantown, WV.

Number of Pages: 312
Dimensions: 0.7 x 7.9 x 4.9 IN
Illustrated: Yes
Publication Date: March 01, 2017
ISBN9781943665518
Author Ronald L. Lewis
PublisherWest Virginia University Press
GenreHistory and Education
FormatPaperback
PublishedMarch 2017
LanguageENG- English
Pages312
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

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More by Ronald L. Lewis

Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780-1980

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About Ronald L. Lewis

Ronald L. Lewis, professor of history and associate in the Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University, is the author of Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715-1865.

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