they called themselves exodusters. >> part of that great migration? >> yeah. part of the great migration in the 19th century. so there are four exodufau dust neighborhoods in topeka historically. one called tennessee town, but three others. sandtown, mudtown and the bottoms. and i think those names of those communities, those neighborhoods are very evocative of their place in the environment. they're low. t topographically low and prone to drainage problems and flooding from the kansas river and a creek that flows into it. >> would those be names that the folks in those areas gave themselves or would the white population call that area sandtown, or whatever? >> well, i think it would have been the inhabitants because they congregated there because they are being excluded. but then a part of the color line also isn't just repressive, it's also a way in which people come together because of shared culture and history and identity and they try to shape a community within that. so people in mudtown, yeah, they

gathered together, but they were the ones who called it mudtown. and so it's from those kinds of landscape features that my argument is the color line arises. and it runs its way through all kinds of things. even into schools and how people experience education and so forth. >> in the course of doing the republic of nature, how much of your research caused you to change your opinion about significant historical events? >> well, one of the things that it caused me to think was that i think it's legitimate. i think it's valid and legitimate to ask basic environmental history questions of almost any event. now, what that yields is going to depend on the topic, the event, the historian asking the questions. those sorts of things. but i really do believe that every topic is subject to environmental history questions. and it's not a question of whether there's an environmental history to it or not. it's a question of what kind of environmental history there is. so i'd like to think that one

could go to any topic and yield a story, a book, a chapter, whatever, of the sort that i've done. >> at the end of the book you actually offer a whole series of topics that you didn't do that seem promising to you. what would be some examples of unasked questions that looked to you to be fertile questions? >> okay. one of the -- the concluding section is titled "paths that beckon." and there are nine vignettes, sketches, each of which ends with questions of the sort that one might ask if one wanted to go further. one of my students called it the bonus nine. so -- and these weren't meant to be comprehensive and authoritative in any way, but one of the -- one section is about the great awakening in the 18th century, for example, and i titled and, and it's drawn from a sermon, "all nature is full of god." and i asked these questions about how people's experience of nature was a part of the great

awakening, how they tended to see things in terms of what was natural and what was not, what was divine in that, what was not. >> what was the great awakening? >> well, the great awakening was this great religious revival in the 18th century that challenged religious hierarchy and authority. so one feature of this was that oftentimes the revival meetings they held were out of doors. they were trying to avoid what they saw as the artificial hierarchy and stultifying arrangements of the various churches. >> of organized religion? >> of organized religion. established religion. so to go outside, to have a meeting in a field, to take people down to a river and immerse them in that river. so there was a rather naturalistic language as i see it that was part of that process. so it's a really intriguing thing for me to wonder about the environmental history of the great awakening. how did people's experience of nature and how did this language of nature become part of that historical event? >> and that actually goes back

to a question you asked earlier about the language of the declaration about endowed by their creator. >> right. >> and you asked is this religious or is it secular. and one of the lessons for me in that is that dichotomy, is it this or is it that, was not as strong in the 18th century as it feels sometimes in america today because in fact out of these religious traditions emerged many core values of the nation which today look secular. but when today does their genealogy you recognize the common roots of some of the religious ways of thinking about the environment or the nation and what tay feel like non-religious ways of looking at it actually have much more in common than you might imagine, which is really a very interesting part. and what mark just said about the great awakening is an example of that. >> i want to ask you about your book, 1991 book called "nature's metropolis." we're talking about the republic of nature. what was the theme of that back? >> so "nature's metropolis" was a history of chicago in the

second half of the 19th century. and the agenda of that book was to look at the history of one of our great -- one of the world's great metropolises at the moment it became a great metropolis. chicago was barely a town dpsh. >> what was that? >> 1848 is sort of the real beginning of chicago's explosion. the town is founded in the early 1830s. but it really explodes with the emergence of the railroad network come the late '40s, mid 1850s, thereabouts. what the book tries to do is narrate the history of the city in tandem with the countryside which was being transformed by the growth of that city's markets. so the argument becomes, you cannot understand the history of chicago nor can you understand the history of the american middle west or west without seeing city and country as transforming each other. and it's part of this kind of an argument that mark is offering which is, when you put seemingly human things, even a city, in a

larger natural frame, you understand things about that city you never would have noticed if you didn't look at them in that larger context. that's what that book tries to do. although it does it for chicago, there's another sense in which the arguments of that book apply to every city on the planet throughout human history. so if you read it in my view you'll look at any human community differently, because you'll be asked to look beyond the boundaries of that community toward the countryside in which that community exists. >> may i add something? i would say that one of the things that bill's book accomplished conceptually was to break down this idea of separations, that there's the city and there's the country. so i think it's influenced a lot of people in how they think about all kinds of things. questioning the categories that we create and don't -- we don't question those. and here was a model for the rest of us to try to begin thinking about those boundaries that we've received from the past but we don't know why they were -- why they originated the way they did, and let's break

that down a little bit. what do we come up with? >> the truth is, isn't it, that particularly these northern cities, chicago, new york, midwestern cities, indianapolis, washington, were influenced by the migration, whether that be certainly the african-americans but whites coming from the country, that changed those cities with the values they bring from the land. >> including people who made that journey from rural europe. so rural folks from ireland, rural folks from italy, rural folks from poland were making a rural urban migration in the same way that rural african-americans from the american south were migrating to the south side of chicago. so we forget sometimes that immigrants, european immigrants, and then other immigrants from all over the world in addition to making a journey to america from other countries were making a journey from country to city in much the same way that rural americans were make that journey. >> because of those factors, does that give -- because of the

immigration both from europe and within give american cities a uniqueness that's not found in cities elsewhere, or -- >> well, i would say this rural to urban migration is actually a worldwide phenomenon. the exploding cities of other parts of the world today are part of the same world to urban migration, but i don't disagree with the premise of the question. american cities felt very different in the 19th century and early 20th century than the european cities that would have been their earliest analogs early on. partly because they were so cosmopolitan, so polyglot, in the languages spoken there, the ethnic traditions, the religious faiths expressed on the landscape. and you would say that although the concept of the melting pot is a very complicated and in some ways problematic wave thinking about the immigrant experience. it is one of the challenges that the united states had to grapple with for decades and decades and decades of what does it mean to be an american and how does one become an american in this

complicated convergence of peoples from all over the world that made this nation -- called it into being. >> i want to go back to your writing about abraham lincoln a little bit more. expand if you will some of the things that you see that influenced him as a political leader and ultimately as a president. >> sure. well, there's a really interesting story about lincoln. i find it fascinating. and in the early 1850s, he wrote a speech and it's generally called the speech on discoveries and inventions, and almost no one knows this but lincoln is the only president to have registered a patent. this is a patent for inflatable cells that would lift a steam boat over shoals in a river and he this is a guy who knows what it's like to have to move boats over rivers and the physical labor that requires. but his speech and discovery and inventionsize fascinating in a number of ways. it's basically an account of technological innovations over time. and it begins with genesis and,

you know, goes forward into the present. and along the way he talks about, for example, wind power. it's almost like he's a proponent of green energy. >> wind power? >> yeah, wind power. green energy. and he talks about this under the general notion of improvement, that nature is something that is subject to fulfilling an inherent potential, it can be improved. and ultimately in that speech which he gave several times before he got back involved in politics is the section on the crisis between the north and south heated up. he does connect it to his political ideas. it's the invention of printing, mass printing so people were read, learn and then eventually as he puts it be able to break the shackles that are enslaving their minds. >> you both teach courses on the history of the american west. how has how we view the american west changed over the years you've been teaching this?

>> i would say there's much more of an emphasis on the 20th century west. most associate this with old west topics. the cattle drives. the wars between the united states army and the indian tribes and so forth. but i would say what's become increasingly important is the creation of the 20th century west, the modern west, which has distinctive characteristics z. p >> what are some of the key topics topics that are important in the 20th century? >> the role of the federal government. the federal government during the time, in the military struggles, the first and second world wars and the cold war and the west plays a very important role. in how they conduct the efforts and resources. >> how has it changed in looking at the american west? >> one of the biggest differences within the field of history as thinking about the west is that western history in its origins was really taught as the history of america. i mean, it was -- as the history of the frontier. and western history began in new

england, began in roanoke, began in the chesapeake. >> sure the west was always being refined? >> and worked its way west from anglo america. sort of consistent with what mark just said about the 20th century is increasingly we teach the history of the west as the west that is today. that is the west that is the slope, the rocky mountains, that is the great plains and don't as much teach those earlier wests, precivil war or pre1800. >> professor cannon, you also are instrumental in leading the american historical association. we're here at the organization of the american historians. you for this year, for 2012, will be heading the american historical association. how are the two associations different? >> well, the organization of american historians, o.a.h., as we call it, is the largest profession organization of scholars who study the past of the united states. the american historical association, which is much larger and is one of the larger

scholarly organizations in the country, is the professional organization of all historians who study all places at all times in the human past. so everything from businessantium backward and byzantium forward would be the american historical organization. one of the obligations of the president is to help organize the conference at which i give my presidential address, which will be in new orleans this coming january. and although that program has to represent all of the past, all histories, all places, all times, there will be a lot of environmental stuff in there. >> you recently wrote a piece in the -- for the a.h.a. about talking about teaching of history and what you term professional boredom. what did you mean? who were you aiming that message to? >> well, it's actually part of a pair of essays. one called professional boredom. and the other called loving

history. it was a plea basically that i think history is at its best when historians don't just talk with each other but talk with everyone who cares about the past and make sure the message we have to share is one that no matter how deep your knowledge of the past, no matter how sophisticated your understanding, you were invited into the space of asking these fascinating questions, which i think mark has done such a brilliant job of in this book, of inviting people in who are not professional historians to say you know, if we look at the american past differently we'll see stuff we've never seen before. >> where did your research take you that was sort of out of the ordinary or weren't just along the typical lines of historical research? >> well, in most chapters i think i wandered into things that at least environmental historians haven't typically gone. and of course i'm asking questions that experts in these fields don't typically ask. so it's hard to answer that

question because i think in some ways it was a journey into the familiar. it was a journey into the familiar but with a set of different questions. so i was seeing the past with fresh eyes, so to speak. >> is this the kind of book that you will use? this will be your coursework book for a course at colorado state. >> yes, i'd like to use it in a course on american environmental history that i teach. but of course i have to be careful because you know, there's a conflict of interest there. so one of the things i want to do is come up with exercises for students that -- in which they don't feel that they have to please me, that they can be critical of the book. and also reassuring them that any royalties i make off the book are going to be donated to the institution, et cetera. so yeah, i'm definitely going to use it. >> and i think many people will. it's a book certainly i plan to use. i very much hope it will be used in high schools too. >> how big is the field of environmental history? >> we just will our annual meeting in madison, wisconsin a couple weeks ago and there were i think on the order of 700 people. one of the largest gatherings. 700 people who professionally do environmental history as an activity.

but it's much more widely read than that and it's a field that's -- because it asks such unusual questions that people aren't used to asking about the past it's won a disproportionate number of prizes in history in the past 25 years and has really seen some of the more exciting work that's been done in the field of history. >> in that field what are you seeing as some of the developing or the most popular recurrent issues that you're wrestling with? >> well, i think mark has alluded to one, which is this idea that looking closely at the human body and how the body as a -- all three of us sitting at this table inhabit bodies and these bodies are themselves environments for the things that live inside of us and they are in environments. that's actually a very exciting set of questions have been cascading from that. i think there are things in the current political scene, the role of energy and what it means to navigate major energy transitions is clearly a question that will be on the

agenda of the american future as it has been repeatedly in the american past. and the past of other nations as well. so there are many, many current policy questions which if we approach them historically we'll understand them differently and i would say better. >> when people ask you why should i study history, why should i major in history, what's the answer you give them? why study history? >> because i don't think that you can really understand the present unless you understand the past. and that ranges from the personal level. no one would say my personal -- i don't know what my story was, i don't know my family's history. and if that applies to the individual i think it applies to the society in which one lives. plus it's really interesting. there are great skills one learns in terms of reading, writing, analysis, and so forth that help one in the world. not only as a citizen but also in getting employment. >> and i'd just quickly say i think it's endlessly fascinating and the world becomes a much, much more interesting place when you look at it historically. the question of how do things get to be this way always has

interesting and unexpected answers. and i sometimes tell my students that when you see something in the world today that makes no sense, it seems this is crazy, why do people do it this way, the reason is usually that there was a time in the past when it actually made a lot of sense and they just haven't changed yet. and figuring out why we do these crazy things that we do by looking backward in time is always interesting. >> mark fiege and his new book is "the republic of nature." historian at colorado state university. and william cronon, who is an environmental -- american environmental historian and the history of the west taenks the history of the west at the university of wisconsin. gentlemen, thanks for being with us. >> thanks very much for having us. >> yeah, thanks very much. this year, c-span's local content vehicles are traveling the country, exploring american history. next, a look at our recent visit to wichita, kaps cancel. you're watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend, on c-span 3.

>> we're flying over downtown wichita, the air capital of the world. >> there is just a genuine excitement about aviation. it was something new. the feeling that it was going to take us to higher places? is that fair to say? we are at the kansas aviation museum in wichita, kansas. our mission is to preserve and present kansas aviation heritage. with a real focus on wichita aviation heritage. you look at the history of aviation from basically the wright brothers moving forward to today. about 70% of all general aviation aircraft have been constructed in wichita. and that's a huge number when you think about the msa or the population of wichita being about half a million compared to other cities of similar size and to say that historically any city has 70% of the market share in any one industry is pretty significant. and that number's still about 40% to 45% annually. people who wanted to build

planes in the late teens and early '20s came here seeking venture capital. and that's why i've come to call wichita the silicon valley of aviation. in the same way that people in the '80s and '90s who wanted to build planes, clyde and walter and lloyd and others, many others, actually, came here because there was lots of oil money. one of largest oil fields in america is just to the northeast of here, the el dorado oil field. so there were lots of people with huge amounts of money as a result of oil. the people who wanted to build planes came here seeking that capital. this is a really unique building. it was the original wichita air terminal from 1934 top 1954. one of om 12 buildings like this built during the first round of air terminal construction in the late '20s and early '30s that still exists and the om one built in what's known as the

indian art style that exists anywhere in the country. at that time in the mid20s when local officials started to begin thinking about a grand air terminal, charles lindbergh was traveling the country and he came to wichita with the idea it would be on the major way between los angeles and new york and he worked with local official l.w. clapp. together he and lindbergh went all over the area looking for an appropriate site, and they finally settled upon this one. is the highest point in wichita and one of the reasons they picked it, but also the particular type of grass that grew here had a very tight weave, if you will, and it made for a good landing strip, and the first six or seven years this air terminal was in business, it had no runway. it just simply out in the field had a big circle of white rock and an air sock and pilots would fly over and determine the wind direction and then land into the wind in the grass. and then roll up to the terminal.

because of air travel at that time, and this was a major route between new york and los angeles, this was the fourth busiest airport in the country for about 20 years, and, also, because of air travel and the fact that people didn't use private planes in the way they do now, just about any famous person you can think of from the '30s and '40s passed through this airport. we have photographs of famous actors who were here at the -- at the airport. fred astaire -- a true story corroborated by someone at the airport at that time, fred astaire actually did a tap routine out in the atrium during a weather delay for the other waiting passengers. so a lot of kind of neat stories about famous people who passed through this building. this is our ramp area. this is where the majority of our planes are showcased. the area where we are right now is an area where people would come and they would throw their blankets out. right over here you can see the line of the concrete.

the ground level was actually there and there were stairs off this terrace. over here to the left where these picnic tables are there was a little kind of a building there, and they would sell hot dogs and hamburgers things like that and people would come out, throw their blankets out and have their lunch and watch the planes come in. a plane would roll up and folks would disembark and go up into the building, but the folks out here would just walk out and stand around the plane as it was being refuelled. there were no fences at that time, and obviously, much less security. it was a totally different environment. the focus of our collection is kansas aviation heritage. so if the plane was built here or flown here, then we're going to be interested in and it we have a number of planes here. everything from 1920 swallow through more modern era planes, and the collection is primarily the result of two sources. either individuals who have donated their personal planes to the museum, or corporations that

have donated planes in the museum. here's one other category. we do have five planes out on the ramp that were -- that are on loan from the u.s. air force museum in dayton, ohio. this is a 1920 swallow, a very important plane in wichita aviation heritage. it's the first production aircraft in wichita. so there were 43 of these built between 1920 and 1923, and it's the first time in wichita and very early in aviation heritage where people recognized, hey, if we build more of these, the economy of scale, we can sell them to a wider audience for less money. this is the only 1920 swallow that exists. there weren't any, and this particular one is a replica, and if you look right here, our

volunteers started with about 10 or 15 of these brackets, and these are original brackets, and they used those to scale photographs, and from the photographs, took hundreds of measurements and with the measurements created the working drawings and then built the plane from those drawings. and so this is very representative of the amazing skill of our volunteers here at the museum. what i wanted you to see over here is, where the pilot would have sat in this basket, if you can see it through the mylar. they stretch this on here so people could see the internal of the plane, but also, i don't know whether you can get a shot of that, but the control stick is actually a baseball bat. >> is that what it would have been originally used? >> yes. if you think about the development of aviation technology from 1920, when this plane was built, through the end of world war ii, you went from this plane, which had an ox 5 engine produce the 90 horsepower, flew at about 120 miles per hour. to 1945, the beginning of the

jet age. the most intense period of development of aviation technology, and so what was happening here in wichita was some 80 companies building planes and plane parts is the experimentation that led to the jet age. the golden age of aviation. now, the plane that we're seeing in front of us is a learjet 23. it was a learjet built -- and actually the sixth one ever built. this was actually bill lear's personal plane. this plane doesn't seem very unusual now, but back then, this was cutting edge. i mean, learjet set the standard for what we know today as the business jet, the corporate jet. this is where it all started right here. this is model 73 steerman. it was actually in a military,

navy military plane known as the ns-1, and this was -- it's a very iconic plane. there was an army version of this plane that had a blue fuselage and yellow wings. this was flown by navy aviators during world war ii as a trainer. so just about any naval aviator that flew in world war ii would have trained in this plane at some point in his career. and it's interesting, because it's a steerman, but at that point in time, boeing actually owns the steerman brand. so this is an early boeing plane, but this is where it all started with a plane just like this. >> what is boeing's legacy here in wichita? >> well, they have a huge legacy here. i mean, at their height, during world war ii, they were employs 40,000 people. they built whole neighborhoods, like plainview, that's just a mile or so from here and they built those specifically for their workers.

so they have a huge legacy a here. they've been a supporter of the community for years and years. sad that they're leaving, but you know, we've had a good run with the company. >> whenever there's a downturn in the economy like there has been recently in 2009 and moving forward, some 10,000 or 12,000 people laid off, and the unemployment ranking go up, and so it becomes very challenging. the thing that people in this community understand is, because they've lived through it, through lots of those cycles of the ups and downs of the economy, is, they understand that that's going to happen. i'm not saying it doesn't hurt, but they know that that's going to happen, and i think people here prepare for it. in terms of the psychology of it. and they know that -- that sooner or later the economy will turn around and they'll get rehired. people recognize that's going to happen in this community. people do just have a love affair with especially americans

i think have a love affair with aviation. i think it's just the idea that, that there's another dimension. you know, there's a third dimension that we can experience outside of the two dimensions that we can walk this way and that. we can also go up. this weekend, american history tv is featuring wichita, kansas. our local content people recently visited wichita to learn about its rich history. learn more about wichita and c-span's local content vehicles at c-span.org/localcontent. next month we'll feature jefferson city, missouri. you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. each sunday evening at 7:30 now through labor day weekend american history tv features our