Blatchford, Dr. Barrie
PhD, MPhil (Columbia University), BA Honours, MA (University of British Columbia)
Research and Expertise
I research the environmental history of nineteenth and twentieth century America. I am particularly interested in the historical interaction of people and animals.
My dissertation explores animal acclimatization - that is, the intentional introduction of foreign wild animals to new areas - in America. It argues that it was far greater in scope, magnitude, and meaning than historians have so far appreciated.
I'm also working on two other projects.
One is a study of the American commercial animal trade and its attendant parts: exotic pet ownership, commercial animal dealers, laws and regulations, exploitation of developing nations, and the interface of the industry with the burgeoning animal rights movement.
The second is a study of the American fur industry after the colonial and early republican periods. Provisionally entitled "Fashion Victims" I explore the longstanding anti-fur, anti-animal cruelty movement as well as the toll the popularity of fur garments has taken on wildlife in the last 150 years.
- Agriculture
- Animal Welfare
- Biodiversity/Ecology
- Climate Change
- Conservation
- History
- Wildlife
- English
Selected Publications
Peer-reviewed articles
A Monkey in Every Home: Henry Trefflich and the Twentieth-Century Exotic Animal Trade in America. (Forthcoming, 2024) in edited collection, Colonial Dimensions of the Global Wildlife Trade, part of a book series published by the Network for Provenance Research of Lower Saxony, Germany.
Make the Desert Blossom Like the Rose: Animal Acclimatization, Settler Colonialism, and the Construction of Oregons Nature. Oregon Historical Quarterly, 122:3 (Fall 2021): 214-249.
Winner of the 2022 Fishel-Calhoun Article Prize from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
Public history articles
American Philosophical Society Blog. July 10, 2023.
The Gotham Center for New York City History Blog. March 25, 2021.
Book reviews
Review of Andrea L. Smalley with Henry M. Reeves, The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation, and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism, 1850-1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2022. In South Dakota History, Vol. 53, 3 (2023): 295-296.
Review of Jeremy Zallen, American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750- 1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. In Environment and History Vol. 29, 1 (2023): 161-162.
Review of Ariel Ron, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. In Agricultural History Vol. 96, 1-2 (2022): 291-293.
Review of Steven Turner, The Science of James Smithson: Discoveries from the Smithsonian Founder. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2020. In Isis Vol. 113, 2 (2022): 445-446.
Review of David J. Nelson, How the New Deal Built Florida Tourism: The Civilian Conservation Corps and State Parks. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2019. In Journal of Tourism History Vol. 13, 1 (2021): 101-103.