Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia

by Steven Stoll

Overview

Short-listed for the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Book Award

In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll offers a fresh, provocative account of Appalachia, and why it matters. He begins with the earliest European settlers, whose desire for vast forests to hunt in was frustrated by absentee owners—including George Washington and other founders—who laid claim to the region. Even as Daniel Boone became famous as a backwoods hunter and guide, the economy he represented was already in peril. Within just a few decades, Appalachian hunters and farmers went from pioneers to pariahs, from heroes to hillbillies, in the national imagination, and the area was locked into an enduring association with poverty and backwardness. Stoll traces these developments with empathy and precision, examining crucial episodes such as the Whiskey Rebellion, the founding of West Virginia, and the arrival of timber and coal companies that set off a devastating “scramble for Appalachia.”

At the center of Ramp Hollow is Stoll’s sensitive portrayal of Appalachian homesteads. Perched upon ridges and tucked into hollows, they combined small-scale farming and gardening with expansive foraging and hunting, along with distilling and trading, to achieve self-sufficiency and resist the dependence on cash and credit arising elsewhere in the United States. But the industrialization of the mountains shattered the ecological balance that sustained the households. Ramp Hollow recasts the story of Appalachia as a complex struggle between mountaineers and profit-seeking forces from outside the region. Drawing powerful connections between Appalachia and other agrarian societies around the world, Stoll demonstrates the vitality of a peasant way of life that mixes farming with commerce but is not dominated by a market mind-set. His original investigation, ranging widely from history to literature, art, and economics, questions our assumptions about progress and development, and exposes the devastating legacy of dispossession and its repercussions today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809080199
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/20/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	638,975
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Steven Stoll is a professor of history at Fordham University and the author of The Great Delusion (Hill and Wang, 2008) and Larding the Lean Earth (Hill and Wang, 2002). His writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly, and the New Haven Review.

Table of Contents

1. Contemporary Ancestors: From Daniel Boone to Hill-Billy
2. Provision Grounds: On Capitalism and the Atlantic Peasantry
3. The Rye Rebellion: Why Alexander Hamilton Invaded the Mountains
4. Mountaineers Are Always Free: On Losing Land and Livelihood
5. Interlude: Agrarian Twilight - The Art of Dispossession
6. The Captured Garden: Subsistence Under Industrial Capitalism
7. Negotiated Settlements: The Fate of the Commons and the Commoners

Editorial Reviews

Short-listed for the 2018 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Book Award

"The book is a masterpiece of panoramic history." —Peter Lewis, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Mr. Stoll, a history professor at Fordham University, marshals his extensive knowledge of ancient and modern economic systems to present a compelling and persuasive argument . . . “Ramp Hollow” adds an eerie sense of déjà vu to the present-day arguments over what, if any, benefits Appalachian communities are reaping from Marcellus shale drilling." —Steve Halvonik, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Meticulously researched . . . Those who associate 'academic' with 'dry' will be pleasantly surprised: the book's prose is light and readable . . . The book's great strength is that it acknowledges something our politics often fails to: that not everyone wants the same things or possesses the same preferences . . . Challenging, interesting and engrossing." —J.D. Vance, The New York Times Book Review

"Stunning . . . Everything the real hillbillies wanted [J.D]. Vance to acknowledge is laid out majestically . . . Ramp Hollow offers a granular chronicle of how wealth, poverty and inequality accrete, layer upon generational layer . . . [It] should be read . . . for the compassion and historical attention that Mr. Stoll devotes to this long-maligned region . . ." —Beth Macy, The Wall Street Journal

"Powerful and outrage-making . . . Gravid and well made . . . A painstaking history of how public land became real estate . . . Stoll clings to a history of what the United States could be. His book becomes a withering indictment of rapacious capitalism." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A searching economic and political history . . . Stoll's sharp book complicates our understanding of a much-misunderstood, much-maligned region that deserves better than it has received." —Kirkus Reviews

"Stoll identifies [Appalachian poverty], correctly, as a consequence of dispossession. By giving it a distinct pedigree, he helps readers understand why Appalachia became poor and why it has stayed that way for so long . . . He is an appealing writer . . . Stoll's insights on how Appalachia became what it is today are an important corrective to flawed commentary about a much-maligned place." —Sarah Jones, Publishers Weekly

"In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll has written both a scholarly masterpiece about the history of dispossessed men and women and a profoundly humane critique of capitalism in the present as well as the past. Anyone who reads this book will never think about the people who live in 'coal country' the same way again." —Michael Kazin, author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914–1918 and editor of Dissent

"A deep and moving chronicle of dispossession, Steven Stoll's Ramp Hollow manages, like no other account I have seen, to combine a subtle understanding of Appalachian subsistence practices with a global understanding of the importance of the commons. Erudite, conceptually powerful, magnificently documented, and deeply sympathetic, Ramp Hollow is an instant classic of agrarian history." —James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology, Yale University

"Ramp Hollow is a bold, imaginative, and eminently readable book that opens up vital questions about how we think about the history of alternatives within a dominant capitalist social order. Anchored in the lives of Appalachian farmers, it has enormous sweep, making telling observations about patterns of subsistence farming and dispossession around the world. One can see Steven Stoll drawing on his enormous wealth of knowledge about farming and rural life, and his voice is always direct and compelling. I think it is an extraordinary achievement." —Elizabeth Blackmar, Professor of History, Columbia University

"Steven Stoll's book will be powerfully influential. He begins in the hollows and follows the trail to global insights. We're deep in the dirt, then deep into texts. It's a difficult feat to pull off, but he accomplishes it in a way that is not only enlightening but glorious." —John Mack Faragher, Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies, Yale University

"In this sweeping, provocative study, Steven Stoll comes to the defense of American pioneers and smallholders everywhere. Focusing on the mountaineers of West Virginia, Stoll argues that a largely successful household mode of production, connected to a larger ecological commons, was not isolated and backwards until it was impoverished by industrial invasion. He ties the undermining of Appalachia highlanders back to the enclosing of early-modern Britain, and to the continuing dispossession of African smallholders today." —Brian Donahue, Brandeis University

From the Publisher

…[Stoll's] book is meticulously researched and draws on much of the rich scholarship dedicated to the region. But those who associate "academic" with "dry" will be pleasantly surprised; the book's prose is light and readable…The book's great strength is that it acknowledges something our politics often fails to: that not everyone wants the same things or possesses the same preferences…Our public policy sometimes ignores this, pretending, for instance, that struggling people just need a good educational or work opportunity to achieve some measure of success in the modern economy. But maybe they need something different—emotional skills that their traumatic family life deprived them of; a social community or civic organization that behavior or circumstance destroyed. Or, as Stoll encourages us to consider, maybe they don't want "success" in the modern economy at all. Maybe they just want a warm fire and a nice garden. Ramp Hollow reminds us that integrating some people into the modern economy will always be a difficult challenge, even as Stoll questions the wisdom of such an integration in the first place. I disagreed with much of this challenging, interesting and engrossing book. But it made me think. And that, it seems to me, is the whole point.

The New York Times Book Review - J. D. Vance

[Ramp Hollow] is a powerful and outrage-making…analysis of the forces that have made West Virginia one of the sorriest places—statistically, at any rate—to live in America…As economic history it is gravid and well made…This is granular history, especially when it comes to dispossession…[Stoll] delivers a painstaking history of how public land became real estate, and how hundreds if not thousands of people were pushed aside by one or two barons.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

09/04/2017
Reviewed by Sarah Jones Appalachia is many things, depending on whom you ask. Observers have at various points christened it the other America, the land outside time, and, more recently, Trump country. But for many of us, it is simply home, and we don’t recognize much of it from its media portrayals. We know it as an uneasy and lovely place, shaped by addiction and ecological degradation and a history of open class war. But these complications rarely make it into media coverage. Appalachia seems to matter little to outsiders unless it is an election year or time for one of Remote Area Medical’s free clinics, when photographers and journalists who otherwise never step foot in the area swarm to document the spectacle of its poverty. J.D. Vance’s popular Hillbilly Elegy only reinforced this image of Appalachia as a dysfunctional place, doomed by its own bloody intransigence. But poverty is not a cultural problem, in Appalachia and elsewhere. It is a problem of power, defined by who has it and who does not. Stoll (The Great Delusion), a professor of history at Fordham University, examines this issue exhaustively, fixing a genealogy of Appalachian poverty that places the problem in its proper political and historical context. Stoll identifies it, correctly, as a consequence of dispossession. By giving it a distinct pedigree, he helps readers understand why Appalachia became poor and why it has stayed that way for so long. “The way back to Appalachia leads through the history of capitalism in Great Britain,” Stoll writes. Capitalism is the specter haunting Appalachia. Stoll focuses specifically on the practice of enclosure, employed first by England’s feudal lords to establish the concept of private property. Victorian England’s moralists favored the practice and, later, so did American tycoons and corporations, who used it to gain access to Appalachia’s natural resources. The region’s coal and timber made it valuable. Now the free market is moving on, leaving an exsanguinated corpse behind. Stoll is not the first academic to attribute Appalachian poverty to the influence of external forces. But his work is distinct in its emphasis on the practice of enclosure and his decision to connect Appalachia’s dispossession to the material dispossessions whites inflicted on freed slaves and that empires and transnational conglomerates later inflicted on colonial and postcolonial nations. Though Appalachia’s “development” lacks the racialized aspect present in the latter two examples, a thread connects each: the idea that capitalism is a civilizing force. Stoll’s is an academic work, but that should not deter readers. He is an appealing writer. The book’s most significant flaw occurs late in its final third, when he veers sharply from analysis to commentary. Even so, it is a minor issue. Stoll’s insights on how Appalachia became what it is today are an important corrective to flawed commentary about a much-maligned place. (Nov.)Sarah Jones is a staff writer for the New Republic, where she covers politics and culture.

Publishers Weekly

10/15/2017
Stoll (Fordham Univ., The Great Delusion) examines the journey of the residents of the southern Appalachian mountain region, from subsistence farmers to employees of mills and coal mines, who lost their land and their autonomy in the process. The author also looks at the story of Appalachia in the context of the larger histories of labor and industrialization, and presents a broad history of capitalism and dispossession, beginning with the enclosure of common land in England in the 18th century. In a wide-ranging narrative, this chronicle touches on many aspects of the region, including the Whiskey Rebellion, the founding of West Virginia, and even the origins of the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys. Stoll closes with a recommendation, presenting a proposal for "Commons Communities" as a way of restoring areas ravaged by coal mining through communal farming and governance. This is not a regional history. Rather, Stoll uses selected examples from Appalachia's past to argue that the move from subsistence farming to wage work is one from independence to dependence, bringing not progress but despair. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in U.S. economic history or the history of labor.—Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Library Journal

2017-09-04
A searching economic and political history of a dispossessed, impoverished Appalachia that progress has long eluded.Alexis de Tocqueville may have insisted that there are no peasants in America, but Stoll (History/Fordham Univ.; The Great Delusion: A Mad Inventor, Death in the Tropics, and the Utopian Origins of Economic Growth, 2008, etc.) finds the term "a perfectly good word to describe a country person." Moreover, as refugees from the enclosures of feudal and early modern Europe, the free "peasants" of Appalachia were able to find land—even if seized from others—and channel their own energies into whatever work they saw fit. That was early on, however. Following the incursions of the extractive industries of logging and mining, those free people suddenly were landless, essentially the property of the company. Stoll notes that the story of Appalachia is very much the story of world systems, with the region "fully part of an Atlantic and global expansion of capitalism." In that winner-take-all system, places like the titular Ramp Hollow, a hamlet outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, that hosted a once-profitable coal seam, are used up and then abandoned. So are their people, as the log cabins of mountain dwellers gave way to tar-paper shanties, "just as a free and robust set of subsistence practices gave way to impoverishing wage labor." Stoll's resonant critique of capitalism takes many turns, examining the corn economy here and the money economy there as well as the backyard company-town garden as a free ride for the company, the rise and fall of agrarianism, and many other topics. The author closes with a friendly but pointed critique of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy as blaming the victim for systemic failures, even as dispossession has served others "as an instrument of control, not a sign of progress." Which is better, cornfields or clean coal? Stoll's sharp book complicates our understanding of a much-misunderstood, much-maligned region that deserves better than it has received.

Kirkus Reviews