🚀 go-pugleaf

"These so-called *buccaneers*, mainly of French Huguenot and British
origin, sought both meat provisions to support their piratical activi-
ties on the Spanish Main and contraband hides for export to northwestern
Europe.  . . .  Among their more direct gifts, *barbecue*, the cooking
of entire cow or pig carcasses elevated over a slow fire, is derived I
feel from the French *Barbe et queue*, meaing the whole animal, 'beard
and tail.'"  This is one tiny gem from a marvelous recent publication,

	Jordan, Terry G.
	1993	North American Cattle-Ranching
		Frontiers:  Origins, Diffusion,
		and Differentiation.  University
		of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
		0-8263-1421-X (cloth), 0-8263-1422-8
		(paper)

Jordan's prose achieves levels of polished perfection; I'll add a few
words of my own, but, for the most part, this review relies on his:
"... [C]attle ranching came to be a prestigious and romanticized way
of life.  . . .  On a more prosaic level, open-range or free-grass
cattle ranching constituted a business, yielded a society with at-
tendant subculture, reflected an adaptive strategy of land use, and
required a favorable institutional-political framework in which to
operate."  To trace its origins, Jordan travels around the North
Atlantic from Scotland to Nigeria and the West Indies, studying primary
documents stretching back at least a millenium and engaging in "field
observations ... [of] the relict landscapes and remnant herding
cultures ..." throughout this orbit.  The result is simply Braudelian
in its scope, precision, and fascination.

I've cross-posted rather widely in part because Jordan's historiography
is so sensitive to cultural issues; readers from a variety of disciplines
will find much to engage their interest.

Note follow-ups are re-directed.
-- 

Cameron Laird
claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net)  	+1 713 996 8546