“Wet and Unfit for Cultivation:” Racial Fantasy and The Swamp Acts of 1850

• In Event: Seepage: Viscous Readings of African Diasporic Archives

Description for Program

In 1850, the U.S. government passed “The Swamp and Overflowed Lands Act,” which placed ownership of land “wet and unfit for cultivation” into the hands of the states, with the expectation that the land would be drained and made available for agriculture. This act, along with three subsequent acts passed by the Louisiana State Legislature, I argue, were driven by racial and environmental fantasies as much as by practical concerns. State surveyor logs from this period are full of blank pages, revealing the physical and conceptual challenges of draining swamps, as continuous seepage caused by geological conditions and plantation agriculture frustrated efforts to convert these lands. Louisiana swamps, feared as sites of disease and deadly wildlife, also carried racialized meanings—spaces of Black refuge, refusal, and revolt —which complicated their role in expanding plantation geographies. This duality of lands framed as both valuable and impassable reflected a politics of anti-Blackness articulated through technocratic vocabularies of disciplining unruly natures. By employing a resistant reading of this legislation and attendant archives, I expose the persistent yet elusive fantasy of swamp drainage as both a material and symbolic endeavor.

Author

• Robin McDowell, Bates College