PUBLIC LECTURE: Don't fence me in: Barbed wire around the American West

Speaker: Dr Ethan Blue, History, UWA

The thin, spindly steel seems innocuous enough until you get too close. This lecture examines the role of barbed wire in the conquest of North America. A technological development that fenced in the wide open spaces and prairies of the West, barbed wire enabled rapid land privitisation, a shift from indigenous bison ecologies to cattle economies, and spelled the end of the cowboy's frontier dream.