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Abstract:
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"Today the commons is a popular name for a shopping mall -- for example, The Bridgewater Commons -- or a collection of professional offices. Developers seem to have chosen the term for its connotation of tradition and communality, a touch of the colonial past and an ironic hint of community opposed to individuality. Were there ever common lands in New Jersey? Did members of towns and villages cooperate in the use and management of common pastures and more to the subject of my book, in the use and management of coastal beaches, clam and oyster beds, and fishing grounds? And if there were, how well did they manage the commons? If the common resources declined, why?
"In historical research I found evidence for common rights to some lands marginal to agriculture in New Jersey: the barrier beaches of the Atlantic Coast, salt marshes of the swampy Delaware Bay area of the states, and forested lands not far from New York City. Eighteenth Century acts of the colonial assembly of New Jersey and a few early 19th Century acts of the new state legislature after the revolution pertain to the management of common pastures and salt meadows along the oceanshore and rivers. I touch briefly on these. They also reveal the failure of a large forest commons and its enclosure, a story I can only hint at here. I focus on the very peculiar emergence of common ownership and management of marine and wetlands habitats in Cape May County in the early 19th Century, a case in which common lands were privatized and then restored to the commons."
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