Marsh, George Perkins (1801–1882)

US politician, diplomat, and conservationist. With a prosperous legal practice in Burlington, Vermont, he entered politics, eventually serving the state of Vermont as a Whig in the US House of Representatives (1843–49), where he opposed slavery and the Mexican War. He resigned to serve as ambassador to Turkey (1849–54). In 1861 he served in the new kingdom of Italy as first US ambassador, a post he held with great respect until he died in Italy in 1882.

Marsh was born in Woodstock, Vermont. A master of several languages by the time he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1820, he taught before turning to the law in 1825. He continued his studies of various languages, such as Icelandic, and as an ambassador was noted for his ability to converse with foreigners in many languages. He wrote a book on introducing the camel into the USA (1856) and lectured and published on the history of the English language. While in Italy he published Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864); it was heavily revised and republished as The Earth as Modified by Human Action (1874). Although it did not receive much attention in its day, it was rediscovered in the 1930s, and with its thesis that humans have abused the land and must therefore restore it, it has come to be regarded as ‘the fountainhead of the conservation movement’.