Environmental history - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Environmental history, a branch of historiography

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

, is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time. In contrast to other historical disciplines, it emphasizes the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs. Environmental historians study how humans both shape their environment and are shaped by it. Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

's supporter and advocate Thomas H. Huxley expressed these concerns when he claimed that "the question of questions for mankind – the problem which underlies all others" – was to ascertain "the place which Man occupies in nature ... What are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature's power over us?"

Environmental history emerged in the United States out of the environmental movement

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...

of the 1960s and 1970s, and much of its impetus still stems from present-day global environmental concerns. The field was founded on conservation issues but has broadened in scope to include more general social and scientific history and may deal with cities, population or sustainable development

Sustainability

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...

. As all history occurs in the natural world, environmental history tends to focus on particular time-scales, geographic regions, or key themes. It is also a strongly multidisciplinary subject that draws widely on both the humanities and natural science.

The subject matter of environmental history can be divided into three main components. The first, nature itself and its change over time, includes the physical impact of humans on the Earth's land

Landform

A landform or physical feature in the earth sciences and geology sub-fields, comprises a geomorphological unit, and is largely defined by its surface form and location in the landscape, as part of the terrain, and as such, is typically an element of topography...

, water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

, atmosphere

Atmosphere

An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low...

and biosphere

Biosphere

The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...

. The second category, how humans use nature, includes the environmental consequences of increasing population

Population

A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...

, more effective technology

Technology

Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

and changing patterns of production and consumption

Consumption (economics)

Consumption is a common concept in economics, and gives rise to derived concepts such as consumer debt. Generally, consumption is defined in part by comparison to production. But the precise definition can vary because different schools of economists define production quite differently...

. Other key themes are the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer communities to settled agriculture in the neolithic revolution

Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution. It was the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved independently in 6 separate locations worldwide circa...

, the effects of colonial expansion and settlements, and the environmental and human consequences of the industrial

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

and technological revolutions. Finally, environmental historians study how people think about nature - the way attitudes

Attitude (psychology)

An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...

, belief

Belief

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....

s and value

Value (personal and cultural)

A personal or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based...

s influence interaction with nature, especially in the form of myths, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

and science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

Origin of name

In 1967 Roderick Nash

Roderick Nash

Roderick Nash is a history and environmental studies professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Nash is the first person to descend the Tuolumne River .- Scholarly biography :...

published "Wilderness and the American Mind", a work that has become a classic text of early environmental history. In an address to the Organization of American Historians in 1969 (published in 1970) Nash used the expression "environmental history", although 1972 is generally taken as the date when the term was first coined.

Historiography

Brief overviews of the field of environmental history have been given by John McNeill in 1983, Richard White in 1985, and J. Donald Hughes in 2006.

Definition

There is no universally accepted definition of environmental history. In general terms it is a history that tries to explain why our environment is like it is and how humanity has influenced its current condition, as well as commenting on the problems and opportunities of tomorrow. Donald Worster's widely quoted 1988 definition states: "Environmental history is the interaction between human cultures and the environment in the past."

In 2001 J. Donald Hughes defined the subject as “The study of human relationships through time with the natural communities of which they are a part in order to explain the processes of change that affect that relationship.” and, in 2006, as "... history that seeks understanding of human beings as they have lived, worked and thought in relationship to the rest of nature through the changes brought by time" ... "As a method, environmental history is the use of ecological analysis as a means of understanding human history ... an account of changes in human societies as they relate to changes in the natural environment.” Environmental historians are also “interested in what people think about nature, and how they have expressed those ideas in folk religions, popular culture, literature and art.” In 2003 McNeill suggested that environmental history was "... the history of the mutual relations between humankind and the rest of nature".

Subject matter

Traditional historical analysis

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

has over time extended its range of study from the activities and influence of a few significant people to a much broader social, political, economic and cultural analysis. Environmental history further broadens the subject matter of conventional history. In 1988 Worster stated that environmental history “attempts to make history more inclusive in its narratives” by examining the “role and place of nature in human life”, and in 1993, that “Environmental history explores the ways in which the biophysical world has influenced the course of human history and the ways in which people have thought about and tried to transform their surroundings”. The interdependency of human and environmental factors in the creation of landscapes is expressed through the notion of the cultural landscape

Cultural landscape

Cultural Landscapes have been defined by the World Heritage Committee as distinct geographical areas or properties uniquely "..represent[ing] the combined work of nature and of man.."....

. Worster also questioned the scope of the discipline, asking: "We study humans and nature; therefore can anything human or natural be outside our enquiry?"

Environmental history is generally treated as a subfield of history, an established discipline. But some environmental historians challenge this assumption, arguing that while traditional history is human history – the story of people and their institutions, "humans cannot place themselves outside the principles of nature." In this sense environmental history is a version of human history within a larger context, one less dependent on anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism describes the tendency for human beings to regard themselves as the central and most significant entities in the universe, or the assessment of reality through an exclusively human perspective....

(even though anthropogenic change is at the center of its narrative).

Dimensions

J. Donald Hughes responded to the view that environmental history is "light on theory" or lacking theoretical structure by viewing the subject through the lens of three "dimensions": nature and culture, history and science, and scale. This advances beyond Worster's recognition of three broad clusters of issues to be addressed by environmental historians although both historians recognize that the emphasis of their categories might vary according to the particular study as, clearly, some studies will concentrate more on society and human affairs and others more on the environment.

Themes

Several themes are used to express these historical dimensions. A more traditional historical approach is to analyse the transformation of the globe’s ecology through themes like the separation of man from nature during the neolithic revolution

Neolithic Revolution

, imperialism

Imperialism

Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

and colonial expansion, exploration

Exploration

Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...

, agricultural change

History of agriculture

Agriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, and it has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt, and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered...

, the effects of the industrial

Industrial Revolution

and technological revolution, and urban expansion. More environmental topics include human impact through influences on forestry

Forestry

Forestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...

, fire

Fire

Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....

, climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, sustainability

Sustainability

and so on. According to Paul Warde, “the increasingly sophisticated history of colonization and migration can take on an environmental aspect, tracing the pathways of ideas and species around the globe and indeed is bringing about an increased use of such analogies and ‘colonial’ understandings of processes within European history..” The importance of the colonial enterprise in Africa, the Caribbean and Indian Ocean has been detailed by Richard Grove.
Much of the literature consists of case-studies targeted at the global, national and local levels.

Scale

Although environmental history can cover billions of years of history over the whole Earth, it can equally concern itself with local scales and brief time periods. Many environmental historians are occupied with local, regional and national histories. Some historians link their subject exclusively to the span of human history – "every time period in human history" while others include the period before human presence on Earth as a legitimate part of the discipline. Ian Simmons's Environmental History of Great Britain covers a period of about 10,000 years. There is a tendency to difference in time scales between natural and social phenomena: the causes of environmental change that stretch back in time may be dealt with socially over a comparatively brief period.

Although at all times environmental influences have extended beyond particular geographic regions and cultures, during the 20th and early 21st centuries anthropogenic environmental change has assumed global proportions, most prominently with climate change but also as a result of settlement, the spread of disease and the globalization of world trade.

Development of the subject

The questions posed and themes covered by environmental history date back to antiquity: historians have always included the effects of natural phenomena on human affairs. Hippocrates, ancient Greek father of medicine, in his Airs, Waters, Places, asserted that different cultures and human temperaments could be related to the surroundings in which peoples lived. However, the origins of the subject in its present form are generally traced to the twentieth century.

In 1929 a group of French historians founded the journal Annales, in many ways a forerunner of modern environmental history since it took as its subject matter the reciprocal global influences of the environment and human society. The idea of the impact of the physical environment on civilizations was espoused by this Annales School

Annales School

The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...

to describe the long term developments that shape human history by focusing away from political and intellectual history, toward agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

, demography

Demography

Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...

, and geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie is a French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ancien regime, particularly the history of the peasantry.-Early life and career:...

, a pupil of the Annales School, was the first to really embrace, in the 1950s, environmental history in a more contemporary form. One of the most influential members of the Annales School was Lucien Febvre

Lucien Febvre

Lucien Febvre was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history. He has designed the Encyclopédie française together with Anatole de Monzie.-Biography:...

(1878–1956), whose book A Geographical Introduction to History is now a classic in the field.

The most influential empirical and theoretical work in the subject has been done in the United States where teaching programs first emerged and a generation of trained environmental historians is now active. In the United States environmental history as an independent field of study emerged in the general cultural reassessment and reform of the 1960s and 1970s along with environmentalism, "conservation history", and a gathering awareness of the global scale of some environmental issues. This was in large part a reaction to the way nature was represented in history at the time, which “portrayed the advance of culture and technology as releasing humans from dependence on the natural world and providing them with the means to manage it [and] celebrated human mastery over other forms of life and the natural environment, and expected technological improvement and economic growth to accelerate”. Environmental historians intended to develop a post-colonial historiography that was "more inclusive in its narratives".

Precursors to environmental historians include Henry Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

, Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...

, and even Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson

Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement....

. Environmental history frequently promoted a moral and political agenda although it steadily became a more scholarly enterprise.” Early attempts to define the field were made in the United States by Roderick Nash

Roderick Nash

Roderick Nash is a history and environmental studies professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Nash is the first person to descend the Tuolumne River .- Scholarly biography :...

in “The State of Environmental History” and in other works by frontier historians Frederick Jackson Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner

Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism...

, James Malin, John Muir

John Muir

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...

and Walter Prescott Webb

Walter Prescott Webb

Walter Prescott Webb was a 20th century U.S. historian and author noted for his groundbreaking historical work on the American West. As president of the Texas State Historical Association, he launched the project that produced the Handbook of Texas...

who analysed the process of settlement. Their work was expanded by a second generation of more specialized environmental historians such as Alfred Crosby

Alfred Crosby

Alfred W. Crosby is a historian, professor and author of such books as The Columbian Exchange and Ecological Imperialism...

, Samuel Hays

Samuel Hays

Samuel Hays was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.Samuel Hays was born in County Donegal, Ireland. He immigrated to the United States with his mother, and settled in Franklin, Pennsylvania, in 1792. He served as treasurer of Venango County, Pennsylvania...

, Donald Worster

Donald Worster

Donald Worster is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas. He is considered one of the founders of, and leading figures in, the field of environmental history; and in 2009, he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.-Education:Worster...

, William Cronon

William Cronon

William 'Bill' Cronon is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison...

, Richard White

Richard White (historian)

Richard White is an American historian, a past President of the Organization of American Historians, and the author of influential books on the American West, Native American history, and environmental history...

, Carolyn Merchant

Carolyn Merchant

Carolyn Merchant is an American ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science most famous for her theory on 'The Death of Nature', whereby she identifies the Enlightenment as the period when science began to atomize, objectify and dissect nature, foretelling its eventual conception as inert...

, John McNeill, Donald Hughes, Chad Montrie, and Europeans Paul Warde, Sverker Sorlin, Robert A. Lambert, T.C. Smout, Peter Coates

Peter Coates

Peter Coates is a businessman and current owner of the Stoke City Football Club. He has been listed as the 25th richest person in British football. He founded Bet365 in 2000, as well as Signal Radio in 1983....

and Jan Oosthoek.

Current practice

In the United States the American Society for Environmental History was founded in 1975 while the first institute devoted specifically to environmental history in Europe was established in 1991, based at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In 1986, the Dutch foundation for the history of environment and hygiene Net Werk was founded and publishes four newsletters per year. In the UK the White Horse Press in Cambridge has, since 1995, published the journal Environment and History which aims to bring scholars in the humanities and biological sciences closer together in constructing long and well-founded perspectives on present day environmental problems and a similar publication Tijdschrift voor Ecologische Geschiedenis (Journal for Environmental History) is a combined Flemish-Dutch initiative mainly dealing with topics in the Netherlands and Belgium although it also has an interest in European environmental history. Each issue contains abstracts in English, French and German. In 1999 the Journal was converted into a yearbook for environmental history. In Canada the Network in Canadian History and Environment

Network in Canadian History and Environment

The Network in Canadian History and Environment based at the University of Western Ontario was established in 2004 as a confederation of scholars working in the field of Canadian environmental history and Canadian-based scholars working in the fields of historical geography and environmental...

facilitates the growth of environmental history through numerous workshops and a significant digital infrastructure including their website and podcast.

Communication between European nations is restricted by language difficulties. In April 1999 a meeting was held in Germany to overcome these problems and to co-ordinate environmental history in Europe. This meeting resulted in the creation of the European Society for Environmental History in 1999. Only two years after its establishment, ESEH held its first international conference in St. Andrews, Scotland. Around 120 scholars attended the meeting and 105 papers were presented on topics covering the whole spectrum of environmental history. The conference showed that environmental history is a viable and lively field in Europe and since then ESEH has expanded to over 400 members and continues to grow and attracted international conferences in 2003 and 2005. In 1999 the Centre for Environmental History was established at the University of Stirling. Some history departments at European universities are now offering introductory courses in environmental history and postgraduate courses in Environmental history have been established at the Universities of Nottingham, Stirling and Dundee and more recently a Graduierten Kolleg was created at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Related disciplines

Environmental history prides itself in bridging the gap between the arts and natural sciences although to date the scales weigh on the side of science. A definitive list of related subjects would be lengthy indeed and singling out those for special mention a difficult task. However, those frequently quoted include, historical geography

Historical geography

Historical geography is the study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and "real" geographies of the past. Historical geography studies a wide variety of issues and topics. A common theme is the study of the geographies of the past and how a place or region changes through time...

, the history and philosophy of science

History and philosophy of science

The history and philosophy of science is an academic discipline that encompasses the philosophy of science and the history of science. Although many scholars in the field are trained primarily as either historians or as philosophers, there are degree-granting departments of HPS at several...

, history of technology

History of technology

The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques, and is similar in many ways to the history of humanity. Background knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors have become possible through technologies which assist...

and climate science. On the biological side there is, above all, ecology

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

and historical ecology

Historical ecology

Historical ecology is a research program that focuses on the interaction between humans and the environments in which they live. Rather than concentrating on one specific event, historical ecology aims to study and understand this interaction across both time and space in order to gain a full...

, but also forestry

Forestry

and especially forest history, archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

and anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

. When the subject engages in environmental advocacy it has much in common with environmentalism

Environmentalism

.

With increasing globalization and the impact of global trade on resource distribution, concern over never-ending economic growth and the many human inequities environmental history is now gaining allies in the fields of ecological

Ecological economics

Image:Sustainable development.svg|right|The three pillars of sustainability. Clickable.|275px|thumbpoly 138 194 148 219 164 240 182 257 219 277 263 291 261 311 264 331 272 351 283 366 300 383 316 394 287 408 261 417 224 424 182 426 154 423 119 415 87 403 58 385 40 368 24 347 17 328 13 309 16 286 26...

and environmental economics

Environmental economics

Environmental economics is a subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues. Quoting from the National Bureau of Economic Research Environmental Economics program:...

.

Engagement with sociological thinkers and the humanities is limited but cannot be ignored through the beliefs and ideas that guide human action. This has been seen as the reason for a perceived lack of support from traditional historians.

Issues

The subject has a number of areas of lively debate. These include discussion concerning: what subject matter is most appropriate; whether environmental advocacy can detract from scholarly objectivity; standards of professionalism in a subject where much outstanding work has been done by non-historians; the relative contribution of nature and humans in determining the passage of history; the degree of connection with, and acceptance by, other disciplines - but especially mainstream history. For Paul Warde the sheer scale, scope and diffuseness of the environmental history endeavour calls for an analytical toolkit "a range of common issues and questions to push forward collectively" and a "core problem". He sees a lack of "human agency" in its texts and suggest it be writtem more to act: as a source of information for environmental scientists; incorporation of the notion of risk; a closer analysis of what it is we mean by "environment"; confronting the way environmental history is at odds with the humanities because it emphasises the division between "materialist, and cultural or constructivist explanations for human behaviour".

Global sustainability

Many of the themes of environmental history inevitably examine the circumstances that produced the environmental problems of the present day, a litany of themes that challenge global sustainability including: population

Population

, consumerism

Consumerism

Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...

and materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

, climate change

Climate change

, waste disposal, deforestation

Deforestation

Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....

and loss of wilderness, industrial agriculture

Industrial agriculture

Industrial farming is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, fish, and crops. The methods of industrial agriculture are technoscientific, economic, and political...

, species extinction, depletion of natural resources, invasive organisms

Introduced species

An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...

and urban development. The simple message of sustainable use of renewable resources is frequently repeated and early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh

George Perkins Marsh

George Perkins Marsh , an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist, although "conservationist" would be more accurate...

was pointing out that the changes we make in the environment may later reduce the environments usefulness to humans so any changes should be made with great care - what we would nowadays call enlightened self-interest. Richard Grove has pointed out that "States will act to prevent environmental degradation only when their economic interests are threatened".

Advocacy

It is not clear whether environmental history should promote a moral or political agenda. The strong emotions raised by environmentalism, conservation and sustainability can interfere with historical objectivity: polemical tracts and strong advocacy can compromise objectivity and professionalism. Engagement with the political process certainly has its academic perils although accuracy and commitment to the historical method is not necessarily threatened by environmental involvement: environmental historians have a reasonable expectation that their work will inform policy-makers.

Declensionist narratives

Narratives of environmental history tend to be declensionist, that is, accounts of progressive decline under human activity. Thus environmental history, like environmentalism, is perceived as entrenched pessimism, a litany of degeneration, failure, loss, decline and decay – a progressive downward spiral leading inexorably to global catastrophe, a kind of environmental eschatology

Eschatology

Eschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...

– often portrayed as proceeding from some halcyon golden age of the past. Along with this often comes the implication of the heroic struggle of a few wise people against the destructive powers of modern capitalism. Further, that narratives of this kind are not only boring and repetitive but also actually mislead due to their excessive simplicity. Against this it is argued that deterioration of the global environment is a fact revealed by careful research, that good environmental history does not predict or prophesy, and that the charge of catastrophism

Catastrophism

Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...

is unwarranted.

Presentism and culpability

Under the accusation of "presentism" it is sometimes claimed that, with its genesis in the late 20th century environmentalism and conservation issues, environmental history is simply a reaction to contemporary problems, an "attempt to read late twentieth century developments and concerns back into past historical periods in which they were not operative, and certainly not conscious to human participants during those times". This is strongly related to the idea of culpability. In environmental debate blame can always be apportioned, but it is more constructive for the future to understand the values and imperatives of the period under discussion so that causes are determined and the context explained. Presentism points out how easy is the wisdom of hindsight and the way we interprete issues of the past through the eyes of today as we attempt to put the past into perspective, not just for the past, but for ourselves and posterity.

Environmental determinism

For some environmental historians "the general conditions of the environment, the scale and arrangement of land and sea, the availability of resources, and the presence or absence of animals available for domestication, and associated organisms and disease vectors, that makes the development of human cultures possible and even predispose the direction of their development" and that "history is inevitably guided by forces that are not of human origin or subject to human choice". This approach has been attributed to American environmental historians Webb and Turner and, more recently to Jared Diamond in his book "Guns, Germs and Steel" where the presence or absence of disease vectors and resources such as plants and animals that are amenable to domestication that may not only stimulate the development of human culture but even determine, to some extent, the direction of that development. The claim that the path of history has been forged by environmental rather than cultural forces is referred to as environmental determinism

Environmental determinism

Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture...

while, at the other extreme, is what may be called cultural determinism

Cultural determinism

Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. This supports the theory that environmental influences dominate who we are instead of biologically inherited traits....

. An example of cultural determinism would be the view that human influence is so pervasive that the idea of pristine nature has little validity - that there is no way of relating to nature without culture.

Methodology

Useful guidance on the process of doing environmental history has been given by Donald Worster, Carolyn Merchant, William Cronon and Ian Simmons. Worster's three core subject areas (the environment itself, human impacts on the environment, and human thought about the environment) are generally taken as a starting point for the student as they encompass many of the different skills required. The tools are those of both history and science with a requirement for fluency in the language of natural science and especially ecology. In fact methodologies and insights from a range of physical and social sciences is required, there seeming to be universal agreement that environmental history is indeed a multidisciplinary subject.

Key works

Chakrabarti, Ranjan (ed), DoesEnvironmental History Matter: Shikar, Subsistence, Sustenance and theSciences (Kolkata: Readers Service, 2006)
Chakrabarti, Ranjan (ed.), Situating Environmental History (New Delhi: Manohar, 2007)
Cronon, William (ed), Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995)
Dunlap, Thomas R., Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment andHistory in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (NewYork/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Glacken, Clarence, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in WesternThought From Ancient Times to the Endo of the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967)
Griffiths, Tomand Libby Robin (eds.), Ecology and Empire: The Environmental Historyof Settler Societies (Keele: Keele University Press, 1997)
Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical IslandEdens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995)
Hughes, J.D., An Environmental Historyof the World: Humankind's Changing Role in the Community of Life (Oxford: Routledge, 2001)
Hughes, J.D., "Global Environmental History: The Long View", Globalizations, Vol. 2 No. 3, 2005, 293-208.
MacKenzie, John M.
John M. MacKenzie
John MacDonald MacKenzie is a British historian of imperialism who pioneered the study of popular and cultural imperialism, as well as aspects of environmental history...

, Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester University Press, 1990)
McCormick, John, Reclaiming Paradise: The Global Environmental Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989)
Rajan, Ravi S., Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development 1800-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Redclif, Michael R., Frontier: Histories of Civil Society and Nature (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 2006).
Stevis, Dimitris, "The Globalizations of the Environment", Globalizations, Vol. 2 No. 3, 2005, 323-334.
Williams, Michael, Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to GlobalCrisis. An Abridgement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
White, Richard, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (Hill and Wang, 1996)
Worster, Donald, Nature's Economy: A Study of Ecological Ideals (Cambridge University Press, 1977)
Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle and Donald Theodore Sanders, Volcanoes in HumanHistory, The Far-reaching Effects of Major Eruptions (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2002)

Seminal works by region

In 2004 a theme issue of Environment and History 10(4) provided an overview of environmental history as practiced in Africa, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, China and Europe as well as those with global scope. David Hughes (2006) has also provided a global conspectus of major contributions to the environmental history literature.

George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, ed. David Lowenthal (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965 [1864])

Africa

Adams, Jonathan S. and Thomas McShane, The Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation without Illusion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
Cock, Jacklyn and Eddie Koch (eds.), Going Green: People, Politics, and the Environment in South Africa (Capetown: Oxford University Press, 1991)
Dovers, Stephen, Ruth Edgecombe, and Bill Guest (eds.), South Africa's Environmental History: Cases and Comparisons (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003)
Green Musselman, Elizabeth, “Plant Knowledge at the Cape: A Study in African and European Collaboration,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 36, 2003, 367-392
Jacobs, Nancy J., Environment, Power and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Maathai, Wangari, Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (New York: Lantern Books, 2003)
McCann, James, Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800-1990 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1999)
Steyn, Phia, "The lingering environmental impact of repressive governance: the environmental legacy of the apartheid-era for the new South Africa", Globalizations, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2005, 391-403

Antarctica

Pyne, S.J., The Ice: A Journey to Anatarctica. (University of Iowa Press, 1986).

Americas

Andrews, Richard N.L., Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)
Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring (Cambridge, Mass. : Riverside Press, 1962)
Cronon, William, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983)
Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991)
Dean, Warren, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
Dorsey, Kurkpatrick, The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1998)
Gottlieb, Robert, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington: Island Press, 1993)
Hays, Samuel, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement1890-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959)
Melosi, Martin V.
Martin V. Melosi
Martin Victor Melosi is Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor and the director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. His research specialty is environmental and urban history...

, Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America (Temple University Press, 1985)
Melville, Elinor, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980)
Nash, Roderick, The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)
Nash, Roderick, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
Raffles, Hugh, WinklerPrins, Antoinette, M. G. A., "Further Reflections on Amazonian Environmental History: Transformations of Rivers and Streams", Latin American Research Review, Vol. 38, Number 3, 2003, pp. 165–187
Reisner, Marc, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (Penguin Books, 1986, 1993)
Simonian, Lane, Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995)
Steinberg, Ted, Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History (Oxford University Press, 2002)
Stradling, David (ed), Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2004.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962-1999 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993)
Worster, Donald, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (Oxford University Press, 1992)
Wynn, Graeme, Canada and Arctic North America: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007)

Asia

Boomgaard, Peter, ed. Paper Landscapes: Explorations in the Environment of Indonesia. (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997)
Burke III, Edmund , "The Coming Environmental Crisis in the Middle East: A Historical Perspective, 1750-2000 CE" (April 27, 2005). UC World History Workshop. Essays and Positions from the World History Workshop. Paper 2. http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucwhw/ep/2
David, A. & Guha, R. (eds) 1995. Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Elvin, Mark & Ts'ui-jung Liu (eds.), Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Elvin, Mark, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004)
Gadgil, M. and R. Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
Grove, Richard, Vinita Damodaran, and Satpal Sangwan (eds.) Nature & the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Hill, Christopher V., South Asia: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2008)
Menzie, Nicholas, Forest and Land Management in Late Imperial China (London, Macmillan Press. 1994)
Mahong, Bao, "Environmental History in China", Environment and History, Volume 10, Number 4, November 2004, pp. 475–499
Marks, R. B., Tigers, rice, silk and silt. Environment and economy in late imperial South China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Perdue, Peter C., "Lakes of Empire: Man and Water in Chinese History”, Modern China, 16 (January 1990): 119 - 29
Shapiro, Judith, Mao's War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2001)
Shiva, Vandana, Stolen Harvest: the Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Cambridge MA: South End Press
South End Press
South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...

, 2000)
Tal, Alon, Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
Totman, Conrad D., The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan (Berkely: University of California Press, 1989)
Totman, Conrad D., Pre-industrial Korea and Japan in Environmental Perspective (Leiden: Brill, 2004)
Ts'ui-jung Liu, Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Tull, Malcolm, and A. R. Krishnan. "Resource Use and Environmental Management in Japan, 1890-1990", in: J.R. McNeill (ed), Environmental History of the Pacific and the Pacific Rim ( Aldershot Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2001)
Yok-shiu Lee and Alvin Y. So, Asia's Environmental Movements: Comparative Perspectives (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1999)

Australasia

Carron, L.T., A History of Forestry in Australia (Canberra, 1985).
Dargavel, John (ed.), Australia and New Zealand Forest Histories. Short Overviews, Australian Forest History Society Inc. Occasional Publications, No. 1 (Kingston: Australian Forest History Society, 2005)
Dovers, Stephen (ed), Essays in Australian Environmental History: Essays and Cases (Oxford: OUP, 1994).
Dovers, Stephen(ed.), Environmental History and Policy: Still Settling Australia (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Flannery, Tim, The Future Eaters, An Ecological History of the Australian Lands and People (Sydney: Reeed Books,1994).
Garden, Don, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005)
Pyne, Stephen, Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (New York, Henry Holt, 1991).
Robin, Libby, Defending the Little Desert: The Rise of Ecological Consciousness in Australia (Melbourne: MUP, 1998)
Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: A Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology 1901-2001, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000)
Robin, Libby, How a Continent Created a Nation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007)
Smith, Mike, Hesse, Paul (eds.), 23 Degrees S: Archaeology and Environmental History of the Southern Deserts (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2005)
Young, Ann R.M, Environmental Change in Australia since 1788 (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Europe

Brimblecombe, Peter and Christian Pfister, The Silent Countdown: Essays in European Environmental History (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1993)
Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
Christensen, Peter, Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environments in the History of the Middle East, 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993)
Ditt, Karl, 'Nature Conservation in England and Germany, 1900-1970: Forerunner of Environmental Protection?', Contemporary European History 5:1-28.
Hughes, J. Donald, Pan's Travail: Environmental Problems of the Ancient Greeks and Romans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994)
Hughes, J. Donald, The Mediterranean. An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005)
Lancaster, Julia H., Marat Fidarov. An Environmental History of the Russian North Caucasus (New York: HHN Media, 2009)
Martí Escayol, Maria Antònia. La construcció del concepte de natura a la Catalunya moderna (Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 2004)http://www.tesisenxarxa.net/TDX-0620105-134124/
Netting, Robert, Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community (Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Stephen J. Pyne, Vestal Fire. An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1997)
Richards, John F., The Unending Frontier: Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003
Whited, Tamara L. (ed.), Northern Europe. An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005)

New Zealand & Oceania

Bennett, Judith Ann,Pacific Forest: A History of Resource Control and Contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1997 (Cambridge and Leiden: White Horse Press and Brill, 2000)
Bennett, Judith Ann, Natives and Exotics: World War II and Environment in the Southern Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009)
Brooking, Tom and Eric Pawson, Environmental Histories of New Zealand (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
James Beattie, "Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand, 1840-1941: Climate Change, Soil Erosion, Sand Drift, Flooding and Forest Conservation", Environment and History 9(2003): 379-392
Cassels, R., "The Role of Prehistoric Man in the Faunal Extinctions of New Zealand and other Pacific Islands", in Martin, P. S. and Klein, R. G. (eds.) Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution (Tucson, The University of Arizona Press, 1984)
D'Arcy, Paul, The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006)
Young, David, Our Islands, Our Selves: A History of Conservation in New Zealand ( Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2004)
Star, Paul, "New Zealand Environmental History: A Question of Attitudes", Environment and History 9(2003): 463-475
Hughes, J. Donald, "Nature and Culture in the Pacific Islands", Leidschrift, 21 (2006) 1, 129-144.
Hughes, J. Donald, "Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand: Polynesian impacts on Island Ecosystems", in: An Environmental History of the World. Humankind"s Changing Role in the Community of Life, (London & New York, Routledge, 2002)
McNeill, John R., "Of Rats and Men. A Synoptic Environmental History of the Island Pacific", Journal of World History, Vol. 5, no. 2, 299-349
Bridgman, H. A., "Could climate change have had an influence on the Polynesian migrations?", Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 41(1983) 193-206.

United Kingdom

Beinart, William and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford, 2007).
Clapp, Brian W., An Environmental History of Britain Since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1994).
Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1994).
Lambert, Robert, Contested Mountains (Cambridge, 2001).
Mosley, Stephen, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (White Horse, 2001).
Porter, Dale, The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London, (University of Akron, 1998).
Simmonds, Ian G., Environmental History of Great Britain from 10,000 Years Ago to the Present (Edinburgh, 2001).
Sheail, John, An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2002).
Thorsheim, Peter, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800 (Ohio University, 2006).

Future

Environmental history, like all historical studies, shares the hope that through an examination of past events it may be possible to forge a more considered future. In particular a greater depth of historical knowledge can inform environmental controversies and guide policy decisions.

The subject continues to provide new perspectives, offering cooperation between scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds and providing an improved historical context to resource and environmental problems. There seems little doubt that, with increasing concern for our environmental future, environmental history will continue along the path of environmental advocacy from which it originated as “human impact on the living systems of the planet bring us no closer to utopia, but instead to a crisis of survival” with key themes being population growth, climate change, conflict over environmental policy at different levels of human organization, extinction, biological invasions, the environmental consequences of technology especially biotechnology, the reduced supply of resources - most notably energy, materials and water. Hughes comments that environmental historians “will find themselves increasingly challenged by the need to explain the background of the world market economy and its effects on the global environment. Supranational instrumentalities threaten to overpower conservation in a drive for what is called sustainable development, but which in fact envisions no limits to economic growth”. Hughes also notes that "environmental history is notably absent from nations that most adamantly reject US, or Western influences".

Michael Bess sees the world increasingly permeated by potent technologies in a process he calls “artificialization” which has been accelerating since the 1700s, but at a greatly accelerated rate after 1945. Over the next fifty years, this transformative process stands a good chance of turning our physical world, and our society, upside-down. Environmental historians can “play a vital role in helping humankind to understand the gale-force of artifice that we have unleashed on our planet and on ourselves”.

Against this background “environmental history can give an essential perspective, offering knowledge of the historical process that led to the present situation, give examples of past problems and solutions, and an analysis of the historical forces that must be dealt with” or, as expressed by William Cronon, "The viability and success of new human modes of existing within the constraints of the environment and its resources requires both an understanding of the past and an articulation of a new ethic for the future."

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Africa

Asia

Latin America

Europe and Russia

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