1
Defining Environmental History

Introduction

Environmental history studies the mutual relationships of humans and nature through time. Historians and others are active in this field in many parts of the world, the literature is vast and growing, and the subject is taught in schools and universities. Its audiences include students, other scholars, government and business policymakers, and a general public, all interested in environmental issues of great import in the modern world.

But what is environmental history? It is a kind of 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. The human species is part of nature, but compared to most other species we have caused far-reaching alterations of the conditions of land, sea, air, and the other forms of life that share our tenure of the Earth. The changes humans have made in the environment have in turn affected our societies and our histories. Environmental historians tend to think that the unavoidable fact that human societies and individuals are interrelated with the environment in mutual change deserves constant recognition in the writing of history.

Speaking of the contribution that environmental history can make to other kinds of history, Donald Worster, a leading American environmental historian, said that it is "part of a revisionist effort to make the discipline far more inclusive in its narratives than it has traditionally been."1 Historians should see human events within the context where they happen, and that is the entire natural environment. The narrative of history must, as the American historian William Cronon said, "make ecological sense."2 The theme of the interaction of human events and ecological processes has been operative during every chronological period from the origin of humankind to the present.

The environmental problems that received world attention during the last 40 years of the twentieth century, and whose importance has only increased in the present century, show the need for environmental histories that will help in understanding ways that humans have in part caused them, reacted to them, and attempted to deal with them. A contribution of environmental history has been to turn the attention of historians to topical environmental issues that produce global changes, such as global warming, altering weather patterns, atmospheric pollution and damage to the ozone layer, the depletion of natural resources including forests and fossil fuels, the dangers of radiation spread by nuclear weapons testing and accidents at nuclear power facilities, worldwide deforestation, extinction of species and other threats to biodiversity, the introduction of opportunistic exotic species to ecosystems far from their regions of origin, waste disposal and other problems of the urban environment, pollution of rivers and oceans, the disappearance of wilderness and the loss of amenities such as natural beauty and access to recreation, and the environmental effects of warfare including weapons and agents intended to impact the resources and environments of antagonists. Although long enough to suggest the variety and seriousness of the changes that make up the contemporary environmental crisis, the foregoing list is, unfortunately, incomplete. It might seem that many of these problems have appeared only recently, but there is no doubt about their tremendous effect during the twentieth century, and most of them had antecedents in all the previous historical periods. Environmental historians have given attention to these contemporary problems, but they also realize that a relationship between humans and the environment has had a formative role in every period of history, from ancient times onward.

Environmental historians recognize that human societies have experienced change in their relationships to natural systems. Changes have been slow during some periods and fast at other times; even isolated and traditional societies have faced tensions caused by factors such as depleted resources, growth and decline of population, the invention of new tools, and the appearance of unfamiliar organisms including diseases. When change is rapid and reordering, the term "ecological revolutions" used by the historian of science Carolyn Merchant is certainly apt.3 José Augusto Pádua indicates another class of "crucial epistemological changes in our understanding of the natural world and its place in human life", including

1) the idea that human action can have substantial impact on the natural world, even to the point of degrading it; 2) the revolution in the chronological milestones of our understanding of the world; and 3) the view of nature as history, that is, as a process of construction and reconstruction over time.4

The Themes of Environmental History

Environmental historians are a varied group as far as their individual interests and approaches are concerned, as well as their philosophies in regard both to historical methods and subjects and to the environment. But their choice of themes falls into three very broad categories: (1) the influence of environmental factors on human history, (2) the environmental changes caused by human actions and the many ways in which human-caused changes in the environment rebound and affect the course of change in human societies, and (3) the history of human thought about the environment and the ways in which patterns of human attitudes have motivated actions that affect the environment. Many studies of environmental history lay emphasis primarily on one or two of the themes, but perhaps most have something to say about all three.

An example of a book that deals with the three themes is Warren Dean and Stuart B. Schwartz's With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest,5 which is in some ways a model for the writing of environmental history. The authors begin by talking about the evolution of the forest itself, continuing with its influences on the people who came to live there. They describe the successive stages of removal of forest and its replacement by agriculture and industries, and analyze the attitudes toward the forest and its development by inhabitants before and after European colonization, including such groups as plantation owners, scientists, politicians, industrialists, and conservationists. They blend the themes in virtually every chapter.

Let us briefly examine each of the three themes. The first considers the environment itself and its effects on humans. Environment can be understood to include the Earth with its soil and mineral resources; with its water, both fresh and salt; with its atmosphere, climates, and weather; with its living things, animals and plants from the simplest to the most complex; and with the energy received ultimately from the sun. It is important to understand these factors and their changes in order to do environmental history, but environmental history is not simply the history of the environment. The human side of the relationship is always included. Geology and palaeontology concern themselves with the study of the vast reaches of the chronology of Planet Earth before humans evolved, but environmental historians include these subjects as part of their narratives only insofar as they affect human affairs. This means that environmental history inevitably has a human-centered approach, although environmental historians are keenly aware that humans are part of nature, dependent on ecosystems, and not entirely in control of their own destiny. Indeed, environmental history can be a corrective to the prevalent tendency of humans to see themselves as separate from nature, above nature, and in charge of nature.

Studies of the influences of the environment on human history include such subjects as climate and weather, variations in sea level, diseases, wildfire, volcanic activity, floods, the distribution and migration of animals and plants, and other changes that are usually regarded as nonhuman in causation, at least in a major part. Usually, environmental historians have to depend on reports by scientists for background in studying the impact of these factors, and geographers or other scientists, in discussing the implications of their work, often become in effect environmental historians. Some, such as Jared Diamond,6 argue that it is 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 and plants suitable for domestication, and associated micro-organisms and disease vectors - that make the development of human cultures possible and even predispose the direction of that development. A near-exclusive emphasis on the formative role of the environment in human history has been termed "environmental determinism," an idea that has a long history of its own.

The role of diseases in history is an example of the theme of environmental influence. The idea that various illnesses arise from environmental conditions has been held at least since the time of Hippocrates, the father of medicine in ancient Greece.7 Human activities have played a critical part in the spread of communicable diseases, but their horrendous inroads into unexposed human populations and the loss of life experienced as a result of the great plagues identify disease as a force often operating beyond human...