The environmental history of Australian rivers: a neglected field of opportunity?

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul I. Boon
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Numerical Data ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Australian Community ◽  
History Of

Historical ecology documents environmental change with scientific precepts, commonly by using statistical analyses of numerical data to test specific hypotheses. It is usually undertaken by ecologists. An alternative approach to understanding the natural world, undertaken instead by historians, geographers, sociologists, resource economists or literary critics, is environmental history. It attempts to explain in cultural terms why and how environmental change takes place. This essay outlines 10 case studies that show how rivers have affected perceptions and attitudes of the Australian community over the past 200+ years. They examine the influence at two contrasting scales, namely, the collective and the personal, by investigating the role that rivers had in the colonisation of Australia by the British in 1788, the establishment of capital cities, perceptions of and attitudes to the environment informed by explorers’ accounts of their journeys through inland Australia, the push for closer settlement by harnessing the country’s rivers for navigation and irrigation, anxiety about defence and national security, and the solastalgia occasioned by chronic environmental degradation. Historical ecology and environmental history are complementary intellectual approaches, and increased collaboration across the two disciplines should yield many benefits to historians, to ecologists, and to the conservation of Australian rivers more widely.

Environment and Empire

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Beinart ◽  
Lotte Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Combustion Engine ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Change Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it underpinned the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia; it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it. Imperialism was inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established sugar plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming and displaced indigenous peoples. Colonial cities, many of which became great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world, and this book illustrates the diverse environmental themes in the history of empire. Initially concentrating on the material factors that shaped empire and environmental change, Environment and Empire discusses the way in which British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined, and farmed. Yet it is also clear that British settler and colonial states sought to regulate the use of natural resources as well as commodify them. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, and to guarantee efficient use of soil and water. Exploring these linked themes of exploitation and conservation, this study concludes with a focus on political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources. In a post-imperial age, they have found a new voice, reformulating ideas about nature, landscape, and heritage and challenging, at a local and global level, views of who has the right to regulate nature.

The Environmental Fall of the Roman Empire

Daedalus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Harper
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Environmental Variability ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
History Of ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
Climate Proxies

Global environmental history is currently being enriched by troves of new data, and new models of environmental variability and human impact. Earth scientists are rapidly expanding historians’ knowledge of the paleoclimate through the recovery and analysis of climate proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, stalagmites, and marine and lake sediments. Further, archaeologists and anthropologists are using novel techniques and methods to study the history of health and disease, as revealed through examination of bones and paleomolecular evidence. These possibilities open the way for historians to participate in a conversation about the long history of environmental change and human response. This essay considers how one of the most classic of all historical questions–the fall of the Roman Empire–can receive an answer enriched by new knowledge about the role of environmental change.

Environmental History

Rural History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Merricks
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Present Decade ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

A cursory examination of publishers’ catalogues reveals a number of titles like Environmental History, Green History and An Environmental History of Britain which suggest an upsurge of interest in what has come to be called ‘environmental history’. This weight of scholarship suggests that demands for the ‘greening of history’, or for more studies of the impact of human actions on the countryside, which have been made throughout the present decade, have been answered. It is worth noting the shift of title from ‘Green’ to ‘Environmental’. ‘Green’ is increasingly attached to the political movements and social groups concerned with environmental issues and even, in the case of the German Greens, to political parties whose concerns include ecology as only one of a number of interests. ‘Environmental’ has a much broader range, but, as the titles below demonstrate, this is by no means an absolute distinction. Closer consideration of many of these works reveals that although ‘History’ appears in many titles, the books are actually written by archaeologists, by sociologists, by political theorists, by Green activists and, most frequently, by geographers - all with ‘historical’ appended to their discipline. The Social Construction of the Past is a collection of essays from the Second World Archaeological Conference; Environmentalism proves to be ‘the view from Anthropology’ but contains at least one essay which appears to be a model of what environmental history could be. Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, rather confusingly, has chapters on historical transformations and a discussion of the ‘history’ in historical ecology. This is perhaps not surprising. History has always prided itself on interdisciplinarity and on its universal appeal. The usual justifications for undergraduate history begin from the premise that a knowledge of one's own history is necessary for any understanding of society, and that history has so many variations that there is bound to be some congenial corner for anyone interested in the past. What is still lacking, however, is British environmental history, written by historians.

scholarly journals A View from the Bush: Space, Environment and the Historiography of Science

2009 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Evenden
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
Space Environment ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Spatial Approach ◽  
Historiography Of Science ◽  
History Of

Abstract This paper examines the interdisciplinary connections among the history of science, historical geography and environmental history. Four approaches have shaped recent scholarship: a spatial approach developed primarily but not exclusively within the discipline of geography that emphasizes problems of space, place, location and circulation; second, a disciplinary approach which pursues histories of environmental disciplines; third, a science and change approach containing works which emphasize the role of science in environmental change; and fourth an eco-spatial approach which includes studies that seek to engage with and link historiographies of science, environment and spatiality. I argue that these approaches have created new connections between fields that should be fostered and extended.

scholarly journals The North Atlantic Fish Revolution (ca. AD 1500)

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poul Holm ◽  
Francis Ludlow ◽  
Cordula Scherer ◽  
Charles Travis ◽  
Bernard Allaire ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Gadus Morhua ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Environmental Parameters ◽  
Fold Increase ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marine Environmental

AbstractWe propose the concept of the “Fish Revolution” to demarcate the dramatic increase in North Atlantic fisheries after AD 1500, which led to a 15-fold increase of cod (Gadus morhua) catch volumes and likely a tripling of fish protein to the European market. We consider three key questions: (1) What were the environmental parameters of the Fish Revolution? (2) What were the globalising effects of the Fish Revolution? (3) What were the consequences of the Fish Revolution for fishing communities? While these questions would have been considered unknowable a decade or two ago, methodological developments in marine environmental history and historical ecology have moved information about both supply and demand into the realm of the discernible. Although much research remains to be done, we conclude that this was a major event in the history of resource extraction from the sea, mediated by forces of climate change and globalisation, and is likely to provide a fruitful agenda for future multidisciplinary research.

Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment, by Joachim Radkau

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Anne E. C. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Global History ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Axis ◽  
The Impact

As is perhaps suggested by its very title, Nature and Power, Joachim Radkau's important contribution to “a global history of the environment” takes as its primary axis of analysis the impact of the exercise of political authority by states on the natural world as constituted by plants, animals, soil, water, and air. The economy makes very few appearances as such. Indeed, the only index reference to things economic is a lone entry for Max Weber's Economy and Society (1922), and even there the economy is not the point of the citation. Yet economic history and environmental history share a great many common concerns, not least of which is what we might broadly call “human welfare.” My comments will explore the possible connections between Radkau's reading of our global environmental past and the broad narratives developed by economic historians to tell their version of global history.

scholarly journals Where Humans and the Planetary Conflate—An Introduction to Environing Media

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Adam Wickberg ◽  
Johan Gärdebo
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Information Storage ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Integrative Research

In this essay, we provide an outline of historical and contemporary examples to illustrate the theoretical concept of environing media. We first discuss how humans have environed their surroundings long before the advent of scientific modernity and the rapid evolution of media technologies that helped in making the planet governable. Against this background, we argue that a fundamental shift in the human–Earth relation happened after 1500 and that this shift is attributable to the development of environing media employed in the process of terrestrial globalisation. We see the present profound renegotiation of the human–Earth relation as a continuity, albeit with a different intensity as exemplified by the work in Earth system science. Finally, we invert Mike Hulme’s call for scientists to meet the humanities into an appeal to humanists to embrace the environmental sciences and pursue more integrative research. Recent developments in environmental history have seen an increased interest in the shaping of environments by means of technology. To this end, scholars have developed theoretical concepts like “environing technologies”, which are based on the premise that the environment is a historical formation by people and societies who form their surroundings as well as their sense of place. In the same vein, historical ecology has shown that premodern peoples also shaped the natural world to their purposes far more than what has generally been understood. The central premise is that what is understood as the environment is the result of human intervention and that environing technologies structure the way that it is used, perceived, and understood. These insights resonate with core notions in media theory, but they have never before been brought together. Given that all of our understanding of the environment today is the product of several processes of mediation, the theory of environing technology would benefit from stronger theorisation of the role of media. While the scale and intensity of information storage, processing, and transmission by media today are unprecedented, the logic of mediated data processing essentially remains the same as five centuries ago when agents of the Spanish Empire took part in shaping the understanding of the environment of the Americas and the globe. For these purposes, we propose the concept of environing media, as a means of both joining intellectual forces and pushing theoretical analysis of both branches further. The paper outlines the theory of environing media using examples from the Global South, in particular the shaping and sensing of landscapes in and around the Philippines. From early modern to late modern times, this region of the world has been influenced by environing media, most importantly circumnavigating ships and orbiting sensing satellites. The result is landscapes made and remade according to colonial and later capitalist priorities operating on a global, and eventually a planetary, scale.

Introduction

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Beinart ◽  
Lotte Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
British Empire ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Combustion Engine ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
World Order ◽  
History Of

European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it precipitated the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia (but not of Africa and Asia); it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it—and arguably also recent global asymmetries in wealth and power. European empires helped to produce the multiple states that are the basis of the world order, and influenced many of their key institutions. Imperial legacies have contributed to some of the world’s major recent conflicts. European imperialism was also inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming; some displaced indigenous peoples and their methods of managing the land. Colonial cities, many of which have become great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. By contrast, while natural resources have been intensely exploited, a related process, the rise of conservationist practices and ideas, was also deeply rooted in imperial history. Large tracts of land have been reserved for forests, national parks, or wildlife. Most environmental histories deal with reciprocal interactions between people and other elements in the natural world. Few see humans as entirely ‘super-natural’—or above nature. Our book on the British Empire emerges from these concerns. It is not an environmental interpretation of empire, nor do we have sufficient space or knowledge to write a definitive environmental history of the British Empire as a whole. Our aim is to illustrate diverse environmental themes in the history of that empire. In the first half of the book we concentrate on the material factors that shaped environmental change. We discuss the way in which an expanding capitalist economy devoured natural resources and transformed them into commodities.

Technology and the Environment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy James LeCain
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Material Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dynamic Hybrid ◽  
Synthetic Approaches ◽  
Cultural Turn

Technology and environmental history are both relatively young disciplines among Americanists, and during their early years they developed as distinctly different and even antithetical fields, at least in topical terms. Historians of technology initially focused on human-made and presumably “unnatural” technologies, whereas environmental historians focused on nonhuman and presumably “natural” environments. However, in more recent decades, both disciplines have moved beyond this oppositional framing. Historians of technology increasingly came to view anthropogenic artifacts such as cities, domesticated animals, and machines as extensions of the natural world rather than its antithesis. Even the British and American Industrial Revolutions constituted not a distancing of humans from nature, as some scholars have suggested, but rather a deepening entanglement with the material environment. At the same time, many environmental historians were moving beyond the field’s initial emphasis on the ideal of an American and often Western “wilderness” to embrace a concept of the environment as including humans and productive work. Nonetheless, many environmental historians continued to emphasize the independent agency of the nonhuman environment of organisms and things. This insistence that not everything could be reduced to human culture remained the field’s most distinctive feature. Since the turn of millennium, the two fields have increasingly come together in a variety of synthetic approaches, including Actor Network Theory, envirotechnical analysis, and neomaterialist theory. As the influence of the cultural turn has waned, the environmental historians’ emphasis on the independent agency of the nonhuman has come to the fore, gaining wider influence as it is applied to the dynamic “nature” or “wildness” that some scholars argue exists within both the technological and natural environment. The foundational distinctions between the history of technology and environmental history may now be giving way to more materially rooted attempts to understand how a dynamic hybrid environment helps to create human history in all of its dimensions—cultural, social, and biological.

Environment and the Natural World

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alix Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Term

Over the course of the early modern period, Europeans came to look at, engage with, and even transform nature and the environment in new ways, as they studied natural objects, painted landscapes, drew maps, built canals, cut down forests, and transferred species from one continent to another. The term “nature” meant many things during this period, from the inmost essence of something to those parts of the world that were nonhuman, such as the three famous “kingdoms” of nature: the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral. This article focuses on nature in this latter sense and broadens it out to include more recent understandings of the modern term “environment,” so as to encompass not only plants, animals, and rocks but also entire landscapes. Scholars from a wide variety of fields, ranging from the histories of science, art, and literature through historical geography, historical archeology, historical ecology, and landscape history, have long been interested in issues related to the environment and the natural world; more recently, they have been joined by practitioners of “environmental history” and additional branches of the environmental humanities and social sciences, who have drawn on these preexisting approaches and brought still further perspectives to the table.

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