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.

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.

Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism

2018 ◽  
pp. 348-366
Author(s):  
Machiel Lamers ◽  
Jeroen Nawijn ◽  
Eke Eijgelaar
Keyword(s):  
Nature Conservation ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Environmental Effects ◽  
Sustainable Tourism ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
Global Environmental

Over the last decades a substantial and growing societal and academic interest has emerged for the development of sustainable tourism. Scholars have highlighted the contribution of tourism to global environmental change and to local, detrimental social and environmental effects as well as to ways in which tourism contributes to nature conservation. Nevertheless the role of tourist consumers in driving sustainable tourism has remained unconvincing and inconsistent. This chapter reviews the constraints and opportunities of political consumerism for sustainable tourism. The discussion covers stronger pockets and a key weak pocket of political consumerism for sustainable tourism and also highlights inconsistencies in sustainable tourism consumption by drawing on a range of social theory arguments and possible solutions. The chapter concludes with an agenda for future research on this topic.

scholarly journals Challenging the Environmental History of the Cerrado: Science, Biodiversity and Politics on the Brazilian Agricultural Frontier

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Dutra e Silva
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Brazilian Cerrado ◽  
Agricultural Frontier ◽  
Environmental Consequences ◽  
Environmental Interactions ◽  
History Of

This article presents an overview of the environmental history of the Brazilian Cerrado, its environmental characteristics and the processes related to the historical change in the landscapes of this endangered ecosystem. It highlights competing classifications of the Cerrado, the role of politics in establishing them, and the environmental consequences of such classifications. More than just describing an environment, classifying an ecosystem is a political process that involves complex socio-environmental interactions. The sources used points out the different attempts to get to know and "conquered" the Cerrado, bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives from a variety of actors and institutions. Historiographic challenges go beyond environmental descriptions in that the socio-environmental interactions that made up this unique ecosystem are equally complex. This paper’s conclusions reinforce the interdisciplinary role of environmental history in the study of ecosystems and the complex relationship between culture and nature.

Lateglacial environmental change in Scotland

2017 ◽  
Vol 110 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 173-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike WALKER ◽  
John LOWE
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Patterns ◽  
Exposure Dating ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Stratigraphic Subdivision ◽  
Event Stratigraphy ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACTThis paper reviews the evidence for environmental change during the Lateglacial period (c.14.7–11.7 ka), perhaps the most intensively studied episode in the Quaternary history of Scotland. It considers first the stratigraphic subdivision and nomenclature of the Lateglacial, before proceeding to a discussion of the various lines of proxy evidence that have been used to reconstruct the spatial and temporal patterns of environmental change during this time period. These include pollen and plant macrofossil data; coleopteran and chironomid records; diatom data; stable isotope and geochemical records; and evidence for human activity. The paper then considers the principal methods that have been employed to date and correlate Lateglacial events: radiocarbon dating; surface exposure dating; varve chronology; and tephrochronology. This is followed by an examination of the constraints imposed on environmental reconstructions, an account of the ways in which the evidence can be employed in the development of an event stratigraphy for the Lateglacial in Scotland, and a proposal for a provisional Lateglacial type sequence (stratotype) at Whitrig Bog in SE Scotland. Emphasis is placed throughout on the potential linkages between the Scottish records and the isotopic signal in the Greenland ice cores, which forms the stratigraphic template for the N Atlantic region. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strategies and approaches that should underpin future research programmes on Lateglacial environmental change in Scotland.

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.

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) and Early Christianity

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. Frend
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Church

Thus Gibbon opened the thirty-seventh chapter of the History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, a lengthy chapter devoted to the twin topics of ‘the institution of monastic life’ and ‘the conversion of the northern barbarians’. The connection between the history of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church was indeed indissoluble. The Church was destined to follow the pattern of the empire by gradually degenerating as it grew in strength from original purity in the life of Christ and the Apostles to become a corrupt and baleful influence on the fortunes of secular society. Looking back over twenty years of research and writing (1767–87) he wrote near the beginning of his final chapter, ‘In the preceding volumes of this History, I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion and I can only resume in a few words, their real or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome.’ He goes on to list ‘potent and forcible causes of destruction’ by barbarians and Christians respectively. As he finally laid down his pen on 27 June 1787 at Lausanne, he concluded with a sentence whose strict accuracy has sometimes been doubted: ‘It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.’ The date of this decision was 15 October 1764. Here we survey briefly the role of ‘religion’, i.e. Christianity in the ruin of the Roman Empire.

The World the Bedouin Lived in: Climate, Migration and Politics in the Early Modern Arab East

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier ◽  
Tariq Tell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Societal Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Marginal Zones

Environmental history provides a perspective from which we can deepen our understanding of the past because it examines the relationships of people with their material surroundings and the effects of those relationships on the individual as well as the societal level. It is a perspective that holds particular promise for the social and political history of arid and marginal zones, as it contributes to our understanding of the reason some groups are more successful than others in coping with the same environmental stresses. Historians working on the early modern Arab East have only recently engaged with the lively field of global environmental history. After presenting a brief overview of some strands of this research, this article illustrates the potential of this approach by looking closely at a series of conflicts involving Bedouin and other power groups in the southern parts of Bilād al-Shām around the middle of the eighteenth century.

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