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Environmental history

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Environmental history, a relatively new branch of historiography, is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time. Historians have tended to treat nature — when they treat it at all — as the setting for history, rather than a participant or active agent of change. Environmental history is history written with the acknowledgment that we shape our environment and it shapes us. Environmental historians maintain that as nature is a key influence on human affairs then it is both an appropriate and necessary subject for historical analysis.

Charles Darwin's "bulldog", his supporter and advocate Thomas H. Huxley 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?"[1] Environmental history was founded to address questions like this.

The city of Machu Picchu was constructed c. 1450 AD, at the height of the Inca Empire. It has commanding views down two valleys and a nearly impassable mountain at its back. There is an ample supply of spring water and enough land for a plentiful food supply. The hillsides leading to it have been terraced to provide farmland for crops, reduce soil erosion, protect against landslides, and create steep slopes to discourage potential invaders.

Environmental history addresses three core issues.[2] Firstly, nature itself and its change through time – nature is more than a cultural construct, it is a physical reality. This issue deals with the impact of humans on historical changes in Earth's land, water, atmosphere and biological systems: included here would be issues of climate, energy exchanges, human resource use, and interaction with ecosystems as well as major natural events such as floods, volcanic eruptions, wildfires and the spread of diseases. Secondly, how we use nature – the environmental consequences of socioeconomic activity resulting from increasing population, more effective technology and changing patterns of production and consumption. Environmental history maps aspects of the transformation that has occurred as the basic human physical need for food, shelter, mobility, water and materials has, over the years, and through complex social organization been converted into industrial agriculture, megacities, modern transport systems, extensive dams, pipelines and water infrastructure, and the sophisticated technology of the manufacturing industry.[3] Other key themes in this category include the separation from nature that occurred when nomadic hunter-gatherer communities developed settled agriculture in the neolithic revolution, the effects of colonial expansion and settlement communities, and the environmental and human consequences of the industrial and technological revolutions.[4] Thirdly, how we think about nature – the way our attitudes, beliefs and values influence our interaction with nature shaped, as they are, by our myths, legends, ideology, aesthetics, religion and science.

Environmental history emerged in the United States as a new discipline that grew out of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s and much of its impetus still stems from present-day global environmental concerns.[5] The field was founded on simple, often local, conservation issues but has progressively engaged with more general social and scientific history and is just as likely to deal with cities, population or sustainable development. Indeed, as all human experience is grounded in the natural world almost anything might be considered suitable material for research, a situation that acts as an incentive to ground the subject in particular time-scales, geographic regions, or key themes. Certainly as a strongly multidisciplinary subject it draws widely on both the humanities and natural science and, like all history, it presents us with a considered view of the past from which we have the opportunity to learn.

Origin of expression

Main article: Roderick Nash

In 1967 Roderick Nash published "Wilderness and the American Mind", a work that has become a classic text of early environmental history: but it was in an address to the Organization of American Historians in 1969 (published in 1970) that he first used the expression "environmental history",[6] although 1972 is generally taken as the date when the term was first coined.[7]

Historiography

Main article: Historiography

Brief overviews of the field of environmental history have been given by John McNeill in 1983,[8] Richard White in 1985,[9] and J. Donald Hughes in 2006.[10]

Definition

The World in 1897.
British "possessions" are coloured in red

A universally accepted definition of environmental history has yet to crystallise. Certainly in simple terms it is a history that tries to explain why our environment is like it is and how humanity has influenced its current configuration, as well as elucidating the problems and opportunities of tomorrow.[11] or Donald Worster's 1988 definition is widely quoted, it states: "Environmental history is the interaction between human cultures and the environment in the past."[12]

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.”[13] 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"[14] ... "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.”[13] 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.”[13] In 2003 McNeill suggested that environmental history was "... the history of the mutual relations between humankind and the rest of nature".[8]

Subject-matter

Traditional historical analysis has, over the years, 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 broadens the subject base of conventional history still further. In 1988 Worster stated that environmental history “attempts to make history more inclusive in its narratives”[15] by examining the “role and place of nature in human life”.[16] 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”.[17] The interdependency of the human and environmental in the creation of landscapes is expressed through the notion of the cultural landscape.

Scope

The scope of environmental history is no more certain than its definition because, as Donald Worster has pointed out, "Environmental history has both the strength of enormous ambition and the weakness of too much diffuseness"[18] and "We study humans and nature; therefore can anything human or natural be outside our enquiry?"[19] Environmental history is generally treated as a subfield of history, possibly because history has such long-established credentials that its position as the parent discipline is considered beyond question. But this assumption is not beyond challenge. Traditional history is human history – the story of people and their institutions.[20] But "humans cannot place themselves outside the principles of nature"[21] so environmental history is human history but within a context that extends beyond the human realm: a history that has matured by taking in the "big picture" and becoming less dependent on its inescapable anthropocentrism – even though anthropogenic change is at the center of its narrative.[22]

Dimensions

General view of Funkville in 1864, Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, USA

J. Donald Hughes has 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.[23] This appears to be an analytic advance on 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[24] as, clearly, some studies will concentrate more on society and human affairs and others more on the environment.

Themes

The themes used to express these historical dimensions are many. 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, imperialism and colonial expansion, exploration, agricultural change, the effects of the industrial and technological revolution, and urban expansion but also the more environmental topics of human impact through its influences on forestry, fire, climate change, sustainability and so on. “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. This brief balance sheet has both positives and negatives, and plenty of unrealized potential.”[25] The importance of the colonial enterprise in Africa, the Caribbean and Indian Ocean has been detailed by Richard Grove.[4] Much of the literature consists of case-studies targeted at the global, regional, national and local levels.[26]

Scale

Although environmental history can cover the sweep of planetary history spanning billions of years and a spatial realm that embraces the whole Earth: it can equally concern itself with local scales and brief time periods.[27] Many environmental historians are occupied with local, regional and national histories.[28] A bibliography of key works for geographic regions of the world is given at the end of this article. Some historians link their subject exclusively to the span of human history – "every time period in human history"[21] 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.[29]

Significantly, although at all times environmental influences have extended beyond geographic regions and cultures it is in the early modern period, th twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that anthropogenic environmental change has assumed global proportions, most notably with climate change but also as a result of settlement, the spread of disease and the globalization of world trade.[30]

Development of the subject

Nature preservationist John Muir with US President Theodore Roosevelt (left) on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park

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.[31] Perhaps Hippocrates, ancient Greek father of medicine, was an early environmental determinist when, in his Airs, Waters, Places he asserted that different cultures and human temperaments could be related to the surroundings in which peoples lived.[32] 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 and this was 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 to describe the long term developments that shape human history[33] by focussing away from political and intellectual history, toward agriculture, demography, and geography. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a pupil of the Annales School, was the first to really embrace, in the 1950s, environmental history as we might understand it today.[34] Although probably the most influential member of the Annales School was annaliste Lucien Febvre (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.[35] It was in America that the idea of environmental history as an independent field of study really emerged in the general cultural reassessment and reform of the 1960s and 1970s along with environmentalism, "conservation history",[36] and a gathering awareness of the global scale of some environmental issues. This was undoubtedly a reaction to the way nature was portrayed in history of the day “When it dealt with nature at all, it 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. It positively celebrated human mastery over other forms of life and the natural environment, and expected technological improvement and economic growth to accelerate”.[37] “The older history, when it recognized that nature and the environment were present, treated them as a backdrop, but environmental history treats them as active forces”. The intention was to develop a post-colonial historiography that was "more inclusive in its narratives".[15]

Early writing was typified by that of Henry Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, even Rachel Carson and it frequently promoted a moral and political agenda although it steadily became a more scholarly enterprise.”[38] Early attempts to define the field were made largely in America by Roderick Nash in “The State of Environmental History” and in other works by frontier historians Frederick Jackson Turner, James Malin, John Muir and Walter Prescott Webb who subjected the process of settlement to critical analysis. Building on these foundations a more secure intellectual base has been established by "trained" or professional "second generation" environmental historians including Alfred Crosby, Samuel Hays, Donald Worster, William Cronon, Richard White, Carolyn Merchant, John McNeill, Donald Hughes, Chad Montrie, and Europeans Paul Warde, Sverker Sorlin, Robert A. Lambert, T.C. Smout, Peter Coates and Jan Oosthoek.

Frontier historian
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932)

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.

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. [39]

The 77 km long Panama Canal, opened in 1914, connects the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, replacing a long and treacherous shipping route passing via the Drake Passage and Cape Horn at the tip of South America. Construction was plagued by problems, including disease (particularly malaria and yellow fever) and landslides. By the time the canal was completed, a total of 27,500 French and American workmen are estimated to have died.

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, the history and philosophy of science, history of technology and climate science. On the biological side there is, above all, ecology and historical ecology, but also forestry and especially forest history, archaeology and anthropology. When the subject engages in environmental advocacy it has much in common with 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 and environmental economics.[40][41]

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.[42]

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".[43]

Global sustainability

Two views of the Earth from space.
Achieving sustainability will enable the Earth to continue supporting human life as we know it. Blue Marble NASA composite images: 2001 (left), 2002 (right)
Main article: 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, consumerism and materialism, climate change, waste disposal, deforestation and loss of wilderness, industrial agriculture, species extinction, depletion of natural resources, invasive organisms and urban development.[44] The simple message of sustainable use of renewable resources is frequently repeated and early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh 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[45] - 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".[46]

Advocacy

Main article: 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[47] 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.[48]

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 – 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.[49][50] Against this it is argued that deterioration of the global environmnet is a fact revealed by careful research, that good environmental history does not predict or prophesy, and that the charge of catastrophism is unwarranted.[51]

Presentism and culpability

Main article: Presentism (literary and historical analysis)

Under the accusation of "presentism" it is sometimes claimed that, with its genesis in the late twentieth 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".[52] 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.[53] 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

Further information: [[:Environmental determinism]] and [[:Cultural determinism]]
Ploughing farmer in ancient Egypt. Mural in the burial chamber of artisan Sennedjem c. 1200 BCE

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"[54] and that "history is inevitably guided by forces that are not of human origin or subject to human choice".[55] This approach has been attributed to American environmental historians Webb and Turner[56] 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 while, at the other extreme, is what may be called cultural determinism. 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.[57]

Methodology

Main article: Historical method
Recording historical events

Useful guidance on the process of doing environmental history has been given by Donal Worster,[58] Carolyn Merchant,[59] William Cronon[60] and Ian Simmons.[61] 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.[62] 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(Berkely: 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., 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 country

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

African landscape: Lesotho
  • 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

File:Palmer Station panorama.JPG
Palmer Station, located on Anvers Island, is the smallest of the three stations operated by the US Antarctic Program
  • Pyne, S.J., The Ice: A Journey to Anatarctica. (University of Iowa Press, 1986).

Americas

Artistic impression of the first landing of Columbus and the pilgrim fathers on the shores of the New World: at San Salvador, West Indies, on 12 October 1492.
  • 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. (Berkely: 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, 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

Banaue rice terraces in the Philippines where traditional landraces have been grown for thousands of years
  • 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, 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

Aboriginal Art, Anbangbang Rock Shelter, Kakadu National Park, Australia
  • 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

Roman aqueduct and plaza, Segovia, Spain
  • 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)
  • 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 (Berkely: University of California Press, 2003
  • Whited, Tamara L. (ed.), Northern Europe. An Environmental History (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2005)

New Zealand & Oceania

Polynesian outrigger canoe
  • 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)
  • 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

  • Grove, Richard, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1994).
  • Beinart, William and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford, 2007).
  • Simmonds, Ian G., Environmental History of Great Britain from 10,000 Years Ago to the Present (Edinburgh, 2001).
  • Lambert, Robert, Contested Mountains (Cambridge, 2001)
  • Sheail, John, An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2002).
  • Clapp, Brian W., An Environmental History of Britain Since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1994).

Future

Old and new human uses of the atmosphere

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”[63] 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”.[64] Hughes also notes that "environmental history is notably absent from nations that most adamantly reject US, or Western influences".[65]

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”.[66]

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”[67] 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."[68]

See also

References

  1. ^ Huxley 1863, p. 71
  2. ^ Worster 1988, p. 293
  3. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 5–7
  4. ^ a b See Grove 1994
  5. ^ MacEachern & Turkel 2009, p. xii
  6. ^ Nash 1970, pp. 249–260
  7. ^ Nash 1972, p. 362
  8. ^ a b McNeill 2003, pp. 5–43
  9. ^ See White 1985
  10. ^ See Hughes 2006
  11. ^ Dovers 1994, p. 4
  12. ^ Worster 1988, p. 289
  13. ^ a b c Hughes 2001, p. 4
  14. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 1
  15. ^ a b Worster 1988, p. 290
  16. ^ Worster 1988, p. 292
  17. ^ Worster 1993, p. 20
  18. ^ Worster 1988, p. viii
  19. ^ Worster 1988, p. 306
  20. ^ Dovers 1994, p. 5
  21. ^ a b Hughes 2008, p. 8
  22. ^ Hughes 2008, p. 5
  23. ^ Hughes 2008, p. 3
  24. ^ Worster 1988, pp. 289–308
  25. ^ See Warde & Sorlin 2007
  26. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 53–92
  27. ^ See Krech, McNeill & Merchant 2003
  28. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 53–93
  29. ^ Dovers 1994, p. 14
  30. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 78
  31. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 18–35
  32. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 21
  33. ^ Worster 1988, p. 306
  34. ^ See McNeill 2003
  35. ^ See Warde & Sorlin 2007
  36. ^ Adam Rome "Conservation, Preservation, and Environmental Activism: A Survey of the Historical Literature". Retrieved 2010-8-8.
  37. ^ Hughes 2001, p. 5
  38. ^ Worster 1988, p. 290
  39. ^ What is Environmental History? K. Jan Oosthoek. Retrieved 2010-8-8.
  40. ^ Bess 2005, pp. 30–109
  41. ^ Martinez-Alier & Schandle 2002, pp. 175–176
  42. ^ See Warde & Sorlin 2007
  43. ^ See Warde & Sorlin 2007, pp. 107–130
  44. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 2–3
  45. ^ See Marsh 1864, p. 15
  46. ^ Grove 1992, pp. 42–47
  47. ^ Opie 1983, pp. 8–16
  48. ^ See Worster 1993
  49. ^ Uekötter 2004, p. 172
  50. ^ See Melosi 2010
  51. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 99–101
  52. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 98–99
  53. ^ Dovers 1994, pp. 14–16
  54. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 5
  55. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 97
  56. ^ White 2001, p. 55
  57. ^ See Cronon 1995
  58. ^ Worster 1988, pp. 289–387
  59. ^ See Merchant 2002
  60. ^ Cronon 1993, pp. 1347–1376
  61. ^ See Simmons 1993
  62. ^ Hughes 2008, p. 6
  63. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 125
  64. ^ Hughes 2006, pp. 92–93
  65. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 75
  66. ^ Bess 2005b
  67. ^ Hughes 2006, p. 126
  68. ^ See Cronon quote here

Bibliography

Regional studies

Africa

  • Adams, Jonathan S.; McShane, Thomas O. Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation without Illusion (1992) 266p; covers 1900 to 1980s
  • Anderson, David; Grove, Richard. Conservation in Africa: People, Policies & Practice (1988), 355pp
  • Bolaane, Maitseo. "Chiefs, Hunters & Adventurers: The Foundation of the Okavango/Moremi National Park, Botswana". Journal of Historical Geography. 31.2 (Apr. 2005): 241-259.
  • Carruthers, Jane. "Africa: Histories, Ecologies, and Societies," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.379-406;
  • Showers, Kate B. Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho (2005) 346pp

Asia

  • Economy, Elizabeth. The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future (2010)
  • Elvin, Mark. The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (2006)
  • Grove, Richard H.; Damodaran, Vinita; Sangwan, Satpal. Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia (1998) 1036pp
  • Johnson, Erik W., Saito, Yoshitaka, and Nishikido, Makoto. "Organizational Demography of Japanese Environmentalism," Sociological Inquiry, Nov 2009, Vol. 79 Issue 4, pp 481-504
  • Thapar, Valmik. Land of the Tiger: A Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent (1998) 288pp

Latin America

  • Dean, Warren. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (1997)
  • Funes Monzote, Reinaldo. From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (2008)
  • Melville, Elinor G. K. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (2008)
  • Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America (2007)
  • Noss, Andrew and Imke Oetting. "Hunter Self-Monitoring by the Izoceño -Guarani in the Bolivian Chaco". Biodiversity & Conservation. 14.11 (2005): 2679-2693.
  • Simonian, Lane. Defending the Land of the Jaguar: A History of Conservation in Mexico (1995) 326pp

Europe and Russia

  • Bonhomme, Brian. Forests, Peasants and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation & Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917-1929 (2005) 252pp
  • Cioc, Mark. The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 (2002)
  • Simmons, I.G. An Environmental History of Great Britain: From 10,000 Years Ago to the Present (2001).
  • Weiner, Douglas R. Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (2000) 324pp; covers 1917 to 1939

United States

  • Bates, J. Leonard. "Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921", The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 1. (Jun., 1957), pp. 29–57. in JSTOR
  • Brinkley, Douglas G. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, (2009) excerpt and text search
  • Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics (1993), on conservatives
  • Flippen, J. Brooks. Nixon and the Environment (2000).
  • Hays, Samuel P. Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (1987), the standard scholarly history
    • Hays, Samuel P. A History of Environmental Politics since 1945 (2000), shorter standard history
  • Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959), on Progressive Era.
  • King, Judson. The Conservation Fight, From Theodore Roosevelt to the Tennessee Valley Authority (2009)
  • Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind, (3rd ed. 1982), the standard intellectual history
  • Rothman, Hal K. The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (1998)
  • Scheffer, Victor B. The Shaping of Environmentalism in America (1991).
  • Strong, Douglas H. Dreamers & Defenders: American Conservationists. (1988) online edition, good biographical studies of the major leaders
  • Turner, James Morton, "The Specter of Environmentalism": Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right. The Journal of American History 96.1 (2009): 123-47 online at History Cooperative

World

  • Barton, Gregory A. Empire, Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, (2002), covers British Empire
  • Bolton, Geoffrey. Spoils and Spoilers: Australians Make Their Environment, 1788-1980 (1981) 197pp
  • Clover, Charles. The End of the Line: How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat. (2004) Ebury Press, London. ISBN 0-09-189780-7
  • Jones, Eric L. "The History of Natural Resource Exploitation in the Western World," Research in Economic History, 1991 Supplement 6, pp 235-252
  • McNeill, John R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (2000),

Historiography

  • Bess, Michael, Mark Cioc, and James Sievert, "Environmental History Writing in Southern Europe," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp.545-56;
  • Bess, Michael; et al. (2005). "Anniversary Forum: What Next for Environmental History?". Environmental History. 10(1): 30–109. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |first= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Bess, Michael (2005b). "Artificialization and its Discontents". Environmental History. 10(1): 5 para. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Cioc, Mark, Björn-Ola Linnér, and Matt Osborn, "Environmental History Writing in Northern Europe," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp. 396-406
  • Coates, Peter. "Emerging from the Wilderness (or, from Redwoods to Bananas): Recent Environmental History in the United States and the Rest of the Americas," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.407-38
  • Cronon, William (ed.) (1995). Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: W W Norton. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Dovers, Stephen (ed.) (1994). Essays in Australian Environmental History: Essays and Cases. Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Febvre, Lucien (1925). A Geographical Introduction to History. New York: Alfred A Knopf. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Grove, Richard H (1992). "Origins of Western Environmentalism". Scientific American. 267(1): 42–47. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Grove, Richard (1994). Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521565138. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Hay, Peter. Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought (2002), standard scholarly history excerpt and text search
  • Hughes, Donald J. (2001). An Environmental History of the World: Humankind's Changing Role in the Community of Life (Routledge Studies in Physical Geography and Environment). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415136198. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Hughes, Donald J. (2006). What is Environmental History? (What is History Series). Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 9780745631899. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Hughes, Donald J (2008). "Three Dimensions of Environmental History". Environment and History. 14: 1–12. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Huxley, Thomas H (1863). Man's Place in Nature. New York (2003): Dover. ISBN 978-0486432731. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
  • Krech, Shepard; McNeill, John R; Merchant, Carolyn (2003). Encyclopaedia of World Environmental History Vol 1–3. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415937320. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
  • McNeill, John R (2001). Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (Global Century Series). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393321838. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • McNeill, John R (2003). "Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History". History and Theory. 42(1): 5–43. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • MacEachern, Alan; Turkel, William J (eds) (2009). Method & Meaning in Canadian Environmental History. Toronto: Nelson Education. ISBN 978-0176441166. {{cite book}}: |first2= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Marsh, George P (David Lowenthal ed. 1965) (1864). Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. Cambridge, Ma: Belknap Press of Harvard University. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  • Martinez-Alier, J; Schandl, H (2002). "Introduction: Special Section: European Environmental History and Ecological Economics". Ecological Economics. 41(2): 175–176. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Merchant, Carolyn (2002). The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231112338. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Melosi, Martin V (2010). "Humans, Cities, and Nature: How Do Cities Fit in the Material World?". Journal of Urban History. 36(1): 3–21. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Mosley, Stephen. "Common Ground: Integrating Social and Environmental History," Journal of Social History, Volume 39, Number 3, Spring 2006, pp. 915-933; relation to Social history
  • Nash, Roderick (1970). "The State of Environmental History". In Bass, H.J (ed.). The State of American History. Chicago: Organization of American Historians and Quadrangle Books. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Nash, Roderick (1972). "American Environmental History: A New Teaching Frontier". Pacific Historical Review. 41 (3): 362–372. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Opie, John (1983). "Environmental History: Pitfalls and Opportunities". Environmental Review. 7(1): 8–16. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Ponting, Clive (2007 (rev. edn)). A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0143038986. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Robin, Libby, and Tom Griffiths, "Environmental History in Australasia," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.439-74
  • Simmons, Ian G. (1993). Environmental History: A Concise Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 1557864454. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Uekötter, Frank (2004). "The Old Conservation History – and the New: An Argument for Fresh Perspectives on an Established Topic". Historical Social Research. 29(3): 171–191. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Warde, Paul; Sorlin, Sverker (2007), "The Problem of the Problem of Environmental History: A Re-reading of the Field and its Purpose", Environmental History, 12(1): 107–130 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
  • Warde, Paul; Sorlin, Sverker (2009), Nature's End. History and the Environment, London: Macmillan, ISBN 9780230203464 {{citation}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
  • White, Richard (1985). "Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical Field". Pacific Historical Review. 54: 297–335. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • White, Richard (2001). "Environmental History: Retrospect and Prospect". Pacific Historical Review. 70(1): 55–57. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Worster, Donald (ed) (1988). The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521348463. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Worster, Donald (1993). The Wealth of Nature. Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195092643. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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