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Class notes LET-GESB2108-CEH (Environmental History)
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ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYperiod 4
WEEK 1
Lecture “Introduction to the course. What is Environmental History?”
there are many academic disciplines dealing with the environment and its history:
• medicine
• ecology
• philosophy
• history
• economy
>> scholars interested in discovering complex causal relations / looking for solutions to the environmental
problems and looking at the consequences of human actions on the environment VS scholars (in humanities)
are interested more in understanding the motivations, intentions and the “why” of the environmental crisis
occurring (rising importance within politics)
>> the role of the historians in this is historicising and contextualising certain frames of the environment
within a certain time context, to understand rather than to judge
environmental history as a new sub-discipline:
• emerged not earlier than the 80s
• grew into a big thing
1) impact of nature on mankind
• natural disasters: how do they influence the development of mankind
• geographical, ecological determinism and the long-term consequences of it
• animal studies - animals as historical agents
2) impact of mankind on nature (on mankind)
• this is what historians usually deal with
• depletion of resources, degradation of nature
• history of activism and government policies: history of framing various environmental problems
3) environmental concepts
• biodiversity, sustainability, anthropocene
the concept of nature:
• wild nature?
• authentic, pristine landscapes —> 1st thing that comes to mind, very romantic understanding of nature
BUT if u think abt it a bit longer u realize that in a lot of parts of the world there is no authentic and true
nature untouched by humans —> all over the globe u can feel the effects of human activity even in places
where no human has ever been (due to climate change etc)
• turning back the clock, back to nature, harmony
• anthropocene: the era we live in, there is not authentic nature bc everything is affected by human activity
either directly or indirectly; realization that it is us in our project of modernization are damaging nature —
> created questions about the future and what we what to do —> do we want to preserve nature fully or do
we want to manage it (give it just enough space so that it can exist on the side of our modernization
process)
• pp realized that the nature is dying bc of our actions so nature conservation(/managing) actions /
movements became more popular, managing nature
• back-breeding, rewilding
• if we have an impact on nature, do we want to authentic, original state of nature by back-breeding
animals that no longer exist or by rewildering landscapes and try to undo the damages that weve done so
far?
> german shephard was created (19th c) by mixing different dog breeds to create an animal that would fit the
image of a german nationalist / romanticist who imagined their predecessors roaming to the forest with a
wolf by their side —> shephard was the closest to the wolf
the history of environmentalism
• 3 or more stages of environmentalism as an active societal and political concern with the environment
1) nature conservation and preservation since 19th c (green)
1) a concern for the preservation of parks, landscapes etc without criticism of the modernizing process
& the impact it has on nature
2) fascist and nature (brown)
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, 1) a romantic understanding of nature, longing for nostalgia and pre-modern utopia (one of the two
sides / objectives of the fascism ideology (the other one was the modernizing objective)
2) example of this longing for pre-modern society was the german shepherd creation
3) progressive laws about the environment protection and nature conservation were enacted by the 3rd
reich
3) pollution activism since 1940s
1) after ww2 industralization took off which created even more pollution (and human casualties)
2) focused more on human health rather than preserving nature
4) environmentalism since 1970s (grey)
1) the report of rome: to see environmental problems not as sth that can be solved by conserving
pockets of nature but rather as a structural problem that requires a change of living to keep the
environment liveable
5) climate activism since 1990s (blue)
1) looks at the environment as a larger and more fundamental scale than before —> ppl realized that we
influence not only our environment but the plant as a whole
—> all these stages point to a different stage in this development of environmentalism
• all these stages also mean that there are different stage of the politics of history-writing:
• history-writing is never neutral its always contextualised in a certain age!!!!!!
• actual history-writing on environmentalism started in the 1980s —> there is very little literature before
that: there is only a lil from ppl involved in green environmentalism
• for a long time environmental historians were also environmental activists
stage 1: green and brown environmentalism
keywords:
civilisation and modernisation: not questioning it
nature and culture: making a clear distinction between these two
urbanisation, agriculture and industralization: the distinction of nature vs culture was alarmed by the
disappearing landscapes which were the result of urbanisation
extinction of species: also prompted the nature vs culture distinction; also element of christianity in here:
if the animals etc created by god are disappearing then sth serious is happening —> idealization of the
environment
nature monuments and re-creation
> historical narrative
stage 2: grey environmentalism
keywords:
local pollution activism
alarm triggered by the industrial pollution and public health, catastrophes
western environmentalism
as a consequence of the catastrophes etc there was the need to rethink modernity, consumerism —>
modernisation became the main enemy to the environment
ppl realised that our sources are depleting so we need to switch to renewable sources,
new leftist and rightist (protested against the soviet parties??) green parties emerge
ecological and peace movements —> both were concerned with nuclear energy
> historical narrative
stage 3: blue environmentalism
keywords:
global warming, rising see levels
new activism: fridays for the future, extinction rebellion —> quite different in their understanding than the
groups of the 70s (grey)
ecology and anti-globalism
civil society and international organisations
anthropocene: focus on the consequences of the mankind on nature
> historical narrative
oostvaardersplassen:
—> a nature park reserve, close to amsterdam, created when ppl were reclaiming land from the sea and
realized they dont need more agricultural fields so they turned some of it into a park for wild animals
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, —> started a debate with some ppl saying its not a park but rather a big cage where wild animals live but no
one is feeding them so they die in the winter (bc the land is not suitable for living creatures - it was under the
sea level for ages) - other say that its just a nature process, animals eat animals and some of them will always
be starving in a animal society
• authenticity vs ecological engineering
• rewilding vs nature conservation
• green, grey, brown or blue environmentalism
• public dilemmas: cage vs reserve
• angles for environmental-history research?
a taxonomy of academic literature; answer the following questions for each lecture
1. look up the biography & bibliography of the lecturer
2. which one of the above 5 types of environmental history does this lecture belong to and why?
3. is the lecturer driven by an activist agenda and / or by academic research question?
4. which one of the historical methodologies does the author apply in their research? is he / she an
economic, cultural, political or ancient / medieval historian or a “genuine” environmental historian?
WEEK 2
Lecture 1 “The Political Ecology of the early Modern World”
what is political ecology?
—> the study of human interaction with the natural world
• the influence of environmental factors on human history
• environmental changes caused by human actors
• history of human thought abt the environment
political ecology studies the relationship between political, economic and social factors and environmental
issues and changes
• division of natural resources is not a given
• not an issue of supply and demand BUT rather inequality of distribution
• starvation of ppl is not about there not being enough food but them not having enough food —> there is
enough of food to feed these ppl but bc of politics that doesnt happen
• idea of amartya sen after he was studying the bengal famine in 1943:
• “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. it is not the characteristic
of there not being enough food to eat”
wood in the early modern world:
• it was a wooden world —> everything was made out of it —> BUT was wood everywhere? —> no, it was
scarce —> some ppl started debating this in treaties etc
• arthur standish in 1612: “no wood, no kingdom”
• robert johnson in 1609: “such a sickness and wasting consumption as all the physick in england cannot
cure” (tf is he referring to)
• wood was used for construction (houses, ships), farming, mining
• no wood = no colonisation bc no ships (wood was as essential as building material)
• it was also essential for preparing food (heating it up etc)
• wood formed 20-25% of costs of sugar production (the quality of wood influences the quality of sugar)
• barbados was basically a forest before the europeans arrived (sad)
• there was so much wood that ppl just started cutting whatever they wanted —> wood was beginning to
be less common i guess —> colonial planters wrote petitions to the govs to protect their wood —> 1656,
an act created by the gov to there would be a punishment for cutting someone elses tree from their
property —> protects the interest of the land-owners but it increased the inequality of the distribution
(only the ones who had land with trees could easily get wood, the rest had to pay lots of it and bc it was
mostly enslaved living there it wasnt that easy to get it for them)
• also a law that if u cut trees u need to plant the same amount of them in another place on the island
• bermuda: also had an act against destroying palmetto trees (they protected from wind and stuff)—> if u do
so u get public punishment —> protects the common interest
• “destroying the palmetto is a general prejudice to the public wealth” so “whoever cut palmetto shall
receive public punishment for every time that they shall so offend”
• also the same with cedar trees “which defend the islands from winds and tempests, be preserved and
maintained”
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