Showing papers in "Environmental History in 2020"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors continue and extend a conversation between environmental history and the broader environmental humanities, outlining and defining an approach to more-than-human histories, which they call more than human histories.
Abstract: This article continues and extends a conversation between environmental history and the broader environmental humanities, outlining and defining an approach to more-than-human histories. En...
33 citations
TL;DR: Reflections: Environmental History in the Era of COVID-19, Environmental History 25 (2020): 595–686.
Abstract: Peter Alagona, Jane Carruthers, Hao Chen, Michèle Dagenais, Sand ro Dutra e Silva, Gerard Fitzgerald, Shen Hou, Dolly Jørgensen, Claudia Leal, John McNeill, Gregg Mitman, Gabriella Petrick, Liza Piper, Libby Robin, Edmund Russell, Christopher Sellers, Mart A. Stewart, Frank Uekötter, Conevery Bolton Valencius, and Marco Armiero, “Reflections: Environmental History in the Era of COVID-19,” Environmental History 25 (2020): 595–686
11 citations
TL;DR: In the early 1930s, many British politicians, journalists, and scientists were greatly alarmed by the feral exploits of a recently introduced North American furbearer that readily escaped British control.
Abstract: In the early 1930s, many British politicians, journalists, and scientists were greatly alarmed by the feral exploits of a recently introduced North American furbearer that readily escaped c
9 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the popularity of the "energy conservation ethic" in the United States during the 1970s, which environmentalists, politicians, and oil companies endorsed as a solution to the energy crisis.
Abstract: This article examines the popularity of the “energy conservation ethic” in the United States during the 1970s, which environmentalists, politicians, and oil companies endorsed as a solution...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the plagues of migrating Spanish sparrows (Passer hispaniolensis) that significantly affected the wheat and barley farmers in North Africa during the French colonial period.
Abstract: Wheat and barley farmers in North Africa during the French colonial period often experienced plagues of migrating Spanish sparrows (Passer hispaniolensis) that significantly affected the ru...
8 citations
TL;DR: The 2019 Presidential Address to the American Society for Environme... as discussed by the authors addresses the social, political, economic, and ecological challenges that confront contemporary society, and responds to these challenges.
Abstract: Responding to the social, political, economic, and ecological challenges that confront contemporary society, this article—the 2019 Presidential Address to the American Society for Environme...
8 citations
TL;DR: In the past decade, experts have discussed the offshore technologies so closely associated with accelerating climate change (namely, offshore oil and gas drilling) as tools for climate change.
Abstract: Over the past decade, experts have discussed the offshore technologies so closely associated with accelerating climate change—namely, offshore oil and gas drilling—as tools for climate acti...
8 citations
TL;DR: A transnational “restoration project” to save the nēnē or Hawaiian goose from extinction in 1950 is examined, showing that there is no simple trajectory from endangered life to valued life.
Abstract: In 1950, a group of scientists and public figures, based in Hawaii and England, launched a transnational “restoration project” to save the nēnē or Hawaiian goose from extinction. Scrutinizi...
8 citations
TL;DR: The first Aswan Dam was built at the dawn of the twentieth century and celebrated as a triumph of imperial engineering as mentioned in this paper, and workers returned to extend the dam five years after its completion.
Abstract: The first Aswan Dam was built at the dawn of the twentieth century and celebrated as a triumph of imperial engineering. Five years after its completion, workers returned to extend the dam. ...
7 citations
TL;DR: The volcano on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, Mt. Pelee, which is the volcano that killed thirty thousand people and obliterated the town of Saint-Pierre.
Abstract: Mount Pelee, the volcano on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, dramatically erupted in 1902, instantaneously killing thirty thousand people and obliterating the town of Saint-Pierre...
7 citations
TL;DR: This article cast doubt on prior scholarship regarding Maoist environmental rhetoric regarding forestry, which has tended to characterize it as destructive, militaristic, and irrefined, and they attempted to cast doubt upon prior scholarship.
Abstract: This article attempts to cast doubt on prior scholarship regarding Maoist environmental rhetoric regarding forestry, which has tended to characterize it as destructive, militaristic, and ir...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the environmental history of the Industrial Revolution by examining the evolution of the usage and management of the waters of the Piave, a river stretching from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
Abstract: This article analyzes the environmental history of the Industrial Revolution by examining the evolution of the usage and management of the waters of the Piave, a river stretching from the e...
TL;DR: Based on local archival documents and fieldwork conducted in Shaanxi Province's Baishui County, the authors examines how large-scale water and soil conservation campaigns launched in North China were conducted.
Abstract: Based on local archival documents and fieldwork conducted in Shaanxi Province’s Baishui County, this article examines how large-scale water and soil conservation campaigns launched in North...
TL;DR: In 1641, according to the vicar Thomas Johnson, Irish rebels in Mayo, in “meere hatred and derision of the English,” tried a group of English cattle for unspecified charges as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In 1641, according to the vicar Thomas Johnson, Irish rebels in Mayo, in “meere hatred and derision of the English,” tried a group of English cattle for unspecified charges. They were convi...
TL;DR: In the summer of 1902, a small crew of fossil hunters from the American Museum of Natural History left New York in search of dinosaur bones, and they ventured to a remote part of Montana with exposed rocks from the Cretaceous period known as the Hell Creek Formation.
Abstract: In the summer of 1902, a small crew of fossil hunters from the American Museum of Natural History left New York in search of dinosaur bones. Acting on a tip from the noted conservationist William Temple Hornaday, they ventured to a remote part of Montana with exposed rocks from the Cretaceous period known as the Hell Creek Formation. Although they were primarily looking for Triceratops bones, it was not long before something else caught their attention. As the young men gradually unearthed their discovery using dynamite and a heavy metal scraper dragged by a horse, it became clear that they had found something special. The specimen was large and imposing, and it was noticeably different from anything previously known to science. And, before long, it would be the most famous dinosaur of all time: Tyrannosaurus rex. From the moment that it was unveiled to the public, T. rex was consistently described as an especially ferocious predator. Barnum Brown, who led the 1902 expedition, characterized this “newly discovered monster” as the “absolute war lord of the earth in his day,” telling a newspaper reporter that it was “so formidable a fighting machine that he easily preyed upon herbivorous neighbors twice his own size.” Even its name, which translates to “tyrant lizard king,” was chosen by Brown’s boss at the museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, to highlight the creature’s proclivity for extreme violence. At the same time, paleontologists always emphasized the small size of its
TL;DR: The authors examines how the severe drought of 1961-62 and the fury of Hurricane Flora in October 1963 influenced the Cuban Revolution socioeconomically and geopolitically in the crucial f...
Abstract: This article examines how the severe drought of 1961–62 and the fury of Hurricane Flora in October 1963 influenced the Cuban Revolution socioeconomically and geopolitically in the crucial f...
TL;DR: Anthropogenic climate change is today transforming Earth’s oceans with alarming speed, imperiling the fate of all of us on land as mentioned in this paper. But preindustrial and overwhelmingly natural climate changes wer...
Abstract: Anthropogenic climate change is today transforming Earth’s oceans with alarming speed, imperiling the fate of all of us on land. Preindustrial and overwhelmingly natural climate changes wer...
TL;DR: The authors argue that colonial categories were never fixed or self-evident but, instead, required constant defining and redefining in order for them to continue reinforcing the colonisation of the world.
Abstract: Historians are well aware that colonial categories were never fixed or self-evident but, instead, required constant defining and redefining in order for them to continue reinforcing the col...
TL;DR: The stories behind the names of two species of Galapagos giant tortoise, Chelonoidis porteri and Chelonoids donfaustoi, are described in this article.
Abstract: This article tells the stories behind the names of two species of Galapagos giant tortoise, Chelonoidis porteri and Chelonoidis donfaustoi, both of which inhabit Santa Cruz Island and which...
TL;DR: There is a world of difference in the responses to disease depending on geographical region, and Webb offers evidence of urban sanitation as far back as the fourth millennium BCE in Syria, the third, in Pakistan and the first, in classical Greece and Rome.
Abstract: “It is a shitty world out there” (p.5). James L. A. Webb’s opening sentence is nothing if not arresting. Reviewing a book about the ultimately self-inflicted diseases of humans during the raging coronaviral pandemic is an unnerving experience. At the time of writing (29 April 2020), worldwide Covid-19 cases number some three million, with deaths exceeding 210,000. Webb reminds us that 1.7 billion cases of diarrheal disease occur in children with more than half a million deaths in those under five years of age – every year. Tasteless as it sounds to play Top Trumps with morbidity and mortality statistics, comparison with Covid-19 illustrates central arguments, perhaps obvious, that run throughout Webb’s assiduous account. One is there is not a single progressive arc of improvement in averting the dangers of excrement; developments occur in fits and starts. At the same time, Webb shows, there is a world of difference in the responses to disease depending on geographical region. The discussion of those differences begins in the ancient world and challenges the theory of “the first epidemiological transition” (p.25), that is, that the Neolithic agricultural revolution represented a shift from a culture of nomadic hunter-gatherers to the emergence of more permanent agricultural settlers. Scientific evidence from archaeology and molecular analysis indicates a greater extent of settlement (often coastal or lacustrine) than has been supposed hitherto. Moreover, evidence suggests that pigs acquired intestinal diseases from humans rather than, as was always assumed, the other way round: “we had roundworm infections long before our ancestors’ domestication of the wild boar and before the transition to permanent settlements” (p.27). Intestinal disease can thus be used as evidence that, “Our distant ancestors seem to have had more varied ways of life than we had previously imagined, some of which predisposed them to new types of infections” (p.28). Webb offers evidence of urban sanitation as far back as the fourth millennium BCE in Syria, the third, in Pakistan and the first, in classical Greece and Rome. The