Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia
Experts in history, history of science, archaeology, geography, and environmental studies examine the history of the region.
Experts in history, history of science, archaeology, geography, and environmental studies examine the history of the region.
The modernization, the declinist, and the inclinist paradigms of the late twentieth century, despite their differences, all tended to frame environmental change in a unilinear Nature-to-Culture fashion, which in turn entailed homogenizing the agency, process, and outcome of environmental change. This article examines the characteristics of each paradigm, as well as some of the paradoxes that have arisen in their wake. Finally, it looks to alternative approaches.
Investigates the significance of the Sundarbans as a natural reserve or buffer area (a resource of yet unknown magnitude) in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial South Asia.
Do we owe the world-famous Kruger National Park to the triumph of “good” conservationists over the forces of “evil” commercial exploitation? Environmental historian Jane Carruthers investigates.
A glowing review of a synthesis of some of the key themes in the study of environmental history as it relates to Latin America.
A collection of essays that explore the “paper landscapes” of the colonial literature and archives in search of the real environmental history of Indonesia.
Highland Sanctuary unravels the complex interactions among agriculture, herding, forestry, the colonial state, and the landscape in the Usambara mountains of Tanzania.
A cultural history of bees and beekeeping in the United States.
Longley traces how geographic and cartographic knowledge of the Athabasca region, Alberta, Canada, colonized the region in the southern imagination long before the oil sands industry began extraction there. The practices of exploration, surveying, and documentation mapped the Athabasca region in terms of its rich bitumen deposits, obscuring the histories of Indigenous people. The south gained political and economic control of the region, although this process is incomplete and contested.
This article examines the environmental impacts of Cantonese gold-miners in New Zealand and situates its research in both Chinese environmental history and comparative global environmental history.