This medieval environmental history examines the tenth-century industrial and trade town of Wolin which grew rapidly on an island immediately off the northwestern coast of Poland.
Environment and History (journal)
"The Wasting of Wolin: Environmental Factors in the Downfall of a Medieval Baltic Town"
"Three Centuries of Whaling and Walrus Hunting in Svalbard and its Impact on the Arctic Ecosystem"
In this article whaling and walrus hunting and their impact on the environment is reconstructed. Annual catch records and shipping logs made it possible to calculate the original size of the populations and to reconstruct their original migration in the Greenland Sea.
"Frontier Foods for Late Medieval Consumers: Culture, Economy, Ecology"
This essay considers medieval long distance trades in grain, cattle, and preserved fish as antecedents to today’s globalised movements of foodstuffs.
"Editorial Introduction" to Environment and History 7, no. 2, "Beyond Local, Natural Ecosystems" special issue (May, 2001)
With this issue of Environment and History, van Dam contributes to the thesis that the expansion of trade systems and the emergence of large-scale human intervention in (formerly) natural ecosystems is a continuous, interactive process with a long history, long before the Industrial Revolution or the discovery of the New Worlds.
"The Farmer and the Bushman"
The authors identify two distinct forms of masculinity, Australian and Cuban, and proceed to show how men and their rhetoric are overtaken, then transformed, by political and environmental developments not of their choosing.
"Property Rights, Development Policy and Depletion of Resources: The Case of the Central Rainlands of Sudan, 1940s–1980s"
Based on a case study of the Central Rainlands of Sudan, the paper challenges the assumptions and principles underlying the tragedy of the commons model and the property rights paradigm with regard to sustainability of resources owned in common.
"From 'Useless Brutes' to National Treasures: A Century of Evolving Attitudes towards Native Fauna in New South Wales, 1860s to 1960s"
The emergence of native fauna as a theme in conservation is used to explore the changing relationship between nature and human culture in late nineteenth century and early to mid-twentieth century Australia.
"Human-Environment Relationships in the Pacific Islands around AD 1300"
This paper traces the history of human-environment interactions in the Pacific Islands during the last millennium, focusing on three main periods: the Little Climatic Optimum, the Little Ice Age, and, in greatest detail, the transition around AD 1300 between the two.
"The Cultural Enframing of Nature: Environmental Histories during the Early German Romantic Period"
The introduction of histories of nature in the late eighteenth century posed the epistemological problem of how to bring the diversity of empirical laws into theoretical unity…
“Deforestation, Erosion, and Fire: Degradation Myths in the Environmental History of Madagascar”
Mention of the island nation of Madagascar conjures up images of exotic nature, rampant deforestation, and destructive erosion. Popular descriptions of the island frequently include phrases such as ‘ecological mayhem’ or ‘barren landscape.’