An introduction to papers delivered in 1992 at an international and interdisciplinary symposium on environmental history at the Lammi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki.
The gap between the sciences and the humanities persists in our intellectual life, with significant consequences. The new field of environmental history represents an opportunity to bridge that gap.
Olwig asserts that the discipline we now know as environmental history owes a great deal of its impetus to the emergence at the beginning of the nineteenth century of a socially engaged and environmentally committed interdisciplinary ‘proto-discipline.’
Wood scarcity at Lovers Alum Works (LAW) restricted the amount of alum produced during a large part of the period of activity (1723–1810s). During the shale fuel period (1810s–1877) the emissions of volatile substances such as cadmium and sulfur increased.
The rapid expansion of European culture since the fifteenth century has greatly altered the face of the countryside all over the world. Among the most dramatic examples of this are the changes in North American nature wrought by Europeans since the seventeenth century…
The present environment of Australia represents a palimpsest which records a history of past climates, nutrient poor soils, burning, and increasing aridity. The details of the history are not readily disentangled…
It was not solely the natural environment that determined which areas large countries and colonial powers of the 18th century used for the purposes of tar making, but also other aspects: political, military, economic and colonial.
Introduction to a special issue that reflects the rapid growth of research in environmental history now apparent throughout the South Asian region.
Two broad themes taken up in the literature will be the focus of this essay: how far colonialism was an ecological watershed, and how producers responded to new pressures. The third issue is of what we can or should learn (or unlearn) from the colonial experience.
This paper contends that recent scholarly interest in systems of colonising knowledge, whether called ‘scientific forestry,’ or ‘development,’ has paid inadequate attention to the historical processes shaping such knowledge production in specific colonial locations.
