Content Index

"Accepting Father Rhine? Technological Fixes, Vigilance, and Transnational Lobbies as 'European' Strategies of Dutch Municipal Water Supplies 1900–1975"

In this article Disco describes the repertoires developed by the municipal waterworks of two large Dutch cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Two main repertoires are visible: 1) ‘coping’ by means of technical fixes and vigilance and 2) ‘transnational technopolitics’ aimed at institutionalising regulatory regimes to curb pollution.

"Different Histories of Buchu: Euro-American Appropriation of San and Khoekhoe Knowledge of Buchu Plants"

This article considers representation of buchu as a traditional remedy in relation to both extensive historical, botanical and commercial interest in the plants and recent and past Khoisan use.

"Poisonous Plants, Pastoral Knowledge and Perceptions of Environmental Change in South Africa, c. 1880–1940"

The paper discusses the expansion of toxicological and ecological knowledge about the grasslands of South Africa and explores some of the measures put forward to encourage more sustainable animal husbandry.

"Deforestation and Sugar Cane Growing in Eastern Australia, 1860–1995"

Deforestation associated with the cultivation of sugar cane in the coastal lands of Eastern Australia commenced in the 1860s. Beyond the initial large-scale clearing of the native vegetation to create arable land, the growing of sugar cane placed other demands upon the native forests…

"Bodies on the Beach: Domesticates and Disasters in the Spanish Philippines 1750–1898"

This paper attempts to assess the extent of domestic livestock loss occasioned by natural hazard especially flood as well as the impact their deaths had on human communities.

"Using Oral History and Forest Management Plans to Reconstruct Traditional Non-Timber Forest Uses in the Swiss Rhone Valley (Valais) Since the Late Nineteenth Century"

In this study, the history of traditional non-timber forest uses is reconstructed by combining the analysis of forest management plans and the results from oral history interviews.

"Out of the Woods and into the Lab: Exploring the Strange Marriage of American Woodcraft and Soviet Ecology in Czech Environmentalism"

It is widely assumed that modern environmentalist thinking was imported into post-communist states such as the Czech Republic post 1989. This paper shows these countries had environmental traditions of their own.

"Subterranean Bodies: Mining the Large Lakes of North-west Canada, 1921–1960"

This paper examines the history of hard rock mining on the large lakes of north-west Canada (Athabasca, Great Slave and Great Bear) from 1921 to 1960.

"Water Dreams, Earthen Histories: Exploring Urban Environmental History at the Penrith Lakes Scheme and Castlereagh, Sydney"

Urban environmental history comprises both human and ecological experience; the two were and are inseparable, and their interaction is dynamic. This essay explores the human and bioregional history of the Penrith Lakes Scheme at Castlereagh in outer Western Sydney as a case study in integrating the two approaches.

"For the 'Preservation of Friends' and the 'Destruction of Enemies:' Studying and Protecting Birds in Late Imperial Russia"

This paper surveys major developments in the Imperial Russian history of wild bird protection and related issues of ornithology during the century or so leading up to the First World War.