droughts

This article examines climate and perceptions of climate as factors in the migration and settlement history of the western United States. It focuses on two regions of great interest in the nineteenth century: The so-called Great American Desert in the western Great Plains and the Mexican state of Alta California, which after 1848 became the US state of California.

Asikel tells of the journey of Tuareg men who, after a great drought, seek work in the city to support their families.

This paper suggests that environmental migration in western Rajasthan, once viewed as a response to drought and famine, has also developed into a planned livelihood strategy.

Sherry Johnson, Carson Fellow from January 2010 until July 2010, talks about her research on the history of disasters and climatology and the related environmental, social, and political changes.

The authors take Shucheng County as a case study to reconstruct the variations of population and land use in the last 500 years, and to examine their influence on the environmental changes in this region.

Over the Colonial period, prolonged drought episodes had severe impacts on all sectors of society, particularly indigenous rural populations. This paper employs a variety of colonial historical records to document the nature and extent of these impacts within the context of prevailing social, political and economic conditions.

The majority of articles in this issue of Environment and History shed some light on the relationship between colonialism and the environment and on colonial constructions of nature.