Exploring Environmental History

At present there are many environmental anxieties related to pollution, species extinction, climate change, acid deposition and many others. However, environmental anxieties are nothing new and were also experienced during the colonial period of the 19th and early 20th century. Colonial authorities and settlers in the British Empire encountered unfamiliar environments and the combination with environmental changes caused by their activities led to widespread environmental anxieties. The most important concern was anxiety over climate change. In 19th century debates surrounding this issue, highly emotive, highly alarmist arguments were made that are very similar to the ones used today.

In this episode, James Beattie, Senior Lecturer at the Department of History of the University of Waikato in New Zealand explores these anxieties of settlers, scientist and colonial officials in India, Australia and New Zealand.

Music credit: Terra Incognita by ditto ditto available from ccMixter

Former industrial sites are constantly reinvented and redeveloped reflecting changes in economies and societies over time. Nowhere else in Europe is regeneration of a former industrial site more spectacular than the 2012 Olympic site on the banks of the River Lea in West Ham, East London. The creation of the Olympic park promises the rehabilitation of the Lower Lea Valley by restoring its eco-system and revitalising the community of the area. The Lower River Lea has a long history, going as far back as the 11th centry, of industrial development and associated environmental degeneration. Jim Clifford, a doctoral student at York University in Toronto, talks in this episode of the podcast about the environmental and social history of West Ham and the Lower Lea River. He highlights that there have been attempts in the earlier 20th century to improve the Lea River’s environmental and social conditions but that the high expectations of these schemes were not always met.

Music credit: Trawnicing by Pitx available from ccMixter

This edition of the podcast is devoted to the environmental history of colonial Zimbabwe. Vimbai Kwashirai, Lecturer in African History at Durham University, examines the debates and processes of woodland exploitation in Zimbabwe during the colonial period (1890-1980). He is doing this along the lines of Richard Grove’s thesis of Green Imperialism, but he goes beyond that by placing conservation and forest history into the broader social, political and economic history of Zimbabwe and the wider British Empire.

Music credit: Soon, this is it! by DrGoldklang. Available from ccMixter

In this episode Professor emeritus in history Christian Pfister, Fellow of the Oeschger Centre of Climate Research at the University of Bern examines the cultural memory of extreme weather events. In the past people experienced extreme weather in different ways depending on whether they lived in an agricultural society, an urban environment or in what profession they worked. Political and religious structures also influenced the response to weather related disasters. This coloured the narrative and memory of past extreme weather events and floods. Pfister demonstrates that this qualitative data is surprisingly objective and can be successfully used for climate reconstruction, producing surprising results.

In this episode, Dolly Jorgensen, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway explains what the online Environmental History Network for the Middle Ages all about. Then she explores the main themes of medieval environmental history and talks about her own work on resource management and sanitation during the Middle Ages.

Music credit: Cello Frevo by short hopper, available from ccMixter

The guest on this episode of the podcast is William Beinart, Rhodes Professor of race relations and director the African Studies Centre in Oxford. Professor Beinart critiques Alfred Crosby’s idea of ecological imperialism. He argues that from the vantage point of Africa, part of the old world, Crosby’s discussion of asymmetrical plant exchange is problematic. Many species from the America’s were highly successful in Africa. He suggests that demographically, economically, and socially, the benefits have outweighed the costs of such invasive plants as prickly pear from Mexico and black wattle from Australia. The ecological costs have been greater but they are difficult to value. The podcast concludes with some brief comments on the relevance of a more flexible and less purist approach to concepts of biodiversity, and how this might be adapted to cater for transferred plants.

This episode of the podcast reports on a one day conference examining biological invasions in history that was held at the Universiy of Oxford in September 2009. This podcast highlights two papers presented at this meeting. Glenn Sandiford, a postdoc researcher at the University of Illinois, talks about his paper entitled: 19th century narratives on the introduction of carp in America.

The second guest on the podcast is Bernadette Hince of the Australian National University who presented a paper examining the history and impacts of invasive species on sub-Antarctic islands. The podcast ends with a brief summary of the themes and research issues that had emerged at the end of the conference.

Music credits: Finally (just guitars) by HC-7, available from ccmixter.org.

This podcast essay puts environmental history in a theoretical and practical framework and considers why this area of study differs from other flavours of history. It will discuss what the narrative of environmental is and how this is researched illustrated by some practical examples of how environmental historians work. Finally the podcast considers the ethical dimension and the pitfalls and advantages of the contemporary importance of environmental history as part of current environmental issues. This is part four of a four-part series of podcasts investigating the nature, methods and challenges of environmental history.

Music credits: Sand Castle by Pitx, Kokokur by Pitx Ana's Guitar, Open Window by Gurdonark. All available from ccmixter.org.

In this edition Marc Hall, Assistant Professor at the Universities of Utah and Zurich, considers the question if there are different regional flavours of environmental history. He is well placed to do so with his transatlantic institutional affiliations. In addition he argues that environmental history has moved beyond the question of how we got into the environmental problems that we are facing at present. Now environmental historians consider how and why people have changed ecosystems and how in return the environment changes people in the way they act and think. This opens up a whole new set of question for historians to address making environmental history potentially a dynamic field. But what is the future of the field?

Environmental history is still a young field and in some respects quite undefined. Many practitioners as well as outsiders struggle to define its boundaries. The challenge that historians are now facing is how to cope with an ever expanding field and how to integrate not only data from other humanities but also the sciences. In this edition of the podcast Paul Warde, Reader in modern history at the University of East Anglia, agues that not defining the boundaries of the field or a common methodology is key to the success of environmental history but also its weakness. It brings excitement and new ideas to history but in the end, if environmental history stays too diverse; it is not clear where it is going. How to deal with this problem is one of the key issues discussed in this edition of the podcast.