bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Arabic Treatises on Environmental Pollution up to the End of the Thirteenth Century
Authors: Gari Lutfallah
Published: June 2007

Ever since the earliest Arabic writings on medicine we meet treatises on widespread illnesses or crowd diseases, including epidemics. Some of those works discuss the causes and treatment; others deal with the treatment only. This paper is limited to the works that deal with environmental pollution as a cause of such illnesses. They cover subjects like air and water contamination, solid waste mishandling and environmental assessments of certain localities. The treatises reviewed are those written by (1) al-Kindi, (2) Qusta b. Luqa, (3) al-Razi, (4) Ibn al-Jazzar, (5) al-Tamimi, (6) Abu Sahl al-Masihi, (7) Ibn Sina, (8) Ali b. Ridwan, (9) Ibn Jumay', (10) Ya'qub al-Isra'ili, (11) Abdullatif al-Baghdadi, (12) Ibn al-Quff and (13) Ibn al-Nafis. Studying the contents of each work shows which authors were merely copying the Greek theory of humours and miasma, and which made genuine contributions to the field. The period covered in the paper is up to the end of the thirteenth century a.d. This is because the Black Death took place in the fourteenth century, and encouraged several authors of that time to write about epidemics and plagues. Other contemporary researchers have studied these later works.
Continuities in Environmental Narratives: The Case of Kabale, Uganda, 1930-2000
Authors: Carswell Grace
Published: June 2007

This article looks at continuities and change around the issue of agricultural sustainability in colonial and post-colonial Kabale. It argues that a series of environmental narratives developed during the colonial period, which have been largely unquestioned since then. It shows how the perception of the district being threatened with environmental degradation has continued from the earliest colonial period up to the present day. Many of the assumptions made by colonial officials remain unquestioned, and with few exceptions the policy rhetoric remains unaltered in the post-colonial period. It argues that recent evidence suggests that these assumptions need to be seriously questioned.
'The Common Cormorant or Shag Lays Eggs Inside a Paper Bag'. A Cultural Ecology of Fish-eating Birds in Western Australia
Authors: Sassoon Joanna
Published: June 2007

This paper builds a history of the rise of ecological awareness of the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia through the cultural perceptions of fish-eating birds. A history of understandings of the specific habitat ecology is traced through the rise of scientific knowledge about fish-eating birds as competitors with fishermen. The impact of this changing awareness on the river ecology is discussed as well as how this scientific knowledge became subservient in the political domain to developmentalist ideology.
Francois Mitterrand and Nature
Authors: Sainteny Guillaume
Published: June 2007

With the help of extensive quotations, this paper shows that the writings of Francois Mitterrand contain many professions of his love for nature, and reflections on the bond between man and nature. In contrast to these aesthetic and mystical, almost religious outpourings, his references to environmental issues, to ecology and to the environmental movement are few, and they are counterposed by exaltations of materialism and material progress. This dichotomy, and Mitterrand's failure when in office to really engage politically with the conservation of nature and the environment, can partly be explained by the anthropocentric and conservative spiritual values engendered by his rural catholic upbringing.
'On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic' in Environmental History
Authors: Wynn Graeme
Published: June 2007

George Perkins Marsh is both the hero and the foil of this paper. His well-known book, Man and Nature , and his reputation as the fountainhead of the conservation movement lie at the very centre of the story offered here. But this account also casts some doubt upon the precedence generally attributed to some of Marsh's ecological claims, and questions the wisdom of placing Marsh and other historical figures on pedestals that elevate them too readily and too markedly above their peers. It does this by probing the reception of Marsh's ideas in New Zealand in the 1870s, by considering the ideas of largely-forgotten Titus Smith about human impacts upon the vegetation of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century, and by wondering about the implications of these tales of environmental understanding from two colonial realms for the practice of environmental history in the twenty-first century. This is thus both an engagement with Marsh and a story about stories, about how they are constructed, about how they travel and about how they influence the ways in which historians present the past and speak to the future.
Marsh at Cravairola: Boundary-Making in the Italo-Swiss Alps
Authors: Lowenthal David
Published: June 2007

George Perkins Marsh, United States minister to Italy, renowned as a linguist and a geographer, was a fitting choice to be named arbiter of a disputed Italo-Swiss boundary segment, the alpe of Cravairola, north of Domodossola and west of Locarno, in 1874. Although Cravairola was on the eastern (Swiss) side of the mountain chain, it was owned and used seasonally, for pasturage and timber, by villagers from two Italian communes. Logging and the flotation of timber were devastating the Swiss torrent of the Rovana and the Val Maggia below. This essay reproduces Marsh's authentic text, printed here for the first time from his own manuscript. It also recounts the boundary dispute's history, Marsh's inspection of the area with the two countries' agents, the issues at stake, and the reasons Marsh awarded the territory in question to Italy. Ancient and uncontested claims of jurisdiction over the area by Italian communes in Marsh's view had to take precedence over the best interests of both countries in terms of access, land management and watershed conservation. Subsequent critiques query Marsh's analysis but confirm its importance as a legal precedent in boundary arbitration.
George Perkins Marsh: The Times and their Man
Authors: Judd Richard W.
Published: June 2007

David Lowenthal is correct in suggesting that George Perkins Marsh was America's most influential mid-nineteenth-century conservationist. Lowenthal's biography, however, fails to address Marsh's intellectual and social 'times'. This article challenges the premise that Marsh was unique in laying out an ecological justification for conservation. It suggests that these principles were common currency in early American natural history. Drawing on theological and evolutionary thinking, naturalists searched for patterns of purpose and interrelatedness in nature, and this quest laid the groundwork for ecological consciousness and conservation thinking, well before publication of Marsh's Man and Nature .
'Nature in League with Man': Conceptualising and Transforming the Natural World in Eighteenth-Century Scandinavia
Authors: Oslund Karen
Published: June 2007

This article examines a series of projects and discussions, among the Enlightenment elite in the Danish kingdom, about the need for technological improvement and agricultural reform in Iceland, a distant province of the Danish state in the eighteenth century. One of the most important of these projects was the importation of reindeer from northern Norway to Iceland in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in response to famine conditions and plagues that had decimated the sheep population on the island. These projects and the language that their instigators and supporters used show that the Enlightenment elite sought to re-define Icelandic and Northern nature, reclaim a territory that had been historically viewed as a wilderness, and remodel it into a well-regulated and homogeneous part of the state. Their vision of nature in the North Atlantic was a radical break with previous traditions of describing nature in Iceland and one of the first times that Icelanders sought to establish themselves as authorities about conditions in their country.
Human Impact on the Environment in the Annecy Petit Lac Catchment, Haute-Savoie: A Documentary Approach
Authors: Crook D.S. , Siddle D.J. , Dearing J.A. , Thompson R.
Published: June 2007

It is axiomatic that mountain environments are particularly vulnerable to changes in patterns of human use, over both long and medium terms, but also over quite short periods of critical activity. This paper uses archaeological and documentary records to look at the human impact on one such montane environment, the pre-alps of Savoy, over the long-term, from pre-history up to the pre-modern period. The use and modification of landscape is estimated at the level of the Annecy Petit Lac hydrological catchment taking into account spatial differences in land use in the uplands, mid-slope and plain. Land use patterns and nutrient balance are reconstructed for specific periods in time between 1561 and 1892. Results from this study demonstrate that seven main phases of human activity have left their traces in the environmental record during the historical period through to the pre-modern period. Of these the 1730-1770s and 1840-1860s stand out as two discernible periods of heightened environmental pressures at higher altitudes, which manifest themselves as discernable lowland environmental problems, such as flooding, increased erosion and declining soil fertility.
Environmental History in China
Authors: Maohong Bao
Published: June 2007

As a subdiscipline, environmental history appeared in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, environmental history studies have been launched in many countries in the world, including China. Since China uses its own writing system with Chinese characters, the environmental history studies done in China have remained unknown outside China. As global environmental problems were becoming more serious and world environmentalism was developing vigorously, the trend to internationalise American environmental history studies was strengthened and there was an increasing need to understand Chinese environmental history and the state of its studies. That is why I wrote this paper, which I hope will improve understanding and co-operation between Chinese and international environmental history studies. The paper is divided into four parts: (1) The rise of environmental history studies in China; (2) The main contents of Chinese environmental history studies; (3) The principal methods and characteristics; (4) The major problems to be solved.
Africa: Histories, Ecologies and Societies
Authors: Carruthers Jane
Published: June 2007

A survey of African environmental history during in the period 1994 to 2004 is is provided and distinctions between the environmental history of Africa and that of other geo-regions are identified. It is argued that the promises of the earlier environmental historiography have not been realised and that an emerging trend embeds Africa's environmental history within the framework of social history and issues around science and changing societies. The article focuses on work that has appeared in Environment and History, analysing the trend-setting role that this journal has played.
The World Scale
Authors: Simmons I.G.
Published: June 2007

A brief review of some of the major publications in environmental history at the worldwide and global scales suggests that authors are engaging in more studies that eschew a single approach. They are undertaking the necessary but risky tasks of trying the understand and integrate the knowledges pointed up by many disciplines and by experience. The prospects for progress look bright.
Emerging from the Wilderness (or, from Redwoods to Bananas): Recent Environmental History in the United States and the Rest of the Americas
Authors: Coates Peter
Published: June 2007

This essay charts and reflects on developments in the environmental history of the Americas over the past decade, arguing that the field has become more inclusive and complex as it tackles a broader spectrum of physical environments and moves beyond an emphasis on destructiveness and loss as the essence of relations between humans and the rest of the natural world. New approaches to traditional subjects such as conservation and national parks are examined too. While paying due attention to the United States, it also highlights progress in Canadian environmental history and (English language) coverage of Central and South America.
Environmental History in Europe from 1994 to 2004: Enthusiasm and Consolidation
Authors: Winiwarter Verena , Armiero Marco , van Dam Petra , Dix Andreas , Eliasson Per , Holm Poul , Jeleček Leos , Lambert Robert A. , Massard-Guilbaud Geneviève , de Molina Manuel Gonzáles , Myllyntaus Timo , Oosthoek Jan , Pfister Christina , Rácz Lajos
Published: June 2007

This review presents European scholarship in environmental history by highlighting a limited number of works which have proved significant in their respective countries. The decade from 1994-2004 saw the development of a new scholarly network for environmental history in Europe. Members of this network have contributed to an overview about important work done in their region during the last ten years. A series of case studies on the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Czechia and Slovakia are offered. The emerging picture shows the diversity of approaches and themes as well as the different degrees of institutional backing and involvement into teaching curricula. The introduction discusses the language challenges in Europe and some common traits in the development are sketched in the conclusions.
Hugh Cleghorn and Forest Conservancy in India
Authors: Das Pallavi
Published: June 2007

This paper examines the important and pioneering role played by Dr. Hugh Cleghorn, a Scottish medical surgeon, in the implementation of forest conservancy in colonial India. I focus on three aspects of his contribution in India, which preceded forest conservancy in Britain itself. Firstly, I deal with the social and intellectual background of Cleghorn that greatly influenced his ideas on forests. Then I discuss Cleghorn's contribution to forest conservation in India. Here, I analyse Cleghorn's views on the causes of deforestation in India. I then examine his ideas on forest conservancy and the importance of forests. Given the economic and political context, I also show how and to what extent he could use his ideas to influence the colonial state to implement forest conservation. I explain why it was that the colonial state accepted Cleghorn's conservation views. I argue that to the extent that Cleghorn was able to show that forest conservation would maintain the timber supply to support infrastructure intended to exploit India's resources efficiently and thereby generate revenue, the colonial state accepted his proposals. Finally, I discuss what kind of forest conservancy, based on Cleghorn's ideas, was adopted by the state.
'Free, Bold, Joyous': The Love of Seaweed in Margaret Gatty and Other Mid-Victorian Writers
Authors: Hunt Stephen E.
Published: June 2007

With particular reference to Gatty's British Sea-Weeds and Eliot's 'Recollections of Ilfracombe', this article takes an ecocritical approach to popular writings about seaweed, thus illustrating the broader perception of the natural world in mid-Victorian literature. This is a discursive exploration of the way that the enthusiasm for seaweed reveals prevailing ideas about propriety, philanthropy and natural theology during the Victorian era, incorporating social history, gender issues and natural history in an interdisciplinary manner. Although unchaperoned wandering upon remote shorelines remained a questionable activity for women, 'seaweeding' made for a direct aesthetic engagement with the specificity of place in a way that conforms to Barbara Gates's notion of the 'Victorian female sublime'. Furthermore, while women's contributions often received an uneven reception within the masculine institutions of professional science, marine botany proved to be a more accommodating area for participation. At Ilfracombe, Eliot wrote that she believed collecting and naming was a means to achieve distinct and definite ideas in her understanding of the world. The argument is developed that many needed to reorient their personal cosmologies in order to make sense of, and impose meaning upon, an uncertain world, thus contributing to the great debate about evolution.
'A Convulsed and Magic Country': Tourism and Resource Histories in the Mexican Caribbean
Authors: Redclift Michael
Published: June 2007

Much of the discussion of 'space' in the recent literature has been concerned to provide a more 'active' account of its role in the transformation of historical epochs. Geographical frontiers, for example, are ascribed figuratively, temporally and spatially in ways that serve to influence succeeding events. Their 'discovery' is acknowledged as an element in powerful myths, which are reworked to create environmental histories as important as the material world they describe. This article takes as an example the Mexican Caribbean, which has recently been 'discovered' as a location for mass tourism and whose early tourist 'pioneers' are beginning to be celebrated in the region. It argues that far from having been an empty space, much of the area currently devoted to tourism once played an important role within global markets, especially through the production of dyewoods, chicle (the original raw material for chewing gum) and other natural resources. The paper concludes that discourses of space can be divided into three phases, the 'analogue', the 'digital' and the 'virtual', each of which contributes to a mythology of succession.
A Soil Conservation Safari: Hugh Bennett's 1944 Visit to South Africa
Authors: Dodson Belinda
Published: June 2007

Hugh Bennett, then Chief of the United States Soil Conservation Service, paid a two-month official visit to South Africa in 1944. His visit threw into relief many of the country's social and political cleavages, not least the administrative division between the Department of Agriculture, responsible for soil conservation on white-owned farms, and the Department of Native Affairs, responsible for soil conservation in so-called 'native areas'. The latter were paid scant attention in the itinerary, and Bennett himself appeared reluctant to acknowledge how any national soil conservation effort would be compromised by the racially segregated socio-political context in which it occurred.
Antecedents to the Community Wildlife Conservation Programme in Kenya, 1946-1964
Authors: Matheka Reuben
Published: June 2007

Studies on wildlife conservation in Kenya have tended to overlook the efforts made by the colonial administration to involve African communities in wildlife conservation. In most of the existing studies, wildlife conservation in colonial and early independent Kenya is viewed as the perpetuation of a 'Western' or conventional conservation ethos emphasising separation of wildlife conservation from other socio-economic activities. Consequently, the evolution of community wildlife conservation in the country from the late 1970s is portrayed as a programme without antecedents. But as this paper demonstrates, attempts to involve Africans in wildlife conservation in Kenya have a long history.
Public Works in an Autocratic State: Water Supplies in an Imperial Russian Town
Authors: Smith Alison K.
Published: June 2007

In the 1830s and 1840s, Russians became particularly interested in water as a public health issue. Despite the attention of the state and the tsar, localities like the town of Kazan were largely unable to affect changes in public health due to bureaucratic obstacles and financial constraints. After the modernising Great Reforms, private interests helped bring older plans into reality. However, their success caused Russia to lag further behind the West, where private interests were ceding ground to public ones in the face of new understandings of contamination and hygiene.
How the Coast Became High: An Historical Introduction to the High Coast ( Hoega kusten ) World Heritage Site in Sweden
Authors: Nordlund Christer
Published: June 2007

The purpose of the present article is to investigate the 'career' of the High Coast as landscape. The High Coast in north-eastern Sweden has become a popular tourist site annually attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors from throughout the world. Its environment is not only considered pleasing from a recreational aspect, but also of extraordinary intrinsic value. Citing the fact that the area has evidenced the greatest land elevation anywhere since the end of the Ice Age, the High Coast was placed on UNESCO's prestigious World Heritage List in the year 2000, thereby becoming the first site in all of northern Europe to earn that status purely on account of its natural environment. In the present article, aspects of the process whereby the High Coast's value has been articulated and established are examined. Particular attention is paid to tourism and scientific, artistic and environmentalist activities pursued in the area during the twentieth century, and connections are made between these activities and the socio-economic development of the region. Furthermore, a comparison between the High Coast and the Grand Canyon in the south-western United States is made.
Overseeing the Family of Whitefishes: The Priorities and Debates of Coregonid Management on America's Great Lakes, 1870-2000
Authors: Chiarappa Michael J.
Published: June 2007

Over the past 175 years, a number of coregonids - lake whitefish ( Coregonus clupeaformis ), lake herring ( Coregonus artedi ) and chub (two species flocks: Coregonus hoyi-kiyi-nigripinnis and Coregonus zenithicus-johannae-reighardi ) - have been among the principal target species of America's Great Lakes commercial fishery. This essay historically examines the manner in which coregonids structured particular management priorities and debates among fisheries constituencies and fostered a management milieu that ranged from willing cooperation and optimism to strident division.
Was Brazilian Industrialisation Fuelled by Wood? Evaluating the Wood Hypothesis, 1900-1960*
Authors: Brannstrom Christian
Published: June 2007

The ecological relationship between cities and resource hinterlands is a major theme in environmental history and historical geography. Most scholars described the twentieth-century industrialisation of Sao Paulo, Brazil, as reliant on hydroelectricity. Warren Dean's 'wood hypothesis', published posthumously in 1995, argued that industrialisation relied on wood fuel and charcoal during the first half of the twentieth century. However, Dean's wood hypothesis has not yet been tested or evaluated. Two substantive criticisms are offered here: the wood hypothesis is accurate in general but under-estimated the industrial consumption of fossil fuels, without conclusively reject the competing 'hydroelectricity' hypothesis; the method used for estimating potential energy supply from forest area was erroneous. The paper also makes several specific claims that advance the issues raised by the wood hypothesis: evidence of actual industrial demand for fuel, not potential supply, should advance the debate on Sao Paulo's energy use; wood fuel consumption required labourers, yet work and trade relations are still not well described; and specific moments in Sao Paulo's energy transition, such as the 1940s, require in-depth analysis. A revised wood hypothesis is that Sao Paulo's industrialisation depended on the interplay of three energy sources, led by biomass fuels, then fossil fuels and hydroelectricity, each of which was supplied by a distinct energy hinterland.
Reconciling Foreshore Development and Dune Erosion on Three Queensland Beaches: An Historical Perspective
Authors: Danaher Mike
Published: June 2007

Yeppoon Main beach, Kinka beach and Keppel Sands beach are nestled around Keppel Bay in Queensland, Australia. Before white settlements were developed adjacent to these beaches, they were comprised of extensive sand dune systems operating in dynamic equilibrium. Over the past century, there has been a popular misunderstanding about the way beach systems work, evident in all kinds of foreshore development along these beaches. This has led to a delayed but cascading effect of worsening dune and beach erosion. Once sea walls and other kinds of foreshore construction begin, historically it becomes unlikely that the authorities will stop and reverse such development. Rather, more expensive construction becomes the remedy for the earlier mistakes as the local government attempts to reconcile coastal development and dune erosion. There is also the issue of how sand was regarded and whether that was a motivating factor for its removal. Was sand perceived as a 'nuisance' and 'readily renewable', and therefore dispensable? Of this trio of beaches, Kinka beach is fortunate to have experienced the earliest implementation of so called soft protection that initiated a natural renourishment resulting in the sea wall mostly disappearing under a build up of sand. This paper examines the historical development, as well as the motivation behind this development, of these three beaches and the subsequent implications for the beaches during the inevitable big seas and cyclones. This coastal environmental history informs local coastal communities about the importance of foresight in protecting dune systems in their natural state.
A Dense and Sickly Mist from Thousands of Bog Fires: An Attempt to Compare the Energy Consumption in Slash-and-Burn Cultivation and Burning Cultivation of Peatlands in Finland in 1820-1920
Authors: Kunnas Jan
Published: June 2007

In historical research about fire-clearance husbandry in Finland the focus has been on burning of forests, while swamps and other peatlands have been neglected. I claim that this neglect is not acceptable. According to my calculations, the amount of biomass measured by energy value burned on peatlands surpassed the amount burned in slash-and-burn cultivation after the mid-nineteenth century. A comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide shows also, that burning cultivation of peatlands was by far the greatest source of carbon dioxide in Finland during the whole of nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. Burning cultivation of peatlands has been practised in peat-rich countries at one time or other throughout Western Europe. In these and other peat-rich countries, the inclusion of the emissions from burning cultivation could substantially alter historical carbon dioxide emission estimates.
Working in the Mangroves and Beyond: Scientific Forestry and the Labour Question in Early Colonial Tanzania
Authors: Sunseri Thaddeus
Published: June 2007

Germans arrived in Tanzania with a vision of scientific forestry derived from European and Asian templates of forest management that was premised on the creation of forest reserves emptied of human settlement. They found a landscape and human environment that was not amenable to established practices of rotational forestry. In particular, a general labour dearth and resistance from Tanzanian peasants and labour migrants forced German foresters to compromise their forestry blueprint. The backdrop of the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905 led colonial authorities to back away from the unbridled use of force to muster labour for forest work, and land abundance in most of the colony stymied the introduction of taungya methods of forest squatting as practised in Asia. Early priority given to managing mangrove forests for revenue generation further undermined established precepts of scientific forestry, seen in the trend toward granting concessions to private entrepreneurs for mangrove bark exploitation rather than for timber. The persistence of an African and Asian consumer demand for mangrove poles and fuel wood subverted a vision of rotational forestry based on timber milling. Problems of labour procurement and retention furthermore undermined efforts to demarcate and conserve inland dry canopy forests, and obviated the expansion of managed forestry into woodland savannahs. By the end of German rule managed state forestry had therefore failed to reshape the landscape according to a Eurocentric and Asian model of development.
Bowhead Whales in the Eastern Arctic, 1611-1911: Population Reconstruction with Historical Whaling
Authors: Allen Robert C. , Keay Ian
Published: June 2007

As early as 1611 Bowhead whales resident between the east coast of Greenland and the island of Spitzbergen were the subject of intensive commercial hunting effort by Dutch, German and British whalers. By 1911 there was no significant, permanent population of Bowhead whales living in these waters. To understand the relationship between the commercial exploitation of the Bowhead and their eventual extinction we must determine the chronology of their decline, starting with an estimate of the initial, pristine stock size. In this paper we compare and contrast four methodological approaches that can be used to estimate the Greenland-Spitzbergen Bowhead stock size prior to, and during, commercial exploitation. Using species-specific biological parameters, a delayed-difference recruitment model, and historical whaling records, we reconstruct the Greenland-Spitzbergen Bowhead population throughout the period of human predation. We estimate that there were approximately 52,500 adult Bowhead whales resident in the waters between the east coast of Greenland and the island of Spitzbergen in 1611.
Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 1
Authors: Vandergeest Peter , Lee Peluso Nancy
Published: June 2007

This paper examines the origins, spread, and practices of professional forestry in Southeast Asia, focusing on key sites in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Part 1 challenges popular and scholarly accounts of colonial forestry as a set of simplifying practices exported from Europe and applied in the European colonies. We show that professional forestry empires were constituted under colonialism through local politics that were specific to particular colonies and technically uncolonised regions. Local economic and ecological conditions constrained the forms and practices of colonial forestry. Professional forestry became strongly established in some colonies but not others. Part 2, in a forthcoming issue of this journal, will look at the influence on forestry of knowledge and management practices exchanged through professional-scientific networks. We find that while colonial forestry established some management patterns that were extended after the end of colonialism, it was post-colonial organisations such as the FAO that facilitated the construction of forestry as a kind of empire after World War Two. As a sector, forestry became the biggest landholder in the region only after colonialism had ended.
The Rivers Come: Colonial Flood Control and Knowledge Systems in the Indus Basin, 1840s-1930s
Authors: Weil Benjamin
Published: June 2007

This essay traces the development of the physical and cultural infrastructure of colonial flood control in the Indus valley. Reconstructing investigations into the causes of a series of floods illustrates the conflict between the idiosyncratic, local knowledge-based, approach of generalists and the reductionist, technological mentality of engineers. Repeated attempts to protect towns from the Indus River illustrate the growing dominance during the second half of the nineteenth century of an engineering mentality, despite its practical shortcomings. Complex engineering works replaced traditional warning systems and mobility, undermining alluvial farming systems as well as a precautionary approach to environmental management.
The History (1620-2003) of Land Use, People and Livestock, and the Relationship to Present Plant Species Diversity in a Rural Landscape in Sweden
Authors: Dahlström Anna , Cousins Sara A.O. , Eriksson Ove
Published: June 2007

The traditional agriculture in Europe favoured numerous plant and animal species that are presently declining. Integrated studies based on various sources are needed in order to unravel the complex relationships between changing landscapes and biological diversity. The objectives of this study were to describe changes in land use during c. 350 years in a Swedish agricultural landscape in relation to changes in human population and livestock, and to analyse relationships between historical land use and present-day plant species diversity. There were only minor long-term changes in land use, population and livestock between 1640 and 1854 in the two studied hamlets, but detailed data 1620-41 showed a large short-term fluctuation in livestock numbers. After 1854 larger changes took place. Grasslands were cultivated and livestock composition changed. After 1932, livestock number decreased and most of the former grazed outland (areas located outside the fenced infields) turned into forest by natural succession. 7 per cent of the study area is still grazed semi-natural grassland. The highest plant species richness is today found on semi-natural grassland with a long continuity of grazing. The distribution of five target species suggests that previous land use still has an important effect today. The majority of their occurrences are remnant populations located in previous outland pastures which are today forests.
National Metabolism and Communications Technology Development in the United States, 1790-2000
Authors: Tilley David Rogers
Published: June 2007

The accelerating rate of technology development during the past two centuries was coupled to a hastened pace of national metabolism, which included vast consumption of fossil fuels, mineral deposits, virgin timber, rich soils and other natural resources, and the construction of an international medium for the communication and storage of ideas and discoveries. The development, maintenance, and improvement of technology, defined anthropologically as physical devices and mental knowledge of how to employ such devices, requires energy. New technologies provide powerful and flexible means for organising subsequent system structure and function, and nourish opportunity for more discovery and technical innovation. From a systems ecology perspective, technology development is an evolutionary process, which implies that it is a self-organising, autocatalytic process driven by energy and resource availability, population size, economic development, scientific knowledge and previous innovation. Understanding how the dynamics of technology development were related to historical resource use (i.e., national metabolism) is important in a world operating mostly on finite resources because it can offer some perspective on the effects of future resource limitations on technology development. Emergy (with an 'm') evaluation, a physically based environmental accounting system that tracks the total amount of resources required to produce something by tracing all resource flows back to the Earth's ultimate energy source of solar radiation, was employed to measure national metabolism of the United States during the past two centuries and to estimate the national metabolism required to develop and maintain the broad-use of four communication technologies. National metabolism of the US grew exponentially from 1790 to 2000, increasing 1600 per cent during those 210 years. The national metabolism required to develop and maintain use of satellites, radios, televisions and telephones approached a minimum, indicating that limits to efficiency improvements exist and that the ubiquity of large-scale technologies surviving under future resource limitations is doubtful.
A History of the Hima Conservation System
Authors: Gari Lutfallah
Published: June 2007

A hima is a reserved pasture, where trees and grazing lands are protected from indiscriminate harvest on a temporary or permanent basis. It existed in the Middle East before Islam; but it was treated as a private reserve for powerful chieftains who were said to have used it as a tool of oppression. With the emergence of Islam, its function changed; it became a property dedicated to the well-being of the whole community around it. Tribes had their own himas with the permission of the state, and acted as self-governing in the absence of state control. This institution flourished through the first half of the twentieth century, when major political, economical and social changes took place in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. The paper reviews the changes that have taken place in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen with regard to the hima. Modern researchers and consultants of governments in the region still recommend using this traditional institution, because they believe that its revival and extension for land improvement based on cultural principles would be successful; it would not require the introduction of alien social institutions or values. But this paper recommends some modifications required to adopt this traditional system in the current societies of the region.
Selling the Space Age: NASA and Earth's Environment, 1958-1990
Authors: McQuaid Kim
Published: June 2007

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958 to develop America's non-military space effort. But the early leaders of a self-consciously elite science and technology agency rarely saw Earth as a part of 'space' or solar system exploration. This is clear when examining NASA's relations with earthly applications in the late 1950s and 1960s and with fast-emergent environmentalism in the 1970s and 1980s. NASA consistently misread the importance of the most popular science-based political movement of the late twentieth century. NASA was advised from 1959 onwards that earthly concerns - and practical worldly benefits - were necessary to create broad and enduring support for space explorations. Despite this, NASA leaders consistently underestimated, ignored or spun-off Earth 'applications' in the formative period of America's civilian space programme. Power and prestige-focused human spaceflight, Moon and Mars missions, and human settlement of the solar system, became NASA's enduring 'human spaceflight culture'.
'Forsaken Spot' to 'Classic Ground': Geological Heritage in Australia and the Recuperative Power of the Deep Past
Authors: Douglas Kirsty
Published: June 2007

The scarcity of navigable rivers and elevated mountain ranges in Australia encourages an aesthetic fashioned by the monumental scale represented by deep-time landscapes and objects instead of geography. This study seeks to construct a theory of geological heritage and the redemptive or recuperative power of material remains of the deep past, concentrating on three landscapes. The South Australian Division of the Geological Society of Australia has played a central role in the preservation of geological heritage in that state since 1966 when the glacial pavements of Adelaide's Hallett Cove became the movement's flagship. The 44,800 hectare Lake Callabonna Fossil Reserve, a dry lake in the state's arid far east, has been celebrated by vertebrate palaeontologists as a significant landscape since the 1890s. The dry Willandra Lakes of western New South Wales were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1981 for their cultural, archaeological and geological significance. These three celebrated areas have been variously described as wasteland, desert, forsaken, degraded, unproductive and isolated. Geological perspectives provide a new lexicon for the appreciation of Australian landscapes as the deep past is mobilised to turn them into regions of 'world renown' or 'classic ground'.
Rhododendron ponticum in Britain and Ireland: Social, Economic and Ecological Factors in its Successful Invasion
Authors: Dehnen-Schmutz Katharina , Williamson Mark
Published: June 2007

Rhododendron ponticum is the most expensive alien plant conservation problem in Britain and Ireland. It was introduced in the eighteenth century, probably in 1763 from Spain, and was then described as a not fully hardy plant. It was expensive to buy. It was made hardier by artificial and natural selection and by hybridisation with Appalachian and other Rhododendron species. It is easy to propagate and became cheap and popular in the mid and late nineteenth century as an ornamental, for game cover and as a root stock for other ornamental rhododendrons. The lowest price was in about 1880 by which time it had escaped widely. The escapes were ignored by botanical recorders for over 50 years. It was scarcely recognised as a problem until between the two world wars. Major control projects date from the second half of the twentieth century.
Soil Erosion, Scientists and the Development of Conservation Tillage Techniques in the Queensland Sugar Industry, 1935-1995
Authors: Griggs Peter
Published: June 2007

Soil erosion throughout Queensland's sugar cane producing lands emerged as a significant problem in the 1930s. Poor farming techniques such as leaving fallow land or fields with young crops bare during the wetter summer months and cultivating sloping land were blamed for this environmental problem. Drawing upon archival documents, government reports and published accounts of agricultural scientists, this paper aims to document how officers of the Queensland Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations and the Soil Conservation Branch of the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock (later Primary Industries) tried developing soil conservation methods suited to land cropped with sugar cane. The conclusion from the historical analysis is that many Queensland canegrowers before 1980 were very slow to adopt the soil conservation methods advocated by the agricultural scientists, even though they acknowledged that soil erosion was a problem. This reluctance to 'save the land' changed during the 1980s following the emergence of an agricultural practice known as trash blanketing. The ease of its implementation and associated reduction in tillage costs contributed to its rapid uptake.
'An Enemy of the Rabbit': The Social Context of Acclimatisation of an Immigrant Killer
Authors: Wells Philippa K.
Published: June 2007

Along with useful and perhaps at times desirable introductions, the history of acclimatisation in New Zealand is riddled with examples of what have turned out to be catastrophic importations. Although some importations can be identified as driven by pragmatic reasons and justification, they can also in a philosophical sense be categorised as aspects of a 'Britain of the South'. The importation providing the focus of this paper is that of members of the family Mustelidae, specifically weasels, ferrets and stoats. These animals were introduced during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century to predate on rabbits, an introduced pest that in turn threatened the viability of the pastoral farming industry. The paper maps the historical context, the debate and the epilogue to the New Zealand decision to import an 'immigrant killer', not of rabbits but of iconic ground-nesting birds.
Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 2
Authors: Vandergeest Peter , Peluso Nancy Lee
Published: June 2007

This paper examines the origins, spread and practices of professional forestry in Southeast Asia, focusing on key sites in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Part 1, in an earlier issue of this journal, challenged popular and scholarly accounts of colonial forestry as a set of simplifying practices exported from Europe and applied in the European colonies. We showed that professional forestry empires were constituted under colonialism through local politics that were specific to particular colonies and technically uncolonised regions. Part 2 looks at the influence on forestry of knowledge and management practices exchanged through professional-scientific networks. We find that while colonial forestry established some management patterns that were extended after the end of colonialism, it was post-colonial organisations such as the FAO that facilitated the construction of forestry as a kind of empire after World War Two. In both periods, new hybrid forestry practices were produced as compromises with the ideal German and FAO forestry models through interactions with local ecologies, economies and politics. These hybrid practices were incorporated into and helped constitute the two empire forestry networks.
Book Reviews
Authors: Moon David , Pearson Chris , Wills John , Dobrovolny Susanne , Harding Paul T.
Published: June 2007

Arja Rosenholm and Sari Autio-Sarasmo (eds), Understanding Russian Nature (DAVID MOON)
Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller (eds), How Green Were the Nazis? (CHRIS PEARSON)
Horace Herring, From Energy Dreams to Nuclear Nightmares (JOHN WILLS)
Noyan Dincknal, Istanbul und das Wasser (SUSANNE DOBROVOLNY)
John Langton and Graham Jones (eds), Forests and Chases of England and Wales c. 1500-c.1850 (PAUL T. HARDING)
Historical Evidence for Climate Instability and Environmental Catastrophes in Northern Syria and the Jazira: The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian
Authors: Widell Magnus
Published: June 2007

Significant cataclysms occurred frequently throughout the history of northern Syria and the Jazira, and had severe short- and long-term implications on the region's economy and the social structure. This paper uses the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, a Patriarch of Antioch in the late twelfth century a.d., as a representation of environmental and climatic catastrophes taking place in northern Syria and the Jazira in the third and early second Millennium b.c. The proportions, general frequency and the clustering tendency of the different disasters in the Chronicle are treated in detail, as well as their general economic, environmental and social significance. The article argues that diversified subsistence and a high degree of flexibility were essential for ancient Mesopotamian societies to absorb the many risks that life in this marginal semiarid environment involved.
Enclosing the River: Industrialisation and the 'Property Rights' Discourse in the Liri Valley (South of Italy), 1806-1916
Authors: Barca Stefania
Published: June 2007

The 'tragedy of the commons' narrative states the eco-efficiency of private property, but this is basically a theoretical assumption, nor it is supported by the environmental history of the industrial era. The Liri valley story, located at the periphery of the industrial revolution, provides an excellent opportunity for investigating the environmental impact of privatisation in water resources, and its social costs. The article also shows how, in the process of appropriating the energetic yield of water, early industrial capitalists participated in the emergence of the post-feudal discourse of private property and public good.
Sovereignty, Collective Ingenuity and Moral Economies: The Confluence of Transnational Trends, States and Local Strategies in the Pyrenees
Authors: Vaccaro Ismael
Published: June 2007

The expansion and consolidation of the state's sovereignty and the market economy in the Pyrenees, in northeast Spain, took place through the implementation of a series of territorialisation policies designed to reorganise the territory, its natural resources and its population. This process was supposed to introduce state-driven modernity into these valleys. These governmental technologies also specifically targeted common property. The explicit goal of such political schemes was to dismantle these putatively outdated managerial institutions. In this paper, however, I focus on three examples of commons endurance. Two collective institutions showing high degrees of ingenuity survived the pressure of market and state, and reformulated modernity from a local perspective while preserving or gaining access to natural resources for local communities. These institutions and the social agency that built them were clearly informed by the sets of values that constitute local moral economies. This paper thus examines local responses to the expansion of state-driven modernity as a hegemonic ideological framework, and sovereignty as its jurisdictional scaffold. These answers are analysed as institutional transformations, discursive elaborations, and as political conflicts.