The Moments of Nature–State Relations

Abstract

A key consideration when explicating the character of nature–state relations is their historical geographies, or what we may term their key ‘moments of mutual association’. But despite the obvious importance of nature and the environment for shaping the character of the state and the equally crucial role played by physical and environmental processes in reproducing political forms, it seems clear to us that the majority of work in history and historical geography has tended to separate the two themes from one another: at one extreme lie studies of the changing political form of the state; at the other, an environmental history that is usually concerned with the history of the environment for its own sake. The not immodest aim of this chapter is to forge a more productive link between these two academic traditions. We attempt to do this through illustrating the key moments that have helped to structure nature–state relations. In talking about moments, we do not refer simply to particular times or periods that have been crucial for the forging of nature–state relations. Our emphasis on the notion of moments does not seek to give primacy to temporal issues as such. Rather, in referring to nature–state moments, we emphasize the characteristic or indicative associations that have existed between states and natures. We seek to stress, therefore, a range of different types of association that have been important in structuring nature–state relations. Obviously, the issue of time is important since the character of nature–state relations would have been extremely different in the Greek polis when compared with the state of high modernity. The degree to which nature could be modified obviously varied between the two time periods, as did its potential impact on political processes. Even within the modern period, the character of nature–state relations has varied considerably. Changing technologies and political and ecological ideologies have ensured a different repertoire of associations between states and natures throughout the whole of the modern period. But it is not the issue of time per se that explains these different associations; rather, it is the differing ideological, technological, and material relations that exist between specific states and natures at particular points in time.