Perspective Of Environmental History Research Articles

The Journey of the Grand Embassy through Livonia and the Great Famine of 1696–97

The article examines the journey of Tsar Peter I's Grand Embassy through Livonia in spring 1697 in the context of the climate crisis of the 1690s that was a culmination of the Little Ice Age. This is clearly one of the less studied episodes in Peter's life though the events in Riga played a tremendous role in his subsequent actions. The article argues that an environmental history perspective on the journey may offer deeper explanations of the offences and incidents that the embassy and Peter had allegedly to suffer in Livonia and Riga. In this fashion the article shows that it was a real environmental challenge to pass through Livonia at that time of year in 1697, which coincided with the culmination of the Great Famine of 1696–97, one the worst famines in the history of that region. Although the Governor-General of Livonia had repeatedly warned the Russians before their arrival in Livonia that the land was suffering from a great lack of food, forage and horses, the delegation and the tsar still felt insulted by the supposed lack of hospitality and the high prices for the provisions they required in Livonia. This was to become one of the pretexts for Moscow's declaration of war against Sweden in 1700.

Da Serra dos Cavalos ao Vale do Ipojuca (Caruaru/PE): águas e história ambiental no semiárido brasileiro

Os núcleos urbanos no semiárido brasileiro apresentam memórias, trajetórias, histórias da dramaticidade dos desafios de abastecimento de água. No agreste de Pernambuco, região de maior déficit de balanço hídrico do estado, encontra-se a sedenta cidade de Caruaru, que, no período de um século (1916-1983), vivenciou os percalços da hidratação dos projetos de expansão, inicialmente a partir do curso natural do rio Ipojuca como fonte primeira, posteriormente nos elevados das fontes na Serra dos Cavalos. As disputas com distintas concepções de soluções e os conflitos entre os diferentes usos deixaram as marcas no caminho, nas relações dos diferentes sujeitos com as águas. O artigo elaborou-se com base em registros documentais normativos da municipalidade, textos jornalísticos, de escritores locais e em diálogos com relatos de memórias de moradores por meio de entrevistas em uma abordagem na perspectiva da História Ambiental.

Fruits of Empire: Figs, Raisins, and Transformation of Western Anatolia in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract This study discusses from the perspective of environmental history the role of fig and grape cultivation in the development of Izmir into the first gateway city of the Ottoman Empire. From the 1870s on, figs and raisins were together a dynamic force promoting the opening up of hitherto unexploited areas of Western Anatolia to commercial agriculture. Fig trees and vines were commercially grown almost everywhere in the region, from the edge of the waters of the Mediterranean to the hilltops. Rural residents reclaimed large tracts of wasteland for planting figs and vines, while the quantity of figs and raisins annually exported amounted to thousands of tons as the introduction of railroads, formation of commercial networks, and development of processing, packing, and shipment operations facilitated their production and trade. The expansion of fig and grape growing was an integral part of the process of Western Anatolia's integration into the market economy and is demonstrated by the railroads, stations, warehouses and packing units found in Izmir and its hinterland. Figs and grapes attracted foreign capital investment and technology, promoted trade and stimulated the movement of people across the region. The expansion of fig and grape cultivation created seasonal employment for thousands of men and women in the city and countryside. In short, fig and grape growing across Western Anatolia had a profound impact on the region's human and natural landscape.

When hydrosociality encounters sediments: Transformed lives and livelihoods in the lower basin of the Ganges River

The hydrosocial cycle is a central analytical framework in political ecological approaches to water. It helps foreground multiple and subtle interactions between water and society, culture and politics. However, to date it has dealt little with matters other than water flows. In river contexts, biotic and abiotic components play critical roles in the way people engage with and make a living out of rivers, beyond water. This article aims to advance the hydrosocial framework with a deeper consideration of the materiality of rivers. To initiate this approach, the focus is here on sediments. Lives and livelihoods connected to river sediments remain both officially and academically under-explored. This certainly applies to the context of the Lower Ganges basin whose active channels transport huge loads of sediments mainly originating from the Himalayan slopes. Building upon an environmental history perspective and drawing on three spatially nested cases in West Bengal, India, the paper analyses instances of water-sediment-society interactions. The general case study presents colonial state interventions in the Lower Ganges basin waterscapes. The second case study zooms the focus on the 2 km long Farakka Barrage. These explorations reveal how an ‘imported’ conceptual land-water divide infused those interventions, leading to unforeseen effects on riverine lives and livelihoods. Focusing on Hamidpur char, situated few kilometres upstream of the barrage, the third case study recounts the contemporary efforts of local communities to obtain revision of administrative decisions unable to deal with ‘muddyscapes’. Finally, the paper engages with recent debates on the concept of hybridity in land-water nexus to reflect on the specific meaning and role of sediments.

从《盐铁论》所载物品看破坏生态环境的主要因素

桓宽的《盐铁论》不只是一部反映儒法斗争的著作，还全面展示了西汉中期的整体社会风貌，贤良文学与御史大夫辩论的主题从国家政策法令到百姓衣、食、住、行、用，无所不包。从环境史角度对辩论双方言论中所涉物品按不同用途与属性划分，不难看出这一时期破坏生态环境的主要因素有水旱灾害频发、人类对资源的过度索取、人口增长和屯田及大规模战争的破坏等。另外，从双方的辩论中，我们还可以总结出有关环境治理的思想。 Discourses on Salt and Iron reflects the struggle of Confucianism and Legalism, showing a broad spectrum of social features of the Mid-Western Han Dynasty. Classic literature debate comparing imperial censorship involving national policies and how it effected basic public necessities are noted in this discourse. From the perspective of environmental history, I describe the main factors that destroyed the ecological environment during this period, which included frequent floods, over consumption of resources, population growth, land cultivation and the large-scale destruction caused by war. On both sides of the debate, we can account for the method of governance on the environment.

The long-term evolution of urban waters and their nineteenth century transformation in European cities. A comparative environmental history

The nineteenth century was marked by a fundamental change in city-river relations. The environmental history perspective employed in this article illustrates how the complex interplay between the diverse natural and societal endowment of four European cities (Brussels, Lyon, Munich, and Vienna) shaped urban aquatic networks. Throughout the long-term co-evolution of the urbanites and their aquatic network, different sources of waterpower in the cities had led to differences in use and transformation. In the nineteenth century, industrialization induced a shift to a fossil energy regime in all four study sites. Population growth and urbanization required new areas for housing, industry, and trade, as well as new means of sanitation. Main drivers of the transformation included river engineering, flood protection dikes, advances in the fight against epidemic cholera, improved sanitation, water supply, and sewage networks. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the water networks of the four cities were thoroughly transformed. Despite different natural endowments, the four cities had grown increasingly similar, using water mainly as a metabolic substance for consumption and waste removal. Smaller watercourses had become part of the subterranean sewage network; larger ones were often vaulted or encased by flood protection walls leaving legacies for urban authorities in the twentieth century and beyond.

Star Path to a New World: Reappraising an Account of a Polynesian Voyage to the American Continent from an Environmental History Perspective

Abstract For the past two centuries, scholars from many fields have attempted to prove that Pacific Islanders reached the American continent in pre-Columbian times. Guided by DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating on items like chicken bones and sweet potatoes, recent scholarship has brought to light strong evidence to support this argument. This article contributes to this long-standing debate, focusing on the Hawaiian Song of Kualii. The most compelling feature of this particular narrative is its reference to a pre-contact voyage towards a distant land called Kahiki , which is allegedly located on the American continent. This study revisits the document to determine the plausibility of such a destination and to ascertain the geographic area where the explorers may have landed. After reconstructing the star path followed by the Hawaiian explorers and analysing the descriptions of the unknown land's environment, the article proves that Hawaiian explorers discovered a country vastly different from their tropical homeland. The cold climate, the unknown forest trees and the strange people inhabiting the land all appeared to them as if they belonged to another world. Comparing the key elements of the explorers' sea route to the Eastern Pacific and prevailing winds in the Late Holocene, this study concludes that the coast of Southern California was their most plausible destination.

Water diversions, environmental impacts and social conflicts: the contribution of quantitative archives to the history of hydraulics. French cases (nineteenth century)

Archives contain numerous documents that allow for a better understanding of hydraulic systems and waterworks of centuries past, as well as for measuring their effects on the environment. The objective of this paper will be to show what can be gleaned from the analysis of writings, statistics and maps emanating from engineering corps and stakeholders between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Based on examples of unregulated hydraulic systems from several regions of France (Vivarais, Morvan, Alps foothills and Roussillon), a quantification of the agricultural and industrial use of river water reveals considerable water withdrawals and weakening of natural flow volumes. This pressure on the natural flows is of diverse origins and can be analysed spatially with precision. Combined with analysis of situations of competition and conflict, the quantitative approach makes it possible to understand the logics of water management in unregulated hydraulic systems and to explain certain impasses that arose in these systems. These contemporary examples could provide an interpretive framework for the study of more ancient systems or techniques, concerning which texts and measurements are often lacking and which are rarely approached in an environmental history perspective. We finally discuss the interest of these historical data for further environmental research.

Christopher Morris. The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina.

For scholars who seek to study place-based environmental relations on a regional scale, no bioregional unit makes as much sense as a watershed. The poet Gary Snyder noted this several decades ago, in A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds (1995), where he explained watersheds as a natural “territory” where humans and non-humans most fundamentally interact. Historians and other cultural analysts have long found the history of rivers to be a rich unit of analysis for studying interactions between humans and nature—for example, the Rivers of America series, which ran from 1937 to 1974 and eventually included books about sixty-four American rivers, including Margaret Stoneman Douglas's influential The Everglades: River of Grass (1947). Some of our larger rivers—the Mississippi and Columbia, most prominently—have become iconic for Americans, and are celebrated and discussed in story and song. Environmental historians who have focused on rivers have given more attention than usual to the Mississippi, too: in the last decade, books by Ari Kelman, Craig Colton, and Mikko Saiku have all studied the Lower Mississippi from the perspective of environmental history.

Deforestation in the Philippines, 1946–1995

This research note offers a glimpse of the thematic approach to the study of Philippine history in China in the period that Bao Maohong, in a commentary published in this issue of Philippine Studies, refers to as “the third wave.” Addressing deforestation at different levels from the perspective of environmental history, this essay argues that deforestation is not only a case of environmental degradation but also involves economic, political, and cultural factors in the modernization of the Philippines. It argues that the state’s one-sided development strategy is the primary cause of deforestation, and reforestation cannot recuperate the forest environment in the Philippines.

"CUANDO EL RÍO SUENA, PIEDRAS TRAE": RELAVES DE COBRE EN LA BAHÍA DE CHAÑARAL, 1938-1990

From the perspective of environmental history, this article focuses on the impact of the Large Scale Copper Industry on the province of Chanaral between 1938 and 1990. More specifi cally, it looks at the history beyond the 350 tons of copper tailings disposed in the Salado river and the Pacifi c ocean, fi rst by the U.S. company Andes Copper and later by Codelco-Chile. While local authorities decided to ignore the problem, local residents articulated a critical discourse, denouncing the polluting practices of the company. Moreover, this article raises questions about the traditional assumption that the nationalization represented a break in the history of the copper industry, showing -from the perspective of environmental history- the existence of important continuities.

Natureza admirada, natureza devastada: História e Historiografia da colonização de Santa Catarina

De um modo geral, a história da "imigraçãopor -colonização" no século XIX, objeto histórico presente na historiografia brasileira e nas histórias regionais, é predominantemente narrada de acordo com as coordenadas ideológicas hegemônicas da sociedade moderna: civilização, progresso, evolução e trabalho. Dentro deste quadro conceitual, a natureza é vista e representada como um mero recurso natural que deve ser "naturalmente" explorado e manipulado pela sociedade humana. Este artigo aborda a história e o conhecimento histórico sobre a experiência da colonização em Santa Catarina, principalmente em relação às principais colônias fundadas na segunda metade do século XIX. Problematiza-se a relação culturapor -natureza instituída no processo colonizador e a concepção de natureza contida no conhecimento histórico da colonização; observam-se fontes documentais (Relatórios da Província, Relatórios das Colônias) e historiográficas na perspectiva da História Ambiental; e procura-se demonstrar que o modo de ver e explicar a "evolução histórica" da colonização estimula e legitima a destruição e a domesticação do mundo natural tanto quanto dos povos indígenas, em particular a Mata Atlântica e os índios Xokleng.

CADÊ A ÁGUA QUE ESTAVA AQUI? OS LEITOS SECOS NA MEMÓRIA E NA HISTÓRIA

This article refers to a case study, conducted in the city of Goias Hidrolândia. Such study discusses, from the perspective of environmental history and oral history, the possibilites of unraveling the historical realities built on landscapes that today are seen as abject due the current state of degradation. In other words, on the one hand, the historiography after the enlargement of its thematic approaches adopted the medium and large rivers as major sources of research, on the other, forgot a colossal hydraulic mesh represented by small streams that, largely are now extincts or dying in face of predation. From this, the restlessness that drives our research is to know for where are sent the dry rivers. Thus, we will show that these multiples spaces hydraulic, especially those whose beds have dried up, directly involved in the construction of memories, given the importance it had in the lives of people, once served by its water, is in the production of their socio-economic areas, is in the construction of maps of the world around them.

Production Cycles and Decline in Traditional Iron Smelting in the Maidan, Southern India, c. 1750-1950: An Environmental History Perspective

This paper explores how economics, technology, politics and ecology interacted in causing ups and downs in the production of traditional iron making, and its subsequent decline in the early twentieth century. In the course of this exercise we find many lacunae in the study of Indian environmental history. These include a neglect of the impact of traditional iron and steel smelting industry on forests in pre- and early-colonial times, the possible strategic motive in controlling iron and steel production through control of charcoal production, the institutional mechanism of forest use for industrial purposes and the role of ecology in the decline of traditional industry. Some of these are important questions for those who seek to reintroduce traditional technologies. A study of history throws up interesting clues on how we could correct mistakes made in the past so as to plan more effectively for the future.

BOSQUES Y AGRICULTURA: UNA MIRADA A LOS LÍMITES HISTÓRICOS DE SUSTENTABILIDAD DE LOS BOSQUES ARGENTINOS EN UN CONTEXTO DE LA EXPLOTACIÓN CAPITALISTA EN EL SIGLO XX

At the end of the 19th century, there were in Argentina 160 million hectares of natural forests, mountains and original jungles. In less than half a century, the country lost more than two—thirds of its aboriginal forests. Currently, the country has less than 33 million hectares of native forests. The exploitation of this extraordinary Argentinean forest wealth is the starting point of this historical analysis that intends to study, from an environmental history perspective, the evolution of forest exploitation in the 20th century and its relation to the expansion of the capitalist agricultural model. The main objective of the text is centered on the study of the deforestation process within the context of its participation in the market and the relation between said phenomenon and

O recomeço na mata: notas para uma história ambiental da colonização alemã no Rio Grande do Sul

This article discusses the German colonization in Rio Grande do Sul in the 19th century from the perspective of environmental history. It pays special attention to the relations between the settlers and the subtropical forest and analyzes the immigrants’ first contacts with the regional flora and fauna. It also discusses the “civilizing deforestation” undertaken in the old colonies and its environmental impact. Key words: German colonization, environmental history, Rio Grande do Sul State.

Forasteiros na floresta subtropical: notas para uma história ambiental da colonização alemã no Rio Grande do Sul

O presente artigo trata da colonização alemã no Rio Grande do Sul do século XIX, a partir da perspectiva da história ambiental, dando atenção especial às relações estabelecidas entre os colonos e a floresta subtropical. O texto analisa o que sentiram os imigrantes em seus primeiros contatos com a fauna e a flora regionais e discute o "desmatamento civilizador" empreendido nas antigas colônias, demonstrando as relações predatórias estabelecidas na nova terra e o impacto ambiental desse processo.