Environmental history

Environmental history is a field that studies the interactive relationship between human beings on the natural world over time. This includes both the effect humans have on the environment as well as the effect the environment has on humans and their societies. The field itself is relatively new, having been first recognized in the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was spurred on by a new awareness of environmental activism, but its roots go farther back to the early environmental movements of the nineteenth century. The scope of environmental history is still debated among modern scholars; however, the field is generally divided into three main areas. The first concerns the workings of the natural world and how the environment has affected human history; the second studies how human actions have caused environmental changes; and the third focuses on human attitudes and perceptions toward the environment.

Background

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many of the world’s nations underwent a dramatic shift away from rural, agricultural-based societies toward manufacturing-based, urban societies. This change, known as the Industrial Revolution, gave rise to numerous factories that polluted cities and began to spread out into the countryside. Writers and activists began to speak out against this rapid industrialization and called for natural areas and farmland to be protected.

In the United States, Americans had been gaining new territories and moving westward for most of the nineteenth century. Many people saw a need to protect this unspoiled natural beauty from the stream of settlers, farmers, and miners moving into the newly opened regions. In 1864, Congress entrusted the Yosemite Valley to the state of California to prevent it from private development. Eight years later, the region surrounding the Yellowstone River in Wyoming and Montana was placed under federal protection and became Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world. By 1916, thirty-five areas in the United States and Hawaii had been declared national parks or monuments. To help manage the growing responsibility, President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service to oversee conservation and environmental concerns in these federally protected areas.

In the twentieth century, conservation groups formed to protect endangered wildlife and their natural habitats. Other movements sprang up to combat pollution and raise awareness of the health issues it could create. In 1949, environmentalist and author Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac was published shortly after his death. The book explained how the processes of the natural world interacted with one another and called upon people to take better care of the environment. The book was highly influential in raising public awareness of environmental issues.

An even more impactful work was published in 1962 when biologist Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a chronicle of how use of the pesticide DDT caused harmful and damaging effects on birds, wildlife, and even humans. Carson’s book is often credited as one of the main inspirations for the modern environmental movement. It prompted Congress to begin investigations into environmental issues that eventually led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. That same year, an effort led by US Senator Gaylord Nelson established the first Earth Day, a celebration meant to bring public focus on the environment and issues concerning environmental protection. By the mid-twenty-first century, Earth Day had grown into a worldwide event.

Overview

The search for an understanding of humans’ impact on the environment led to the development of the field of environmental history during this period. At its core, environmental history incorporated other scientific disciplines such as geography, geology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and archaeology. In the late 1960s, professor and author Roderick Nash was among the first scholars to explore the concepts of environmental history in his work. He is credited with coining the term in a 1972 article.

The one common element in all studies of environmental history is the role humans have had in the natural world. For example, geological processes have been occurring on Earth for billions of years, but environmental history is only concerned with the processes as they affect humans. Apart from that, many of the early scholars in the field developed different themes of study for environmental history. Alfred Crosby, one of the founding fathers in the field, saw environmental history as the result of “imperialistic” human practices to spread their influences on the natural world. Professor Carolyn Merchant divided the subject into four parts: ecology, the relationship living things have with one another in an environment; production, the use of nature as a resource; reproduction, the biological process of birth and development; and consciousness, the way human societies perceive the natural world.

Perhaps the most widely accepted view of the subject comes from the work of Donald Worster, an author and professor of environmental history. Worster broke the field down into three sections. The first concerns the processes of nature and the effect they have on humans within the environment. These processes include the study of winds, ocean currents, geology, climate, weather, and the spread of disease among populations. The second theme examines how humans alter the environment through their actions and how these changes affect both the natural world and human societies. Aspects of this theme include the effects of farming on soil; the effects of hunting and grazing; and the impact of mining, urban development, and industrialization. The third theme takes into account how people think of the world around them and how that thinking affects their decisions regarding the environment.

Examples of the first theme of environmental history can include human migration and settlement patterns brought on by past climate changes. For instance, about twelve thousand years ago, Earth’s climate warmed and melted the ice sheets that had moved south during the last ice age. With warmer temperatures and more land to explore, humans began planting crops, which eventually led to the development of cities and civilizations. Another example holds that the environment of the precolonial United States made it easier for diseases to spread from the European explorers to the Native Americans they encountered. While the deaths of millions of native people reduced the opposition the Europeans faced, it also deprived them of a workforce. As a result, they turned to enslaved African people as a source of labor.

The most widely studied element of environmental history is the impact humans have had on the environment. These can include the irrigation works of ancient human civilizations as they reworked the landscapes to bring water to their fields. Other cultures built terraced fields on the sides of mountains to increase farmland in regions where agriculture was difficult. Some farming methods involved cutting away or burning forests or grasslands to make planting space for crops. While this method provided people with more land, it also led to soil erosion, poor quality soil, and deforestation.

During the 1920s, the worldwide demand for wheat prompted farmers in the Great Plains of the United States to plow up grasslands in order to plant more crops. Farmers had been overplowing their fields in the region for years, and in the early 1930s, the area was hit by a devastating drought. With little grassland left to hold down the topsoil, winds picked up the soil and carried it across the region, causing crippling dust storms. The storms choked cattle to death and destroyed millions of acres of farmland. The event, known as the Dust Bowl, was the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Environmental history also examines human perception of the environment and the attitudes, actions, and laws that arise from this perception. This includes the influence that religion, politics, and pop culture have had on environmental thinking throughout history. For example, the Native Americans who lived in the United States before Europeans arrived viewed the natural world as a means of survival and a provider of their way of life. When European settlers arrived, they also thought of the environment as a source of natural resources but saw the untamed wilderness as something to be overcome and shaped to fit their needs. As a result, the disparate approach to the environment was one of the many elements that caused conflict between the two cultures.

Another aspect of this theme is the popular view on recycling. The concept of recycling has been around for centuries, but it was not until political and societal changes of the mid-twentieth century that it became widely accepted. During World War II (1939–1945), the US government instituted mandatory recycling efforts to conserve natural resources for the war effort. As the economy boomed in the postwar years, Americans worried less about recycling. The process gained renewed support during the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s and was further bolstered by concerns that US landfills were becoming overcrowded with trash. Perception shifted to such an extent that in the twenty-first century, community recycling programs are the norm, and most American households and businesses routinely recycle their waste products.

Bibliography

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