Themes in Environmental History – serie

This volume brings together environmental and human perspectives, engages with both historians and scientists, and, being mindful that environments and disease recognize no boundaries, includes studies that touch on Europe, the wider Mediterranean world, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds explores the intertwined relationships between humans, the natural and manmade environments, and disease. Urgency gives us a sense that we need a longer view of human responses and interactions with the airs, waters, and places in which we live, and a greater understanding of the activities and attitudes that have led us to the present. Through a series of new research studies, two salient questions are explored: What are the deeper patterns in thinking about disease and the environment? What can we know about the environmental and ecological parameters of emergent human diseases over a longer period – aspects of disease that contemporary persons were not able to know or understand in the way that we do today?The broad chronological and geographical approach makes this volume perfect for students and scholars interested in the history of disease, environment, and landscape in the medieval and early modern worlds.

This volume brings together environmental and human perspectives, engages with both historians and scientists, and, being mindful that environments and disease recognize no boundaries, includes studies that touch on Europe, the wider Mediterranean world, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds explores the intertwined relationships between humans, the natural and manmade environments, and disease. Urgency gives us a sense that we need a longer view of human responses and interactions with the airs, waters, and places in which we live, and a greater understanding of the activities and attitudes that have led us to the present. Through a series of new research studies, two salient questions are explored: What are the deeper patterns in thinking about disease and the environment? What can we know about the environmental and ecological parameters of emergent human diseases over a longer period – aspects of disease that contemporary persons were not able to know or understand in the way that we do today?The broad chronological and geographical approach makes this volume perfect for students and scholars interested in the history of disease, environment, and landscape in the medieval and early modern worlds.

Water in North American Environmental History offers 25 cases studies that explore the range of uses and perceptions of water throughout Canadian, Mexican, and United States history.Water has served a myriad of purposes historically as human sustenance, agricultural irrigation, sanitation, fire protection, military defense, power generation, transportation, and much more. Water and its uses provide an excellent entrée into the study of humans and the environment, not only because water is a vital resource for life, but also because water as a medium is so intimately woven into the everyday experiences of humans and into society’s economic, political, and social fabric. A North American perspective is not representative of the world’s water use, but it is an area with a linked history and many overlapping human and environmental features and concerns. With a continental perspective, the book explores many disparate topics without being confined to the history and experiences of just one country. The chapters are short, but descriptive, and departure points for what they tell us about the human experience in dealing with water and the environmental implications of water use. The text leads students to consider water in relation to society, and to the past.The book will be of interest to students of environmental history, geography, and the environmental sciences.

Water in North American Environmental History offers 25 cases studies that explore the range of uses and perceptions of water throughout Canadian, Mexican, and United States history.Water has served a myriad of purposes historically as human sustenance, agricultural irrigation, sanitation, fire protection, military defense, power generation, transportation, and much more. Water and its uses provide an excellent entrée into the study of humans and the environment, not only because water is a vital resource for life, but also because water as a medium is so intimately woven into the everyday experiences of humans and into society’s economic, political, and social fabric. A North American perspective is not representative of the world’s water use, but it is an area with a linked history and many overlapping human and environmental features and concerns. With a continental perspective, the book explores many disparate topics without being confined to the history and experiences of just one country. The chapters are short, but descriptive, and departure points for what they tell us about the human experience in dealing with water and the environmental implications of water use. The text leads students to consider water in relation to society, and to the past.The book will be of interest to students of environmental history, geography, and the environmental sciences.

Uncovering, for the first time, the role played by home users in fostering energy changes, this book explores the effects of energy transitions between the medieval and industrial era on the everyday life of Europeans and considers how cultural, social and material changes in the home facilitated the transition towards a more energy-demanding world.This book delves deeper into the interactions between early modern consumers and the ecological constraints of the world surrounding them. Experts on specific aspects of domestic energy use departing from different case studies in early modern Europe confront these central issues. This book therefore offers a wide range of approaches within a long-term and comparative perspective. Different ‘material cultures of energy’ across time and space and across different climates in Europe are explored. Ultimately, this book aims to consider how the early modern home not just adapted to energy changes, but perhaps even prepared the way for our modern addiction to fossil energy. Energy in the Early Modern Home is the perfect resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe, premodern environmental history, the history of consumption and material culture, and the history of science and technology.

Uncovering, for the first time, the role played by home users in fostering energy changes, this book explores the effects of energy transitions between the medieval and industrial era on the everyday life of Europeans and considers how cultural, social and material changes in the home facilitated the transition towards a more energy-demanding world.This book delves deeper into the interactions between early modern consumers and the ecological constraints of the world surrounding them. Experts on specific aspects of domestic energy use departing from different case studies in early modern Europe confront these central issues. This book therefore offers a wide range of approaches within a long-term and comparative perspective. Different ‘material cultures of energy’ across time and space and across different climates in Europe are explored. Ultimately, this book aims to consider how the early modern home not just adapted to energy changes, but perhaps even prepared the way for our modern addiction to fossil energy. Energy in the Early Modern Home is the perfect resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe, premodern environmental history, the history of consumption and material culture, and the history of science and technology.

The Nature of Empire exposes the central role of modern imperialism in the development of contemporary environmentalism and environmental science. It builds this case through an investigation of five major modern empires: Britain, France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan.This book offers readers a global environmental history of modern imperialism that actively engages Western-based and non-Western based empires. As this study shows, imperialism ultimately transformed human perceptions of nature and the environment in significant, lasting, and conflicting ways. It both inspired modern conservationist practices and fueled opposition to environmental policies in colonial contexts. It also spurred the development of climate science, which helped reveal the environmental toll of imperial exploitation and drive efforts to fight it. The environmental and political legacies of empire remain evident today through unmitigated anthropogenic climate change and the increasing incidence of extreme weather, which tends to disproportionately impact marginalized peoples.This book stands as a useful and accessible resource for students, scholars, and all those seeking to better understand environmental history, imperial legacies, and the roots of contemporary climate challenges.

The Nature of Empire exposes the central role of modern imperialism in the development of contemporary environmentalism and environmental science. It builds this case through an investigation of five major modern empires: Britain, France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan.This book offers readers a global environmental history of modern imperialism that actively engages Western-based and non-Western based empires. As this study shows, imperialism ultimately transformed human perceptions of nature and the environment in significant, lasting, and conflicting ways. It both inspired modern conservationist practices and fueled opposition to environmental policies in colonial contexts. It also spurred the development of climate science, which helped reveal the environmental toll of imperial exploitation and drive efforts to fight it. The environmental and political legacies of empire remain evident today through unmitigated anthropogenic climate change and the increasing incidence of extreme weather, which tends to disproportionately impact marginalized peoples.This book stands as a useful and accessible resource for students, scholars, and all those seeking to better understand environmental history, imperial legacies, and the roots of contemporary climate challenges.

Emphasizing the voices of activists, this book’s diverse contributors examine communities’ common experiences with environmental injustice, how they organize to address it, and the ways in which their campaigns intersect with related movements such as Black Lives Matter and Indigenous sovereignty.The global COVID-19 pandemic exposed the ways in which BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities and white working-class communities have suffered disproportionately from the crisis due to sustained exposure to toxic land, air, and water, creating a new urgency for addressing underlying conditions of systemic racism and poverty in North America. In addition to exploring the historical roots of the Environmental Justice movement in the 1980s and 1990s, the volume offers coverage of recent events such as the DAPL pipeline controversy, the Flint water crisis, and the rise of climate justice. The collection incorporates the experiences of rural and urban communities, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, and Indigenous peoples in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.The chapters offer instructors, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers a range of accessible case studies that create opportunities for comparative and intersectional analysis across geographical and ethnic boundaries.

Emphasizing the voices of activists, this book’s diverse contributors examine communities’ common experiences with environmental injustice, how they organize to address it, and the ways in which their campaigns intersect with related movements such as Black Lives Matter and Indigenous sovereignty.The global COVID-19 pandemic exposed the ways in which BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities and white working-class communities have suffered disproportionately from the crisis due to sustained exposure to toxic land, air, and water, creating a new urgency for addressing underlying conditions of systemic racism and poverty in North America. In addition to exploring the historical roots of the Environmental Justice movement in the 1980s and 1990s, the volume offers coverage of recent events such as the DAPL pipeline controversy, the Flint water crisis, and the rise of climate justice. The collection incorporates the experiences of rural and urban communities, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, and Indigenous peoples in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.The chapters offer instructors, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers a range of accessible case studies that create opportunities for comparative and intersectional analysis across geographical and ethnic boundaries.

Consumption and Waste in American Environmental History is an accessible introduction to the consumption experience, wasting practices, and disposal history of the United States, spanning precontact to the present.Centered around concise case studies, the book confronts consumption and consumerism and assesses the impact of solid and hazardous wastes from political, economic, social, and especially environmental perspectives. The overarching relationship among consumption, waste, and climate change is woven throughout the book, identifying key questions and themes in United States environmental history. Each chapter explores a specific element of consumption and waste, including the commodification of humans and animals; depletion of resources; the role of immigrants, women, and people of color in sanitation services and as sanitary and environmental activists; salvaging and recycling; environmental justice; e-waste; plastics; space junk; and more.With a broad chronology and a variety of relevant topics, this volume is an engaging resource for undergraduate and graduate students in American history, environmental history, and sustainability studies.

Consumption and Waste in American Environmental History is an accessible introduction to the consumption experience, wasting practices, and disposal history of the United States, spanning precontact to the present.Centered around concise case studies, the book confronts consumption and consumerism and assesses the impact of solid and hazardous wastes from political, economic, social, and especially environmental perspectives. The overarching relationship among consumption, waste, and climate change is woven throughout the book, identifying key questions and themes in United States environmental history. Each chapter explores a specific element of consumption and waste, including the commodification of humans and animals; depletion of resources; the role of immigrants, women, and people of color in sanitation services and as sanitary and environmental activists; salvaging and recycling; environmental justice; e-waste; plastics; space junk; and more.With a broad chronology and a variety of relevant topics, this volume is an engaging resource for undergraduate and graduate students in American history, environmental history, and sustainability studies.

Across the early modern world (late 1400s to mid-1900s), oceans provided the key connection between far-flung communities in an age of empire and colonial expansion, while also serving as an increasingly important source of resources, from salted fish to whale oil to luxurious pearls.This story has rarely been told from the perspective of the marine environment itself. This book brings together the newest research to explore an era of newfound importance for the global ocean, focusing on the changing human relationships with maritime environments as cultures around the world found new ways to use and manipulate different aspects of this environment. The book focuses on key themes in early modern maritime history: harvesting marine life, movement through and on water, changing coastal environments, sea–land connections, and the metaphysics of the ocean in an age of change. While making a case for the importance of early modern marine environmental history throughout all the oceans of the world, this book also provides a foundation for more work on the topic.This book is for undergraduate and graduate students beginning work on premodern environmental, maritime, ocean and global history, as well as literary scholars or ocean scientists interested in ocean history.

Across the early modern world (late 1400s to mid-1900s), oceans provided the key connection between far-flung communities in an age of empire and colonial expansion, while also serving as an increasingly important source of resources, from salted fish to whale oil to luxurious pearls.This story has rarely been told from the perspective of the marine environment itself. This book brings together the newest research to explore an era of newfound importance for the global ocean, focusing on the changing human relationships with maritime environments as cultures around the world found new ways to use and manipulate different aspects of this environment. The book focuses on key themes in early modern maritime history: harvesting marine life, movement through and on water, changing coastal environments, sea–land connections, and the metaphysics of the ocean in an age of change. While making a case for the importance of early modern marine environmental history throughout all the oceans of the world, this book also provides a foundation for more work on the topic.This book is for undergraduate and graduate students beginning work on premodern environmental, maritime, ocean and global history, as well as literary scholars or ocean scientists interested in ocean history.

Taking North America as its focus, this book offers a comprehensive exploration of humanity’s evolving relationship with energy.As humans have sought to live and develop the North American continent, energy from Earth’s basic elements has served as the raw material for living. Through its chronological approach and critical case studies, the volume examines how the search for and harvest and use of energy have shaped human history, from colonial empire-building to contemporary debates on sustainability and climate change. By analyzing diverse energy sources, including sail power, coal, crude oil, wind, solar, electricity, and nuclear power, the book reveals how industrialization transformed energy consumption and demand, driving political, social, and environmental change. It connects energy history to major political and environmental themes, such as water politics, post-1990s Alberta pipeline debates, the war in Ukraine, and climate change, highlighting how energy has been both a unifying force and a source of division among diverse peoples, shaping global power dynamics and regional histories.Designed for students of environmental history and energy studies, this text synthesizes this important history whilst offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

Taking North America as its focus, this book offers a comprehensive exploration of humanity’s evolving relationship with energy.As humans have sought to live and develop the North American continent, energy from Earth’s basic elements has served as the raw material for living. Through its chronological approach and critical case studies, the volume examines how the search for and harvest and use of energy have shaped human history, from colonial empire-building to contemporary debates on sustainability and climate change. By analyzing diverse energy sources, including sail power, coal, crude oil, wind, solar, electricity, and nuclear power, the book reveals how industrialization transformed energy consumption and demand, driving political, social, and environmental change. It connects energy history to major political and environmental themes, such as water politics, post-1990s Alberta pipeline debates, the war in Ukraine, and climate change, highlighting how energy has been both a unifying force and a source of division among diverse peoples, shaping global power dynamics and regional histories.Designed for students of environmental history and energy studies, this text synthesizes this important history whilst offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

Combining traditional historical research with environmental history, migration studies, historical anthropology, and religious history, this book examines how societies in the southern frontier of medieval and early modern Hungary navigated the recurring disasters that defined their existence.The region—caught between the Habsburg, Ottoman, and other imperial spheres—faced wars, plagues, famines, floods, and forced migrations that not only disrupted lives but also reshaped governance, identities, and community resilience. The book draws on underused archival sources, parish records, plague reports, and visual materials to explore both grassroots coping strategies and the premodern forms of institutional disaster management. It moves beyond seeing disaster as a mere historical backdrop, instead showing it as a political and ideological tool used by states to control mobility, engineer settlement, and consolidate power. Regional histories are situated within broader global comparisons and other imperial “laboratories” of crisis management from the Mediterranean to colonial India, offering fresh comparable insights.The book addresses scholars and advanced students of Central and Eastern European history, medieval and early modern studies, migration history, environmental history, and disaster studies, as well as a broader readership interested in the dynamics of historical frontier societies and their enduring strategies of survival.

Combining traditional historical research with environmental history, migration studies, historical anthropology, and religious history, this book examines how societies in the southern frontier of medieval and early modern Hungary navigated the recurring disasters that defined their existence.The region—caught between the Habsburg, Ottoman, and other imperial spheres—faced wars, plagues, famines, floods, and forced migrations that not only disrupted lives but also reshaped governance, identities, and community resilience. The book draws on underused archival sources, parish records, plague reports, and visual materials to explore both grassroots coping strategies and the premodern forms of institutional disaster management. It moves beyond seeing disaster as a mere historical backdrop, instead showing it as a political and ideological tool used by states to control mobility, engineer settlement, and consolidate power. Regional histories are situated within broader global comparisons and other imperial “laboratories” of crisis management from the Mediterranean to colonial India, offering fresh comparable insights.The book addresses scholars and advanced students of Central and Eastern European history, medieval and early modern studies, migration history, environmental history, and disaster studies, as well as a broader readership interested in the dynamics of historical frontier societies and their enduring strategies of survival.

Whose Water? The Control and Appropriation of Water Resources in Medieval Hungary addresses conflicts surrounding water management, a space where different economic and other socio-political interests meet and sometimes clash. The geographical space that it focuses on is the Kingdom of Hungary, and the time frame is the period from the foundation of the Christian state around the year 1000 to the late medieval period. Modern politics focuses on who has legitimate claims in water-related disputes, but for historians, it is certainly more relevant to understand how such conflicts were approached and resolved in the past. These questions include what kind of disputes unfolded concerning water use; to what degree water was conceived as a private or common good; and how different interests were aligned with each other. Throughout the book’s chapters, it is argued that the use of water by the societies of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages gave rise to complex sets of customs and norms that, until the modern era, were the most important principles for settling water-use disputes. Whose Water? The Control and Appropriation of Water Resources in Medieval Hungary will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental and landscape history, as well as those studying the legal and urban history of premodern Europe.

Whose Water? The Control and Appropriation of Water Resources in Medieval Hungary addresses conflicts surrounding water management, a space where different economic and other socio-political interests meet and sometimes clash. The geographical space that it focuses on is the Kingdom of Hungary, and the time frame is the period from the foundation of the Christian state around the year 1000 to the late medieval period.Modern politics focuses on who has legitimate claims in water-related disputes, but for historians, it is certainly more relevant to understand how such conflicts were approached and resolved in the past. These questions include what kind of disputes unfolded concerning water use; to what degree water was conceived as a private or common good; and how different interests were aligned with each other. Throughout the book’s chapters, it is argued that the use of water by the societies of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages gave rise to complex sets of customs and norms that, until the modern era, were the most important principles for settling water-use disputes.Whose Water? The Control and Appropriation of Water Resources in Medieval Hungary will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental and landscape history, as well as those studying the legal and urban history of premodern Europe.

We are pleased to announce a new series of environmental history readers, suitable for students. Comprising essays selected from our journals, Environment and History and Environmental Values, each inexpensive paperback volume will address an important theme in environmental history, combining underlying theory and specific case-studies. The first volume, Bio-invaders, investigates the rhetoric and realities of exotic, introduced and 'alien' species. The book comprises a number of general essays, exploring and challenging common perceptions about such species, and a series of case studies of specific species in specific contexts. Its geographical coverage ranges from the United Kingdom to New Zealand by way of South Africa, India and Palestine; and the essays cover both historical and recent introductions.

Landscapes is the second in our new series of environmental history readers, suitable for students and researchers. Comprising essays selected from our journals, Environment and History and Environmental Values, each inexpensive paperback volume addresses an important theme in environmental history, combining underlying theory and specific case-studies. Landscapes explores the conceptualisation of environments as landscape, philosophically and historically. Excursions in landscape aesthetics contextualise case studies of landscapes perceived, constructed and responded to, from the plantations of South Africa to the Australian outback, the medieval Ardennes to nuclear-age America. Literary and artistic versions of landscape are studied alongside those driven by policy and pragmatism, probing the intersections of the transcendent and the ideological.

The third volume in the reader series, 'Themes in Environmental History'. Comprising essays selected from our journals, Environment and History and Environmental Values, these inexpensive paperbacks address important aspects of environmental history, by means of theoretical essays and case studies. Indigenous Knowledge investigates how indigenous peoples from various cultures interact with and conceptualise their environments, past and present; it offers accounts of indigenous conservation practice and traditional environmental knowledge alongside challenging explorations of how 'knowledge' is filtered through ideologies and subjectivities, from the Western scientific worldview to individual memory.

The fourth volume in the reader series, 'Themes in Environmental History'. Comprising essays selected from Environment and History and Environmental Values, these inexpensive paperbacks address important aspects of environmental history through theoretical essays and case studies. The readers are attracting increasing interest from course-organisers. Animals examines human relationships with non-human others, exploring dynamics of exploitation, preservation and cultural interpretation. The essays, whose animal actors range from whales to goats, cormorants to crocodiles, cover such diverse topics as hunting, farming, conservation and display. The authors are alive to the complexities and conflicts inherent in human - animal interactions: as friend, as food, as object of ethical discourse or of power-play between human societies, this volume shows that there is no simple answer to the question posed in the opening essay - 'An Animal: What is it?'

The fifth volume in the reader series, 'Themes in Environmental History'. Comprising essays selected from Environment and History and Environmental Values, these inexpensive paperbacks address important aspects of environmental history through theoretical essays and case studies. The readers are attracting increasing interest from course-organisers. Trees addresses the roots of environmental history in forest history, offering a substantial section on forestry practice and ideology and the power-relations that have been and continue to be played out in global forests. While histories of forests and forestry have at times, by focus on the woods, obscured our vision of the trees, this volume contains several essays about the nurturing of specific trees, from street trees to penal planting. A theme that runs through many of the essays is the psycho-social significance of trees, from nationalism to legend, imperialism to post-modern uncertainty; trees can be aligned with identity, power, betrayal or redemption.The human relationship with trees that Dargavel and Johann have figured as one of 'science and hope' is an arena for endlessly diversified construction and negotiation, experiment and experience.