Environmental History: The Origins, Stakes, and Perspectives of a New Site for Research
Environmental history was first constituted in the United States and planted its roots in the 1960's. In a climate strongly influenced by new left history and political activism, young historians, Roderick Nash and Donald Worster in particular, affirmed that a class of the oppressed is systematically forgotten: the earth, the biotope.[2] Mark Cioc, Char Miller, "Interview with Roderick Nash,"...[2] We must, they say, write history "from the bottom up," starting with what is ignored, scorned and is not endowed with speech.[3] Roderick Nash, "American Environmental History: A New...[3] It is a matter of giving a central role to the natural elements and of inserting them into all history books instead of unfurling the succession of kings, wars, and great ideas.[4] Donald Worster, "History As Natural History: An Essay...[4] Let us recall that at the beginning of the 1960's in the United States, intellectual and political history still very widely dominates the profession.[5] Robert Darnton, "Intellectual and cultural history,"...[5]
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The birth of environmental history is generally said to be August, 1972, with a special number of the Pacific Historical Review and a famous article by Roderick Nash.[6] Nash, "American Environmental," 362-372.[6] The choice of the journal marks the rise of environmentalism on West Coast campuses. Initiated by the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962, this heightened awareness triumphs on April 22, 1970 with the first Earth Day, one of the largest demonstrations ever organized in the United States gathering 20 million people.[7] Sale Kirkpatrick, The Green Revolution. The American...[7] In this climate, in April 1974, John Opie edits an informational letter in environmental history which is followed by the creation of a journal, Environmental Review, in the fall of 1976.[8] It will continue to be published under the name Environmental...[8] The American Society for Environmental History is founded in 1977.[9] Carolyn Column, "From the President’s Desk," ASEH News,...[9] These birth dates are, however, misleading. First of all, this new field mobilizes earlier studies, for example those that were published by Samuel P. Hays on the history of conservation or the many publications on the history of forests (which has its own review since 1957).[10] Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency;...[10] Secondly, environmental history remained a church of the catacombs all the way into the middle of the 1980's, with a journal that almost disappeared several times while the number of subscribers to its association was still less than 20 in 1987.[11] "Interview with Hal K.Rothman," Environmental History,...[11] No academic position exists in environmental history and historians cling to a few welcoming campuses, like those of the University of California or the University of Kansas, to pursue their research in spite of the success of the first environmental studies majors with students.[12] Mark Harvey, "Donald Worster. Interview ," Environmental...[12]
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If this emergence remains fragile, it will also be formative for at least three reasons which, even when they are called into question, continue to weigh on the field today. The tie between environmentalism and environmental history is extremely strong for the first generation, which imagines its studies as a fulcrum for acting on the present.[13] William Cronon, "The uses of environmental history,"...[13] Some do not hesitate to take public positions, for example Roderick Nash who writes the "Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights" to protest against the oil spill affecting the region in January, 1969.[14] M. Cioc, C. Miller, "Interview with Roderick Nash,"...[14] Secondly, the rediscovery of the American roots of the relation to nature leads to the conviction that this nation invented the environment and, consequently, environmental history. The pioneering work of Roderick Nash on the "wilderness" allows for the rehabilitation of figures such as Aldo Leopold or John Muir.[15] Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (1967)...[15] A third particularity comes from the attention paid to the degradation of nature through human actions, which opens new fields of research. Donald Worster is the figure who goes furthest in this direction, all the way to embodying, according to Hal Rothman, the "tragic school" of environmental history by underlining capitalism's responsibility.[16] Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological...[16] He thus inaugurates a new narrative based on fall and decline as opposed to the reasonable use of nature by local populations.[17] W. Cronon, "A place for stories: nature, history, and...[17]
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The 1980's see the rise of a second generation whose works have now become classics in environmental history. Institutional fragility is counterbalanced by the incredible dynamism of researchers who throw themselves into a field under construction. Richard White and William Cronon rewrite the history of certain American regions through the perspective of climate change with a narrative that makes it impossible to separate humans from their environment.[18] W. Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists,...[18] Carolyn Merchant rereads Bacon's scientific revolution in the light of the environment, arguing that it marks an essential turn in the relation to nature: nature is no longer a living whole but is instead divided and fragmented into private pieces of life that will constitute objects of scientific knowledge and domination.[19] Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology...[19] By affirming the passage from a feminine conception of nature to a masculine one, Carolyn Merchant very early on offers a writing of environmental history that is attentive to gender.[20] C. Merchant, ed., "Women and environmental history:...[20] Stephen Pyne constructs a total history of fire that combines the physical characteristics of the phenomenon with values, institutions, and beliefs.[21] Stephen Pyne, Fire in America. A Cultural History of...[21] Thanks to the use of new sources, he unearths the rationality behind traditional methods of the use of fire which, far from destroying nature, allow for resource management. Finally, certain publications somewhere between scientific work and journalism contribute to structuring environmental history and to give it visibility.[22] John McPhee, The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar,...[22]
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To this list of new objects must be added objects that preexisted environmental history but to which its theoreticians lay claim. Given environmental history's marginality, this appropriation was initially of little consequence. In a first bibliographical assessment in 1985, Richard White explicitly sought to show that a new field was in the midst of being constituted on the basis of a series of dispersed objects. The many references show that he can rely on the ample and earlier bibliographies on the valorization of the American West: movements for conservation and preservation, the history of forests and forest services, the intellectual history of wilderness and of its major figures, the history of national parks, the study of landscapes and historical geography, the control of water supply, the valorization of agriculture.[23] R. White, "American environmental history: the development...[23] On the other hand, certain objects are not included: risks, for example, emerge at the same moment in sociology and anthropology, probably because they are too often assimilated into technological risks.[24] Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An...[24] Only insecticides provide an exception given that they link scientific theories, environmental transformation, and social change.[25] John H. Perkins, Insects, Experts and the Insecticide...[25] The repercussions of Silent Spring explain this interest. The second half of the 1980's proposes new objects, some of which are sketched out in a programmatic way: fishing and the disappearance of resources in fish, air pollution, the consequences of the expansion of the suburbs, the history of gender and the environment, the environmental history of industry.[26] Arthur McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and...[26] The columns of the Environmental History Review remain essentially filled with the United States. And yet elsewhere, the first studies in environmental history in African and Asian areas begin to emerge, for example hunting in Africa, forests in India, the occupation of land in China.[27] John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation...[27] These studies do not yet need to define themselves as part of environmental history. Studies on animals also have their own dynamic which was first situated in 18th and 19th century England with Keith Thomas and Harriet Ritvo before it reached the British colonies with John MacKenzie.[28] Keith Thomas, Dans le jardin de la Nature. La mutation...[28]
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Several lessons emerge from this second moment of US environmental history. The field was constituted through the invention of new objects more than through methods, concepts, or a theory of history. This inventiveness fully responds to the intuitions of its founders: we have to put nature into history, as much as we can, in order to draw out themes that had never before been studied. This territorial expansion can be translated through the inclusion of preexisting objects. Given that the first conference in environmental history did not take place until 1982 and was not widely attended, these ambitions were no more than a pipe dream.[29] The conference took place at the University of California,...[29] But little by little the terms "nature" and "geographical" cede their ground to "ecological" and "environmental," in other words to another type of disciplinary inscription even if the content is not necessarily different.
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The second lesson is found in the limits of a theoretical consensus, even if the Environmental Review does devote a special 1987 issue to theories of environmental history.[30] "Special issue: theories of environmental history,"...[30] In 1990, the Journal of American History devotes an entire issue to the definition of environmental history.[31] Journal of American History 76-4 (March 1990): 108...[31] The debate is extremely awkward because it is clear that the main figures in the field do not share the same theoretical positions on nature, even as they recognize a common identity in their practice of history. Stephen Pyne formulates this clearly when he states that he likes Donald Worster's histories but not his values; the disagreement is epistemological and political, while the agreement is empirical.[32] Stephen J. Pyne, "Firestick history," The Journal of...[32]
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When the first signs of recognition from historians begin to appear at the end of the 1980's, environmental history occupies an ambiguous place in the field of history. Historically, several proponents feel close to the wave of the 1960's, not only to new left history but also to women's studies, African-American history, Chicano history, and gay and lesbian history.[33] W. Cronon, "Uses," 1-2.[33] Environmental history was nonetheless unable to occupy the same positions of power and lay claim to the constitution of a distinct territory by refusing to be integrated into curricula of general history.[34] P. Novick, That Noble, 496, 459.[34] When it comes to defending the oppressed, there is an explicitly formulated sense that non-humans will always come after women, African-Americans, and other minorities.[35] M. Harvey, "Donald Worster," 153-154.[35] Even as late as 1995, Alfred Crosby will reproach environmental history for being a sect, with its association, the AAEH, and its journal, writing and speaking for itself without influencing the heart of the historians' community.[36] Alfred Crosby, "The past and present of environmental...[36] This institutional marginality preserves and maintains a certain distance from the post-modern turn of the 1980's. Environmental history is more attached to the ethical and activist dimension than it is to the subjectivity of the historian's point of view; it continues to affirm the certainty of the existence of materiality and of the facts to be reconstituted. In 1988, one of the best tableaux of American history in the 20th century can content itself with only one allusion to the environment, deeming it one of the era's new subjects into which young white liberal historians invest in a turn away from African-American studies.[37] P. Novick, That Noble, 489-490.[37] In the following decade, the end of this marginality coincides with other deep transformations that unsettle the field.
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