Orisha Trinidad: Drums and Colours

Orisha, an African-rooted religion practised in Trinidad and Tobago, has survived for generations despite much misunderstanding. David Tindall learns

By David Tindall | Issue 34 (November/December 1998) 0 Comments

It is time for the invisible to reveal themselves. The drums are speaking to the ancient ancestors of Africa. Tonight in a rural garden in central Trinidad, tradition dictates that it will be Shango, the Yoruba god of fire, thunder and lightning who will manifest himself in one of his flock, twisting and twirling in the candle shadows of the shrine. They are oblivious to the stormy accompaniment outdoors as Mother Nature plays fireworks in the midnight sky.

To the outsider this surreal scene seems like a wonderful piece of theatre, sound effects as if made to order, the dancing brilliantly choreographed by people just doing what comes naturally. To the devotee, the ebo, or feast, is much more. It is the most spiritually important ceremony in the Orisha religion; the season of sacrifice and thanksgiving, an almost week-long celebration of food, dance and song from midnight till dawn, during which time there will be many manifestations as the spirits interact in different ways with those possessed.

For anyone not brought up in the faith, the concept of being controlled by some cosmic force is hard to grasp. In fact today, as down the ages, there are those who, in their ignorance, still demonise this religion. Yet there is nothing demonic about Orisha, nothing sinister. It is a non-Christian religion, but as with other belief systems there is the notion of one supreme God — Oludumare.

Orisha spirits, many of them equated with Christian saints, are messengers between humankind and His divine Kingdom. Oya, Shango’s wife, mistress of speed and tempestuous wind, is paired with St Catherine; Oshun, goddess of water and beauty, with St Philomena; Osain, Yoruba god of herbal medicine, healing and prophecy, with St Francis; Shakpana, also a healer particularly of children’s illnesses, with St Jerome; Ogun, the warrior god of iron and steel, with St Michael.

Historically, Orisha worshippers have shown a preference for aspects of the Catholic faith, though the dogma of the Church is virtually ignored. In the early 19th century West African slaves in Trinidad were sometimes baptised into Catholicism en masse; it seems likely that many Orishas used the paraphernalia of the Catholic church as camouflage behind which they hid their African beliefs and practices. Their faith was not to be diminished by oppression. And yet, as we draw towards the end of another millennium the religion is still unrecognised by the census-takers of multi-cultural, multi-religious Trinidad and Tobago. There is still in place an outdated law which forbids the rites and rituals of the religion, though the status of Orisha worship in Trinidad is on the rise and its open appeal to the middle classes is apparently increasing. There is also an Orisha Marriage Bill presently undergoing final revision by the religion’s Council of Elders.

Some people have come to this African-based faith as an act of political and ideological self-expression, a way of reclaiming their identity within the cultural “callaloo” that is Trinidad today. As I see it, the grassroots devotee derives a sense of well-being and self-worth from practising a religion which is essentially community-based and in such close touch with Nature. The saints or gods are there to help the faithful cope with the stresses and strains of life, to protect the water, the soil, food, the roadways. Since there is no written liturgy in the Orisha faith, no sacred book, the continuity and uniformity of the religion depends on oral traditions maintained through the generations.

The structure of each shrine is basically the same, and so are the various objects or symbols inside. In the palais, the open-sided part of the building where the singing, dancing and drumming takes place, there are candles burning in all four corners, into which sweet olive oil or water will be poured from time to time as offerings to the gods, and at one end of the room, in front of the three drummers, there is Ogun’s sword embedded in the earthen floor. Around the blade are candles, bottles of olive oil, water or rum. An adjoining room, the chapelle, houses any statues or lithographs of the saints, crucifixes, candles, pots of water, bottles of olive oil and “tools” associated with the deities: swords, a double-bladed wooden axe, Shango’s principal icon, cutlasses, ceremonial brooms, chac-chacs and the shepherd’s crook. Every chapelle has its collection of thunderstones taken from some sacred place and usually kept in white dishes so they can be fed periodically with olive oil.

In a corner of the garden or compound of the shrine is the perogun, an area where a number of flags on 20-foot bamboo poles have been planted, flying the individual colours of those gods expected to “enter” on any particular night. Worshippers consider flags a conduit through which spirits may visit the shrine. It is here in this corner that the slaying of any sacrificial animals takes place. Candles and stools are also placed at various points in the garden for the convenience of powerful deities, and there is always a water trough or pond, because many spirits are also water gods. Water and blood are reckoned, as well, to be powerful matrices of spirit force. It seems that spirits, like people, demand a lot of attention and respect.

Tonight a red flag flies for Shango. Inside the building the drums are pounding in a call-and-response pattern. The worshippers swaying and chanting are somehow insulated from the thunder and lightning playing havoc beyond their enclave. No-one who experiences the exhausting drama of spirit possession will have any memory of what happened. Nor will they feel any pain should they take a bad fall. Feet that have walked through flame will show no scars. These people will feel only an inner strength, by divine grace, a kind of rebirth.

Shango is expected to manifest himself within one of those dancing inside the palais, but tonight is different and no-one within seems to notice that a middle-aged man who had been talking with friends on a verandah outside the shrine is now flat on his back in the mud and rain, stretched out like a corpse. I was talking to him a few hours ago — a quiet, avuncular man who had travelled to the Ebo every night during the week from his home 20 miles away in Port of Spain. Here he is now, entrenched in the garden, but suddenly starting to move, feet first, in seemingly uncontrollable spasms. The sheer effort of moving forward, inch by inch, towards the candle flame in the doorway of the palais, seems almost too much for him, judging by his facial contortions. It is as though the Earth’s magnetism is reluctant to let him go. He is like a prisoner trying to free himself from invisible shackles.

Now the chanting, dancing throng inside become aware that the manifestation they are awaiting indoors is slowly emerging from the storm. A single candle in the doorway shows the way, and olive oil is poured along the route. As if lifting some enormous weight, he heaves himself out of the quagmire and crashes awkwardly into the door frame, one leg twisted beneath him. The atmosphere is electric, the air filled with incense offered to the four corners of the building (no different from the Catholic high mass). The drums and chanting reach a crescendo; women in white make the way clear for the man being “ridden” by the spirit. Gradually he stands, and moves into the light as though dragging chains.

He is divested of the sharp-edged jewellery around his neck and anything else that might cause injury to himself or anyone else, and his trousers are rolled up to the knee. Finally, as he tries to hold his balance, he is tied around the waist and shoulder with a length of red cloth. Then he staggers through the worshippers and into the chapelle which is said to be his earthly domain. In a matter of minutes he re-emerges, straight as a ramrod now, clutching the shepherd’s crook.

Shango surveys his flock slowly with the care and concern of a father checking that all is well. His eyes, his face, speak volumes as the drums roll.

From the chapelle the head of the shrine, Mother Joan, brings in the candle-lit dish containing sweet olive oil and the sacred thunderstone (this one from Mount St Benedict). She stands before Shango as devotees come in turn to kneel and receive his blessings. It is a powerful scene in which there is obvious respect for the shepherd in their midst guiding their every move.

And Shango himself, it seems, is not without a guardian. His wife, Oya, has now manifested herself in one of the white-robed ladies and is twirling around the floor brandishing an axe, as if to ward off unwanted spirits or visitors. She is a human tempest, one second in the centre of the floor and the next spinning outside into the storm to check the compound for anything amiss. She stops, axe in hand, in front of people standing in the garden. She gestures that she wants them inside the palais; her face carries that simple message. One woman runs off into the night, shrieking.

The blessings, the singing, chanting and drumming go on until a cock crowing signals the thin light of dawn. Only then does the torrential rain stop and worshippers begin to step out into the warm promise of sunshine. Everyone is smiling and you’d think they were just arriving, fresh as paint, for a garden party.

It had been the same all week: a gathering of 60 or 70 people, young and elderly, from far and near, who came to Mother Joan’s ebo around 10 p.m. every evening in a head-tie and dress of a different colour to please the spirits.

During this week of marathons, Wednesday was yellow for the god Osain, he who protects the forest, who can help people in distress, who can find jobs for them, and food. He has another attribute I would like to have known about sooner, as a long-time sufferer with back pain: Osain is also said to be a very good chiropractor.

Shango’s night had so appropriately coincided with thunder and lightning; Osain’s evening is dry — and yet wet with moonlight, palms pointing silver fingers into the shrine. Typically the celebration begins with Christian prayers, the drums rolling quietly behind the Hail Marys. Then all sound ceases briefly, and when the drums start again they are speaking a different language, and so are the worshippers. Instantly we are in West Africa, and the song leader guides us through the musical offerings to different gods. There will be invitation songs, all sung in Yoruba, asking the orishas, or saints, to visit the shrine and possess one of the devotees. There will be acceptance songs as an expression of gratitude after manifestations, and work songs sung while a spirit is attending to or consulting with someone. There are also pleasure songs to entertain the gods after they have completed their work.

Usually the song leader sings for the saints in a particular order but since there is no written liturgy the order may differ from shrine to shrine. Generally the sequence starts with songs for Eshu, the gateman, opening the way to the spiritual experience, then Ogun, the protector, followed by Osain, Shakpana, Emanje (St Anne), Oshun and Erele (equated with Jonah, not as a saint, but as more of a prophet, which I suppose is reasonable, given his adventures at sea). Osain who is said to take special care of children is very popular at Mother Joan’s shrine. She’s had 10 of her own, six of them still at home, and there are grandchildren. Tonight, the palais is jumping with manifestations, at one point half a dozen at a time. There is an explosion of drums and colour.

Several men, at the height of spirit possession, walk on burning coals without a hint of pain. Osain, I’m told, sometimes feels uncomfortable unless there is fire and the sight of men treading the glowing embers is proof, apparently, that he is there. One of Mother Joan’s daughters glides gracefully towards the drummers with a live morocoy perfectly balanced upon her head, the top of its shell lit by four candles. The morocoy is one of the favoured offerings to Osain. So is the white goat which is also brought into the throng to be washed and anointed with oil. There it stands, chewing, blissfully unconcerned. Finally it is led to all four candle-lit corners along with other live offerings — a pair of ducks, a pair of hens, a pair of chickens. A man picks up the goat and dances with it draped around his neck Then, amid the song and dance of celebration, and a puff of incense, a pair of hands holds aloft a baby, only one month old, while prayers are sung for Osain to bestow his blessings upon the child.

And so the night’s spiritual activity moves on relentlessly towards its finale in the moonlit garden, the drummers having re-assembled beneath the flags to welcome those bringing their animals to the sacrificial altar. Prayers are chanted and the first in line, the white goat, no longer chewing, finds himself being danced around again — this time on Mother Joan’s shoulders. A final fling. Then, it is quickly over. The cutlass falls.

Osain was well served this night. In the days to come, all the food, when prepared, will be given to the needy in the district, and beneath the flags in Mother Joan’s shrine will lie some evidence to commemorate her Ebo. In this case it will be the morocoy.

There will be many such ebos in the months of the feast season, and some worshippers, along with drummers, will travel around from one to another. I should mention that not all the shrines sacrifice animals. Some prefer to offer fruit instead, either on moral or financial grounds, or perhaps a combination of both.

According to the most recent count there are now 70 Orisha shrines in Trinidad. But invitations to visit any one of them do not come easily, and that is understandable. The Orisha religion is often misinterpreted even among those who profess religious tolerance, and devotees are cautious about outsiders. In fact until fairly recently in the minds of many Trinidadians the name Shango, and the wild images that it might conjure, had come to epitomise Orisha worship. Way back in history the label stuck because Shango was King of the Oyo people (hence his wife’s name Oya) who were prominent among the enslaved Yoruba. In African theology, Shango is one of the gods who originally walked the earth.

It is interesting that Mother Joan’s shrine is in the middle of a Hindu community who fly different flags for different spirits in their gardens. Some of the Hindus happily come to Orisha ceremonies and vice versa: religious tolerance in practice. History is important to all religious communities, including the Orishas, which might explain the tendency these days towards Africanisation. After all, it is said that a people without a history is like a tree without roots.

Maybe one day the census-takers will visit an Ebo, and amid the drums and colours of an African rainbow, what is officially invisible will be revealed.

David Tindall is a former BBC correspondent who was their man in West Africa during Nigeria’s Biafra War

© MEP Publishers | Orisha Trinidad: Drums and Colours | Caribbean Beat Magazine https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-34/drums-and-colours#ixzz6MT5VYE7g

What is Global Environmental History? 
Conversation with Piero Bevilacqua, Guillermo Castro, Ranjan Chakrabarti, Kobus du Pisani, John R. McNeill, Donald Worster 

The following telematic debate has provided historians from different historiographic traditions and distant countries with an opportunity to compare views on the diff erent interpretive paradigms. A wide range of subjects was covered: the definition of the discipline’s fi eld of research, themes, and chronological scope; the relationship between global and local; the role of the West in history and historiography; the perspective of the dominated; the discipline’s role in policy making; and its relationship with the natural sciences. 

http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/Forum-GE-2-2008_0.pdf

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Who politicized the environment and climate change?

February 1, 2016

Protector in chief: Theodore Roosevelt with conservationist John Muir at Yosemite in 1906. U.S. Library of Congress

An environmental activist friend of mine recently shook her head and marveled at the extraordinary accomplishments of the last several months. “Still lots of work to be done,” she said. “But wow! This has been an epic period for environmentalists!”

From the rejection of the Keystone pipeline to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (COP21), “epic” may be an apt descriptor for someone who is an environmentalist.

However, nothing galvanizes opposing forces to action better than significant wins by their foes. And 2016 appears to promise that environmental issues – particularly climate change – will be more politicized than ever before.

It wasn’t always this way.

By and large, environmental action since the 1960s proceeded in the U.S. in a bipartisan fashion, emphasizing issues of human health and resource conservation. That’s no longer true: almost by default, the Democratic Party stands largely alone, rather than together with the Republican Party, to uphold the ethic that environmental protection is a united, American common interest.

How have we gotten to a point where the environment has become such a partisan issue?
From Teddy R. to Reagan

The intellectual roots of American environmentalism are most often traced back to the 19th-century ideas of Romanticism and Transcendentalism from thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau. These philosophical and aesthetic ideas grew into initiatives for preserving the first national parks and monuments, an effort closely associated with Theodore Roosevelt. By the close of the 19th century, a combination of resource exploitation and increasing leisure led to a series of conservation efforts, such as protection of birds from feather hunters, which were often led by wealthy women.

Today’s environmentalism clearly harks back to these origins with aspects of being a social movement that seeks clear political outcomes, including regulation and government action. But much of what became known as the “modern environmental movement” originally coalesced around groups that formed under the influence of 1960s radicalism.The large oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969 provided some of the impetus for landmark environmental laws signed by Nixon, including the Clean Air Act, which he signed December 31, 1970. National Archives

The biggest impact of these organizations, though, came during the later 1960s and 1970s, when their membership skyrocketed with large numbers of the concerned, but not-so-radical, middle class. Through the formation of “nongovernment organizations” (NGOs), ranging widely from the Audubon Society to the Sierra Club, Americans found a mechanism through which they could demand a political response to environmental problems from lawmakers.

During the 1970s and 1980s, NGOs often initiated the call for specific policies and then lobbied members of Congress to create legislation. Such bipartisan action included clean water laws that restored Lake Erie and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River or responded to dramatic events such as the Santa Barbara Oil Spill in 1969.

The nuclear power accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 fueled an antinuclear protest, a major concern of many environmentalists. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

Republican and Democratic presidents of this era signed laws that had begun with grassroots demands for environmental action. Environmental issues, whether they were the effects of acid rain or the ozone hole, had become a prime concern in the political arena. Indeed, by the 1980s, NGOs had created a new political and legal battlefield as each side of environmental arguments sought to lobby lawmakers.

These gains by environmentalists had a ripple effect politically. In “A Climate of Crisis,” historian Patrick Allitt describes the opposition to environmentalism that emerged as a result of the bipartisan action on environment in the 1970s.

In particular, he describes the “anti-environmental” response manifested in policies of President Ronald Reagan, who slowed efforts to limit private development on public lands and set out to shrink the responsibilities of the federal government.
Antiregulation

Today, portions of this backlash appear to inform the views of candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential primary who reiterate the libertarian belief that it’s best to severely limit government regulation of the environment.

And compared to the cooperative vision of past leaders including President Teddy Roosevelt and Congressman John Saylor, who fought in the 1960s for wilderness and scenic river legislation, the Republican environmental mandate of the past appears today to be stymied.Climate change and environmental issues have barely come up in presidential debates, with candidates typically complaining that environment regulations will harm the economy. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz, for example, tapped into this spirit when in December 2015 he held a three-hour “hearing” titled “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Climate Change” (which technically was convened by the science panel of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he chairs).

Prior to his hearing on the topic, climate change had been little discussed at the party’s presidential debates; however, Cruz proclaimed that the “accepted science” proving climate change was actually a “religion” being forced on the American public by “monied interests.”

By contrast, Democrats stress the term “common sense” and appear more than content to allow their party to become the primary bastion for environmental concern. Hillary Clinton, as the likely Democratic presidential candidate, has often been publicly ahead of the Obama administration on environmental issues.

For instance, when in early 2015 Obama approved the expansion of Arctic drilling, Clinton openly opposed it. Also, Clinton was openly against the Keystone pipeline project long before Obama definitively rejected it.

In both Keystone and Arctic drilling, Obama allowed the issues a long and very public vetting process that has revealed a powerful, broad-based environmental lobby. NGOs such as 350.org and others have demonstrated a willingness for activist demonstrations, particularly due to a deep base of support for issues such as climate change and sustainable energy.

Republican candidates seem prepared to relent possible compromise on environmental questions in order to appeal to a special interest faction of their party. Overall, though, Gallup polling demonstrates broad-based support for environmental issues, including a solid 46 percent favoring protecting the environment over economic development.
Climate change worsens the political divide

Going forward, the most revealing flashpoint on issues related to the environment is likely to be climate change, particularly after the historic Paris Agreement of December 2015.

Global warming first made front page news in the 1980s when NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the Senate. Then in 2007, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made history by specifying the connection between temperature rise and human activity with “very high confidence.”An emerging political force: activists for action on climate change and sustainable energy. Steve Rhodes/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

In its relation to environmentalism, climate change represents a clear expansion of thinking. While local issues such as oil spills and toxic waste remain concerns, climate change clarified the possible planet-changing extent of the human impact. As a concept, it has had time to percolate through human culture so that today we are most concerned with issues of “mitigation” and “adaptation” – managing or dealing with implications.

In each case, these responses to climate change involve plans for regulations to, for example, limit carbon emissions. In response to the increasing call for structural changes to our economy and society, contrary voices (such as that of Cruz) have found traction by saying mitigation efforts will undercut economic development and, in general, disrupt our everyday lives.

Not surprisingly, concrete mitigation efforts, such as discussions of “cap and trade” legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and international pacts such as COP21, have also spurred panicked responses among those destined to be impacted by the new thinking. For instance, coal companies and a number of states openly fight efforts by the EPA to monitor and regulate CO2 as a pollutant.

So who politicized the environment? Ultimately, voters have.

By tying environmental issues such as climate change to our system of laws and regulations at the end of the 1960s, Americans permanently chained these concerns to political vagaries in the future. Politics is now an integral part of the process of regulating the nation’s environment and health.

Therefore, a better question might be: “Who exploits the issue of environmental protection for political gain?” That answer, it appears, unfolds today for American voters.

Author

Brian C. Black

Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University provides funding as a founding partner of 

The Conversation

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Exxon’s Rex Tillerson and the rise of Big Oil in American politics

January 10, 2017 

In 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, part of a behind-the-scenes policy to ensure access to oil for the U.S. and its allies. National Archives and Records Administration

“How Big Oil Bought the White House and Tried to Steal the Country” is the subtitle of a book that tells the story of a presidential election in which a candidate allowed money from big oil companies to help him win office and then rewarded them with plum appointments in his cabinet.

With President-elect Donald Trump picking former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, one might think the book is an early exposé of the presidential election of 2016.

Instead, it’s from “The Teapot Dome Scandal,” a book that tells the story of a corruption scandal that rocked the term of President Warren G. Harding’s administration in the 1920s.

In the context of Tillerson’s controversial appointment, history is a useful guide to understand the rising political power of Big Oil over the past century, a subject I’ve studied and written about. And with Tillerson, the political influence of the energy sector has reached a high point, particularly because it strikes the president-elect and other observers as a sensible, mainstream selection.Tillerson is no stranger to Russia’s Vladimir Putin as ExxonMobil has worked with Russian oil giant Rosneft to develop oil and natural gas fields in Russia and North America. AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Government Press Service

But this is only the latest episode of a tight relationship between energy and the U.S. government that stretches over decades.
Access to energy

In 1921, when Albert Fall accepted his position as secretary of the interior, he interpreted his responsibility to accelerate energy development on federal lands, including some in an out-of-the-way place known as Teapot Dome, Wyoming. And he believed that this meant involving private entities.

He brokered a deal with Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, major players in the booming American oil fields of the early 1900s, blazing a new trail for federal policy – a trail that laid clear the crucial relationship between energy development and political power. In Fall’s case, he personally accepted cash to allow this access to oil developers, which made him the first cabinet official to go to jail for crimes committed while serving in office.Albert B. Fall, the former secretary of the interior, became the first cabinet official to go to jail for accepting money from oil companies to clear the way for drilling on public lands. Library of Congress

Since its indiscreet beginning with Teapot Dome, of course, oil has only become more essential to the lives of every American. If we follow the lead of Life magazine creator Henry Luce, who referred to the 20th century as the “American Century,” we are by association also declaring it the era of fossil fuels and particularly of petroleum. Oil and other fossil fuels were the relatively inexpensive energy resources that provided the foundation for the modern consumer society and political policy often focused on ensuring that supplies be assured and kept stable.

Despite energy being central to our society, though, the policy influence of Big Oil most often functioned behind the scenes. For example, President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 struck a deal in a secret meeting with King Ibn Saud to allow the U.S. and its allies to have access to Saudi oil for decades to come. During the ensuing decades, foreign oil development was carried out by international companies but often required the support, if discreet, of the U.S. government.
Out from behind the scenes

In domestic politics after 1950, the executives of oil corporations were often involved informally in elections, particularly as donors or lobbyists to candidates more friendly to the industry than others. Most often, though, Big Oil remained in the background.

In the modern era of heightened environmental awareness, Republican administrations typically created policies that benefited the oil companies. It was, for instance, the Reagan administration that sought to undermine the new environmental regulations of the 1970s, particularly with Anne Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and James Watt as secretary of the interior. It was Watt who allowed extensive energy development on federal lands under his jurisdiction – however, with no payment to himself.

Through the 1980s, energy resources on federal lands were opened to development, and environmental regulations were curbed to be more “friendly” to corporate interests. Most often, Reagan was unabashedly overt in his approach in this regard; however, Big Oil and energy were not cornerstones of his administration, per se.George W. Bush, pictured here with Saudi King Abdulla, traveled in 2008 to Saudi Arabia to ask the country to pump more oil in order to lower prices. It did not. AP Photo/Susan Walsh

The tenor and role of oil in government changed more substantially when George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush – both former oil executives – were in office. They prioritized an agenda that, while not confrontational, grew from incredibly close consultation with the energy industry that they knew so well.

Dick Cheney personifies the proximity of these energy interests to power during this era. After serving under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Cheney was the CEO of one of the world’s largest drilling and rigging suppliers, Halliburton Inc., during the Clinton years before reemerging as George W. Bush’s vice president in 2000.

In the book “Private Empire,” journalist Steve Coll describes Cheney’s consultation with industry executives, from which the Bush energy policy took shape. These close consultations drew criticism for Cheney’s reluctance to disclose the participants and the apparent influence the industry had on policy.

Thus, a review of presidential administrations shows the growing clout of leaders from the energy industry. What’s perhaps more revealing, however, is the increasing willingness to allow this connection to be seen by the public – to view it as business as usual – as evidenced by Tillerson’s appointment.
Direction on foreign policy?

These political changes have come at a time of growing national awareness of the importance of energy, both as a source of wealth from the expansion of domestic drilling in the U.S. and as a contributor to climate change from burning fuels.

While the George W. Bush administration internally pressured government agencies to subdue scientific findings that supported climate change, the Obama administration used regulations and government science to pursue an agenda of mitigating climate change and adaptively planning for a different future. In this approach, climate change was included within the Department of State as a matter of national security.

Tillerson’s appointment, along with other cabinet appointees, suggests a major reversal on the nation’s serious treatment of the issue of climate change.

While Obama worked with over 100 nations to craft the 2015 Paris climate accord, ExxonMobil under Tillerson faced criticism and lawsuits accusing it of concealing the science that substantiated climate change.

Tillerson and the company, which traces its origins back to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and has operated in about 200 countries and territories, is of course no stranger to foreign affairs and politics. Coll quotes Lee Raymond, Tillerson’s predecessor at the energy giant, as saying: “Presidents come and go; Exxon doesn’t come and go.”

As the 20th century closed, Coll described Exxon’s approach to policy in this fashion:


“The corporation’s lobbyists bent and shaped American foreign policy, as well as economic, climate, chemical and environmental regulation. Exxon maintained all-weather alliances with sympathetic American politicians while calling as little attention to its influence as possible.”

With Tillerson as the country’s top diplomat, the opportunity to redefine the rationale and methods for the entirety of our interactions with other nations is unparalleled. While this has been true to some extent since World War II, this appointment institutionalizes the view that our national diplomacy – much like a business – will be guided by resource acquisition, particularly energy.

This article has been corrected on January 31, 2017 to indicate that Halliburton is one of the largest oil services companies in the world, not the largest.

Author

Brian C. Black

Distinguished Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Pennsylvania State University



THE CONSERVATION

Environmental History: The Origins, Stakes, and Perspectives of a New Site for Research

 Fabien Locher

CNRS-EHESS

andGrégory Quenet

Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine

2009/4 (No 56-4)

• Pages : 224
• ISBN : 9782701151083
• DOI : 10.3917/rhmc.564.0007
• Publisher : Belin

AN EXCERPT 

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]

4

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 18^th and 19^th 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 20^th 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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