Environmental history

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The environmental history is a discipline of historical science that deals with the long-term development of the interactions of humans with their natural or cultured environment (or habitat concerned).

Questions

Modern environmental history takes both perspectives (of humans and the environment), in contrast to a deterministic approach that only asks to what extent environmental conditions have an impact on social developments. On the one hand, environmental history asks about non-human-made environmental changes (e.g. the ice ages , the warm and cold phases such as the Little Ice Age , storm surges , meteorite impacts , historical volcanic eruptions such as the year without summer) and its impact on human history. On the other hand, the focus of her interest are the social images of nature (religious-mythical, technical, holistic) that existed in the various epochs, the development of human knowledge about nature, the social regulations of dealing with nature ( environmental policy , environmental law ), the changes in Economic and lifestyles, their consequences for the environment and the repercussions on human societies. This includes diseases such as the plague or the flu or intercontinental infections such as the Spanish or French disease ..

An essential achievement of environmental history is the rational consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the natural environment of earlier cultures, in contrast to the enthusiastic idealization of earlier epochs and "golden ages" in which people supposedly lived in harmony with nature.

Wolfram Siemann and Nils Freytag advocate addressing the environment as the fourth basic category of historical studies alongside rule (politics), economy and culture. But there are also other categories for which this is also used: gender or historical region.

Older story

In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, various authors described serious, irreversible changes in the landscape and the environment. Plato lamented the erosion of the soil as a result of the clear cutting of the forests in the Attic mountains in the course of the Athens fleet building. The environmental problems of the metropolis of Rome were considerable. Warnings have also been given against lead poisoning in drinking water. In the medieval cities there were enormous ecological problems caused by rubbish and stench. Since the 16th century, there has been an increased awareness of ongoing changes in the landscape due to overexploitation due to the growing need for firewood and construction wood in large parts of Europe, which led to the first interventions in the forestry sector. Especially in England, the long-term consequences of the increased use of fossil fuels and logging for the mines have been documented since the 18th century (e.g. the transition of many tenants to grazing ). However, systematic environmental monitoring did not develop until the late 19th century. For example, since around 1860, natural lichen growth has been used as an indicator of exposure to air pollution.

Environmental history of modernity

If you let the modern age begin with the dominance of the industrial over the agricultural sector , then with it aggravated environmental problems began, not only through industrial production, but also through its social consequences such as urbanization and mobility as well as through new mentalities in the consumer society . This has resulted in complex historical research fields for environmental history. This also includes the social movements that arose from environmental issues and environmental awareness , from the homeland movement to the anti-nuclear movement . This also includes giant dictatorial projects such as the Stalinist canal construction ( White Sea-Baltic Canal ) or irrigation projects after the American Dust Bowl . For Germany there are many questions about the relationship between urbanization, agriculture and nature conservation .

Institutionalization

The institutionalization of environmental history began in the 1960s as a sub-discipline of historical studies , but soon developed into an interdisciplinary research area that refers to numerous human and natural science disciplines, including the history of philosophy or the history of ideas , the history of science (e.g. the history of medicine ) and history of popular empirical knowledge, legal history , political history (e.g. history of environmental policy ), economic history , history of technology . Closely related disciplines are geography , environmental sociology and environmental psychology . Despite its interdisciplinary orientation, environmental history remains an important branch of historical science. However, there are seldom separate chairs for the field of environmental history at historical institutes in Germany; mostly it is operated under other chair names, such as history of technology, history of the city. The department at the Ruhr University in Bochum , at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg and at the Technical University of Darmstadt is part of the chair denominations .

German-speaking representatives of environmental history research include Franz-Josef Brüggemeier , Bernd Herrmann , Christof Mauch , Christian Pfister , Joachim Radkau , Dieter Schott , Rolf Peter Sieferle , Wolfram Siemann , Frank Uekötter , Verena Winiwarter , Cornel Zwierlein , and the younger Jens Ivo Engels , Julia Herzberg , Martin Knoll.

In 1977 the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) was founded.

In 1999 the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) was founded. It publishes a quarterly newsletter ("ESEH Notepad") and has organized conferences every two years since 2001 (St. Andrews, Prague, Florence, Amsterdam, Turku, Munich, Versailles, Zagreb, 2019: Tallinn).

ASEH and ESEH jointly run an internet discussion forum called 'H-Environment'.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfram Siemann, Nils Freytag: Environment - a historical scientific basic category , in: Wolfram Siemann (Ed.), Environmental History . Topics and Perspectives , Munich 2003, 7–20, esp. 12f.
  2. ^ Karl-Wilhelm Weeber: Smog over Attica. Environmental behavior in antiquity . Artemis, 1990, ISBN 3-7608-1026-8 .
  3. ↑ Robert Guderian: Handbook of environmental changes and ecotoxicology: Vol. 2B: Terrestrial ecosystems. Berlin 2013, p. 294.
  4. ↑ history of aseh. American Society for Environmental History, accessed February 16, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Mission. European Society for Environmental History, accessed February 16, 2020 .
  6. ^ H-Environment. Humanities & Social Sciences Online, accessed February 16, 2020 .