Bücher der Reihe Environment in History: International Perspectives

Though still a relatively young field, the study of Latin American environmental history is no longer in its infancy. Bringing together thirteen leading experts on the region, A Living Past gives a transnational and thematically diverse survey of historical developments since the nineteenth century.

Historians of Russia were relative latecomers to the field of environmental history. Yet, in the past decade, the exploration of Russian environmental history has burgeoned. Thinking Russia's History Environmentally showcases collaboration amongst an international set of scholars who focus on the contribution that the study of Russian environments makes to the global environmental field. Through discerning analysis of natural resources, the environment as a factor in historical processes such as industrialization, and more recent human-animal interactions, this volume challenges stereotypes of Russian history and in so doing, highlights the unexpected importance of Russian environments across a time frame well beyond the ecological catastrophes of the Soviet period.

Even leaving aside the vast death and suffering that it wrought on indigenous populations, German ambitions to transform Southwest Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were futile for most. For years colonists wrestled ocean waters, desert landscapes, and widespread aridity as they tried to reach inland in their effort of turning outwardly barren lands into a profitable settler colony. In his innovative environmental history, Martin Kalb outlines the development of the colony up to World War I, deconstructing the common settler narrative, all to reveal the importance of natural forces and the Kaisereich's everyday violence.

The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was an event of obviously transnational significance-not only in the airborne particulates it deposited across the Northern hemisphere, but in the political and social repercussions it set off well beyond the Soviet bloc. Focusing on the cases of Great Britain and France, this innovative study explores the discourses and narratives that arose in the wake of the incident among both state and nonstate actors. It gives a thorough account of the stereotypes, framings, and "e;othering"e; strategies that shaped Western European nations' responses to the disaster, and of their efforts to come to terms with its long-term consequences up to the present day.

In the 1960s and 1970s, rapidly growing environmental awareness and concern not only led to widespread calls for new policies, but also created unprecedented demand for ecological expertise by the likes of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Changes in the Air looks at New Orleans and its changing cultural responses to hurricanes over three centuries, carefully exploring the complex interplay of sociopolitical, economic, legal, and cultural factors in the development or stagnation of adaptive practices.

Covering a host of both notorious and little-known substances, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted over the past two hundred years.

National Parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a global phenomenon. This volume adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time.

In spite of decades of research on toxicants, along with the growing role of scientific expertise in public policy and the unprecedented rise in the number of national and international institutions dealing with environmental health issues, problems surrounding contaminants and their effects on health have never appeared so important...

Cold has long been a fixture of Russian identity both within and beyond the nation, even as the ongoing effects of climate change complicate its meaning and cultural salience. The Russian Cold assembles fascinating new contributions from a variety of scholarly traditions...

The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation's forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.

Argues that deficient knowledge of the environment is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Makes significant contribution to the inter-disciplinary debate about the production and resilience of ignorance.

National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a global phenomenon.

Following Stalin's lead, the newly communist states of Eastern Europe pursued a total "transformation of nature" in the 1940s and 1950s intended to improve agricultural outputs. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, exploring their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.

Earth's fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between "e;rural"e; and "e;urban,"e; "e;backwardness"e; and "e;development,"e; and "e;before"e; and "e;after,"e; shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.

This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of regional bodies, professional communities, the United Nations, NGOs, and other international organizations during the twentieth century.

This series of fascinating case studies traces the twin histories of biking and recycling, providing valuable context for today's policy challenges.

Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of "East" and "West."

Eleven chapters, organized regionally, explore the origins of state forestry policy in Northern Europe from the early modern period to the present.

This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of regional bodies, professional communities, the United Nations, NGOs, and other international organizations during the 20th century.

Today, the East African state of Tanzania is renowned for wildlife preserves such as the Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and the Selous Game Reserve. Yet few know that most of these initiatives emerged from decades of German colonial rule. This book gives the first full account of Tanzanian wildlife conservation up until World War I, focusing upon elephant hunting and the ivory trade as vital factors in a shift from exploitation to preservation that increasingly excluded indigenous Africans. Analyzing the formative interactions between colonial governance and the natural world, The Nature of German Imperialism situates East African wildlife policies within the global emergence of conservationist sensibilities around 1900.

In recent years, activists & policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability, and waste recycling and bicycles both exemplify this development. This series of fascinating case studies traces the twin histories of biking and recycling, providing valuable context for today's policy challenges.

Rivers figure prominently in a nation's historical memory, and the Volga and Mississippi have special importance in Russian and American cultures. Beginning in the pre-modern world, both rivers served as critical trade routes connecting cultures in an extensive exchange network, while also sustaining populations through their surrounding wetlands and bottomlands. In modern times, "e;Mother Volga"e; and the "e;Father of Waters"e; became integral parts of national identity, contributing to a sense of Russian and American exceptionalism. Furthermore, both rivers were drafted into service as the means to modernize the nation-state through hydropower and navigation. Despite being forced into submission for modern-day hydrological regimes, the Volga and Mississippi Rivers persist in the collective memory and continue to offer solace, recreation, and sustenance. Through their histories we derive a more nuanced view of human interaction with the environment, which adds another lens to our understanding of the past.

The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a "e;scientific national park,"e; thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

From the proliferation of synthetic additives to the threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the chapters in Risk on the Table zero in on key historical cases in North America and Europe that illuminate the history of food safety.

Drawing upon the fields of environmental history and political ecology, Colonial Seeds in African Soil unravels the complex forest conservation history of Sierra Leone during the 20th century.

Covering a host of both notorious and little-known substances, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted over the past two hundred years.

Following Stalin's lead, the newly communist states of Eastern Europe pursued a total "transformation of nature" in the 1940s and 1950s intended to improve agricultural outputs. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, exploring their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.

Conservation's Roots illuminates the diversity of practices in premodern environmental history across Europe from the Middle Ages to the brink of modernity.