The authors propose and discuss four ‘intersections’ that have potential as loci of interdisciplinary engagement: mutual understanding; spatial scale and locale; time and change; and the environment and agency.
The author’s own research into the early years of European settlement plots an evolving cultural engagement with the indigenous environment, and in particular with forest or ‘bush,’ which ran parallel with its extensive replacement by agroecosystems.
Controversy over the claim that sugar depleted the soil and stunted subsequent rice crops reached a stalemate when both sugar scientists and their critics were accused of selectively choosing evidence according to political bias…
This article examines a series of projects and discussions among the Enlightenment elite in the Danish kingdom, that relate to the need for technological improvement and agricultural reform in Iceland, a distant province of the Danish state in the eighteenth century.
This paper shows how the story of Alpine milk illustrates that in premodern times food production reflected much more the connection between local land resources and farmer’s skills, tools, and practices—a link that has ceased to exist in the mindset of industrialised societies.
Australia and New Zealand share a southern, settler society history, and cultural solidarity as British colonies and dominions. Their early unity as ‘Australasia’ is where this paper begins, focusing on the strong role of science in shaping environmental history and policy in both countries.
This review presents European scholarship in environmental history by highlighting a limited number of works which have proved significant in their respective countries. The decade from 1994–2004 saw the development of a new scholarly network for environmental history in Europe.
Environmental history in and of the American South has developed in a different direction than the field in general in the United States, which has been shaped by its origins in the history of the American West.
The aim of this study was to analyse the swift land-use transition, from nomadic to agricultural, in the last colonised landscape of northern Sweden. Using historical documents and maps together with modern maps and a field survey, the authors wanted to link land-use patterns as strongly as possible to landscape features and ecosystems.
The objectives of this study were to describe changes in land use during c. 350 years in a Swedish agricultural landscape in relation to changes in human population and livestock, and to analyse relationships between historical land use and present-day plant species diversity.
