forests

Reinhold Reith, Carson Fellow from October 2009 to March 2010, talks about his work on ‘An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period.’

The author argues that the analysis of historical energy systems can provide an explanation for the basic patterns of different social formations.

An introduction to the seven papers in this issue of Environment and History. The papers are based on presentations to the seventh conference of the Australian Forest History Society, held early in 2007 in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Only in recent times have serious historical studies been published about floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storm tides, forest-fires, and other natural disasters and their effects on human life.

Professional forest management in the Philippines is largely attributed to the ideas and endeavours of American foresters such as Gifford Pinchot, George Ahern and Henry Graves who were instrumental in establishing the Insular Bureau of Forestry in 1900 and in passing the forestry laws of 1904 and 1905.

While many saw the landscape transformation which followed the European settlement of New Zealand as firmly within the prevailing ‘doctrine of progress,’ this transformation was viewed with misgivings by others, who observed how deforestation led to erosion and floods, and advocated more prudent forest management.

This paper explores how economics, technology, politics and ecology interacted in causing ups and downs in the production of traditional iron making, and its subsequent decline in the early twentieth century.

This paper looks at early experimentation with tree planting in Canterbury and its encouragement, which predated attempts elsewhere in New Zealand.

While modern penal institutions exist, putatively, to transform the people held within them into law-abiding citizens, it is not generally recognised that since the early twentieth century, Australian and New Zealand penal systems have also sought to transform ‘wastelands’ into ordered, productive landscapes.

The forces that started formal forestry education in Australia and New Zealand from 1910 and 1924 respectively are traced.