mining

Natural Resources

Natural Resources

Apart from a diverse and previously unknown fauna, explorations and receding ice caps have uncovered a sought-after abundance of natural resources in the Arctic region. Historian Elena Baldassarri argues that the exploitation of these resources not only constitutes a threat to the non-human world, but also to the Inuit people. This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources.”

The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources

This exhibition tells the story of the Northwest Passage from the pursuit of a myth to the exploitation of natural resources. Historian Elena Baldassarri takes readers on a multimedia tour of the Arctic, featuring interactive maps, photographs, videos, and interviews with experts, scholars, and elders of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.

Elena Baldassarri

About the author

Baldassarri, Elena
Baldassarri, Elena

Roma Tre University, Italy

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Elena Baldassarri is an Assistant Professor in North American History at the Humanistic Department of Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy. Her research interests focus on the history of Canada and the United States, and the relationship between cultural and social rights in Canada. Her most recent publications cover US environmental policy, Canada’s sovereignty over the lands and waters of the Arctic. In past she has obtained a Canada Grant (2012) at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin, a Faculty Research Grants/Bourses de recherche International Council for Canadian Studies (ICCS) (2007), and a Travel Grant from the Italian Association for Canadian Studies (AISC) (2006). She is the author of several articles and books including Canada e Quebec: Un problema di identità nazionale (1947–70) [Canada and Quebec: a problem of national identity]. Roma: Viella, 2009, and has edited Percorsi migratori e accoglienza fra storia e politiche di gestione [Migration routes and migrant reception: history and policies], edited with Pia G. Celozzi Baldelli. Roma: Aracne, 2009, and La Guerra Fredda nella satira politica Est/Ovest [Cold War and political satire] edited with Pia G. Celozzi Baldelli. Roma: Aracne, 2010.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Myth and Adventure
Sovereignty
Natural Resources
Security
Timeline
Further Reading

Visions of Australia: Environments in History

About this issue

The contributions in this volume explore the way that Australasian environments have been envisioned, worked, and changed in the past, and how ideas about places inform the present and future of the continent.

Content

Histories of Transitions

Histories of Transitions

In this chapter of the virtual exhibition “Energy Transitions,” historian Nuno Luís Madureira argues that the study of such transitions itself has gone through changes over the course of history.

Energy Transitions

Human practices of energy consumption both transform—and are transformed by—social structures. This exhibition—written by historian Nuno Luís Madureira—introduces the concept of “energy transitions,” structural shifts in energy use and their pathways, obstacles, and consequences, challenging the view of “transitions” as the simple replacement of one energy resource by another.

by Nuno Luís Madureira

About the author

Madureira, Nuno Luís
Madureira, Nuno Luís

Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE), Portugal

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Nuno Luís Madureira is professor at the History Department of the Lisbon University Institute, former visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and Harvard University, and referee of the European Science Foundation. With several publications in the fields of contemporary global history, history of technology and energy and environmental policy, his last book is entitled Key Concepts in Energy (Heidelberg and New York: Springer, 2014).  His most recent research embraces the analysis of historical methods and nuclear technologies, particularly the plutonium fuel cycle.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
About the Exhibition
Histories of Transitions
Contrasting Transitions
Imagining Transitions
Recommended Reading

Bitumen Exploration and the Southern Re-Inscription of Northeastern Alberta: 1875–1967

 
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Perspectives Issue 2016/4

Longley traces how geographic and cartographic knowledge of the Athabasca region, Alberta, Canada, colonized the region in the southern imagination long before the oil sands industry began extraction there. The practices of exploration, surveying, and documentation mapped the Athabasca region in terms of its rich bitumen deposits, obscuring the histories of Indigenous people. The south gained political and economic control of the region, although this process is incomplete and contested.

The Environment & Society Portal is a project of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum. The center is supported by a grant from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Read more about the Portal in English and in German.