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Book Review
| Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War. Edited by Richard P. Tucker and Edmund P. Russell. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2004. 288 pp. Maps, index. Paper $29.95.
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| Natural Enemy, Natural Ally is an excellent and important collection of essays that is poised not only to make a lasting contribution to the fields of environmental and military history, but also to add insight into a variety of historical questions. Editors Richard Tucker and Edmund Russell characterize the collection "as a sample of early initiatives, not as an exhaustive review of what the field will become" (p. 3). Though at first glance the individual essays seem disparate, Tucker and Russell expertly tie them together in their introductory essay, identifying the numerous themes that weave coherence throughout the collection. In addition, the editors identify three specific purposes they intend the volume to fulfill: first, to merge environmental and military histories to help explain the ways war and nature shape each other; second, to highlight emerging trends and the significance of such research; and third, to encourage further study. |
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One of the volume's best qualities is the breadth of topics included. Richard Tucker's "Impacts of Warfare on the Natural World" details major developments in war's effects on nature across time and space. The second essay, by Stewart Gordon, examines the impact of warfare on the environment in pre-colonial India (circa 1560-1820). Roger S. Levine's article, "African Warfare in All Its Ferocity," examines the military encounters between Africans and the British colonial regime in the early nineteenth-century, contrasting how two cultures, the Zulu and the Xhosa-speaking peoples, adapted their military strategies to their local environments. Mark Fiege explains in "Gettysburg and the Organic Nature of the American Civil War" that that war "was a duel in which two social and biological entities battled one another in the medium of nature" (p. 94). |
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The last six essays focus on the two world wars, but the geographic and thematic diversity that characterizes the first part of the collection remains intact. Richard Tucker's article, his second contribution to the volume, traces the process of globalization of the timber industry between 1918 and 1945 in response to wartime demands. Edmund Russell reprises his path-breaking argument in "'Speaking of Annihilation': Mobilizing for War Against Human and Insect Enemies, 1914-1945," making it clear once again the power of language and technology in fighting wars against humans and nature. Simo Laakkonen's "War—An Ecological Alternative to Peace?" and William Tsutsui's "Landscapes in the Dark Valley" ably demonstrate the ambiguous nature of war's effects on the Finnish and Japanese environments respectively. Judith Bennett illustrates in her essay "Pests and Disease in the Pacific War" that wartime migrations of humans and animals provided parasites like cattle ticks "an opportunity for invasion and colonization" (p. 219) on the Allied-controlled island of New Caledonia. The Second World War also allowed free movement of other species according to Kurk Dorsey; decreased whaling activity during the years of conflict opened the door, if only slightly, for efforts at conservation for the dwindling blue and fin whale populations. |
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The volume's balance and diversity will appeal to a variety of audiences, and will be especially useful for teachers of both military and environmental history courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, individual essays could be integrated fruitfully into topic-specific courses like the American Civil War and modern African history. Instructors will likely need to supplement the maps included in the volume (and should correct the error on page 6 stating General George Sherman marched across Georgia—it was William T.), but the drawbacks are few overall. Indeed, the volume is a significant addition to a small but growing number of studies that examine the connections between war and environment and certainly will inspire others to fill the gaps this volume necessarily had to leave. As each of the essays makes clear, war's effects on the natural environment and nature's effects on war are not always predictable. Ultimately, this ambiguous message is the most important contribution of the volume. |
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Lisa M. Brady is assistant professor of history at Boise State University. Her work focuses on war and environment with particular attention to the American Civil War. |
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