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from the editor
| IN 1957, THE FOREST History Society began publication of the Forest History Newsletter, precursor to Forest History, Journal of Forest History, and Forest & Conservation History, which merged with the Environmental History Review to become Environmental History in 1996. In honor of the Newsletter's fiftieth anniversary, I asked Brian Donahue to reflect on the journal's most widely cited forestry essay, Hugh Raup's "View from John Sanderson's Farm," published in 1966. Raup was about to step down as director of Harvard Forest, and he used the occasion to provoke a lively debate about forest conservation. Donahue's carefully crafted essay offers not only a "new view" from Sanderson's farm but also a nuanced appraisal of Raup's contribution to the fields of ecology, silviculture, and history. A major part of his legacy was to inject a healthy dose of skepticism toward contemporary forestry practices. As Donahue notes, Raup's main complaint against Harvard foresters was that they had been "misled by half a century of fuzzy ecological thinking and were trying to induce sustained yield from managed versions of stable, climax ecosystems that had never been there in the first place." |
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Each of the next three essays has a regional focus. Thomas Campanella's "'Mark Well the Dismal Gloom'" is set in New England, which experienced, on May 19, 1780, a "dark day" that evoked widespread panic from Maine to Massachusetts and gave rise to a wide variety of theologically and scientifically based explanations as to what had caused this ominous interruption of sunlight. Mart Stewart's "From King Cane to King Cotton" examines the political ecology of canebreaks, one of the most ubiquitous features of the south's floral landscape before the triumph of cotton plantations. Ted Moore's "Democratizing the Air," meanwhile, focuses on the efforts of the Women's Chamber of Commerce to improve air quality in Salt Lake City at a time when mining and business interests still largely dominated local and state politics throughout much of the West. |
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I first heard Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde's provocative essay, "The Problem of the Problem of Environmental History," at the Nordic Environmental History Conference, in Turku, Finland, in 2005, and then again at the Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge, England, in 2006, and so I was pleased when they decided to send a much-enlarged and revised version to Environmental History for publication. They currently are compiling an anthology of essays on the global environment that will incorporate many of the provocative ideas they present in this essay.
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THIS ISSUE OF the journal introduces a new feature: short interviews with leading practitioners in the fields of environmental and forest history. Char Miller and I are deeply grateful to Hal Rothman for agreeing to undertake the first interview, despite a debilitating illness and his commitment to many other time-consuming projects. The next issue will feature an interview with Roderick Nash. While Char and I will conduct the first several interviews, we would welcome the participation and assistance of others in this series. If you would like to conduct or co-conduct an interview, please let us know.
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| FINALLY, I CANNOT end without making a short reference to Edvard Munch's "The Scream." No, this is not a reflection of how I feel—at least not most of time!—after completing my first full year as journal editor. Rather, I was intrigued by a reference in Thomas Campanella's essay to an article entitled "When the Sky Ran Red: The Story Behind The Scream" (Sky & Telescope, February 2004), which suggested that Munch's iconic image reflected not only modernist angst but also a particular natural event. Kathryn Morse then secured permission to use "The Scream" on the cover and arranged for the authors of the Sky and Telescope essay—Marilynn Olson, Donald Olson, and Russell Doescher—to write a "Gallery" piece on Munch for this issue. |
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MARK CIOC
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