| EDMUND RUSSELL opens
this issue with a powerful challenge—scholars need to pay more
attention to evolution as a historical force. His argument is brilliant
and wide-ranging. I am particularly impressed by Russell s case
for the study of domestication. If we aim as a field to offer insight
into the entirety of human interactions with the non-human world,
we need more studies of the everyday role of plants and animals
in history. Since the domestication of dogs and the beginning of
agriculture, humans have shaped the evolution of many forms of life.
The deliberate manipulation of plant and animal genetics has accelerated
tremendously in the last hundred years, and humanity now depends
more than ever on biotechnology, broadly defined. Yet we cannot
understand the history of domestication by looking only at political,
economic, cultural, and social forces. We also need to understand
the complexities of evolutionary change.
To underscore the importance of Russell s argument, the cover
image in this issue comes from a chapter on domestic pigeons in
Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants Under
Domestication, first published in 1868. Darwin bred and studied
pigeons. Though all the domestic breeds had descended from one
source, he wrote, the amount of variation in pigeons was "extraordinarily
great," and the differences among breeds therefore revealed
much about "the progress of change in domestic animals."
Lisa Kiser's article takes us back to the world of St. Francis
of Assisi. Francis has become a man out of time. His ideas still
are a source of inspiration to many environmentalists today. Yet
his continuing power to inspire has obscured his role as a historical
figure—a figure we see through the eyes of his first followers..
What do the early accounts of his life tell us about the environmental
history of thirteenth-century Italy? To suggest answers to that
question, Kiser analyzes the stories that Francis's first biographers
told about his relationship to nature.
Matthew Osborn considers a profoundly important yet neglected
subject in environmental history—the industrial revolution.
In England—the first industrial nation—the rise of manufacturing
was tied to the commercialization of land,, a process that Karl
Polanyi famously termed "The Great Transformation."
Osborn's account of Oldham in the late eighteenth century allows
us to see that transformation close-up. Though the rise of coal
mining was critical, the process began when landowners began to
think in new ways about forests.
In different ways, the articles by Joshua West and William Tsutsui
explore the environmental history of war, another important yet
neglected subject. West argues that World War I changed the terms
of debate about forest policy in both Great Britain and the United
States. In both nations, the war did not lead to fresh ideas about
forestry but instead gave renewed force to old agendas. Tsutsui
explores the effects of World War II on the Japanese environment.
Though war seems to be unquestionably bad for nature, Tsutsui
concludes, the experience of wartime Japan was not so one-sided.
His analysis is imaginative, subtle, and stimulating.
THIS ISSUE also includes a new section, "Gallery,"
which will appear in every issue. I hope that the "Gallery"
essays will be a nice change of pace.. Images are fun. But I also
hope that the section will serve a scholarly purpose. Photographs,
cartoons, posters, botanical prints, and maps offer great insight
into the past, and Environmental History ought to try to
spark discussion about the wealth of visual materials in our field.
The "Gallery" essays will vary from issue to issue..
Some will explain how an image came to be, while others will explore
an image s historical impact. Some will consider images as sources.
We often can learn something about environmental history from
a visual source that we cannot learn as well—or at all—from
written sources. Other "Gallery" essays will focus on
the use of visual materials in teaching. What kind of discussion
does an image stimulate in the classroom?
The subject of the first "Gallery" essay is a photograph
taken by Gifford Pinchot in 1897. The image is striking. As Pinchot
biographer Char Miller explains, the photograph also has a fascinating
history. It is part of the wonderful Forest History Society collection,
and you now can view it online. Yet the image has never before
appeared in print!
ADAM ROME
|
|