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Book Review
| South Africa's Environmental History: Cases & Comparisons. Edited by Stephen Dovers, Ruth Edgecombe, and Bill Guest. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. ix + 326 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, list of contributors, index. Paper $24.95.
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| During the apartheid years, many of the best historians of South Africa focused their research on resistance politics, racial consciousness, and class formation. South African historiography has become more diverse since the advent of democracy in 1994. Increasing numbers of established scholars, as well as quite a few junior scholars, have been turning their attention to the history of science, technology, and the environment. This volume demonstrates a number of things about the state of environmental history in South Africa. The first is that evidence abounds. The eleven case studies presented here are all well-supported by evidence drawn from a wealth of sources, including historical archives, biological surveys, and oral interviews. Readers also will notice that a wide variety of environmental issues are investigated here, from range and coastline management to urban development and afforestation. It is plain that there are abundant sources and problems for environmental historians to address in South Africa. |
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Two authors use South African cases to engage the environmental historiography of the United States and Europe. In doing so they attempt to reframe important issues. In one case study on ecological changes in nineteenth-century Kuruman, Nancy Jacobs raises questions about Carolyn Merchant's model of the "colonial ecological revolution," which Jacobs claims over-emphasizes European agency. In Kuruman, during early Tswana contacts with Europeans, indigenous "production, reproduction, and consciousness of the non-human environment" actively shaped colonial ecological relationships (p. 22). Prevalent U.S. and European conceptions of environmental history come in for even heavier criticism from Lance van Sittert in his article about the spread and control of the American prickly-pear cactus in the eastern Cape during the late nineteenth century. According to van Sittert, the "prevailing utopian Luddite orthodoxy in the environmental history canon" requires that we see biological invaders as "just another example of the environmental despoliation caused by humanity's Faustian pact with Mammon" (p. 140). Instead of following these models, van Sittert uses his extensive sources on the prickly-pear to highlight the ways in which the invasion drew out and influenced (and was influenced by) the evolving culture and politics of South Africa. Van Sittert's article is at once provocative, subtle, and substantial. |
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For the most part, the other case studies in this volume do not engage U.S. and European environmental historiography, per se, although most do engage the literature on South African social history. All make solid, empirical contributions to our understanding of South Africans' relationships with the environment, but many case studies may prove tough going for readers who are not already well-versed in South African social history. Assistance is provided by Jane Carruthers, whose introduction contextualizes the case studies within South African historiography. Help also comes from five environmental historians who assess the South African cases in the context of Africa (W. Beinart and G. Maddox); Australia (S. Dovers); India (R. Rajan); and South America (J. R. McNeill). Their commentaries are uniformly good and helpful. Perhaps they are too helpful, for they show that most of the authors of the case studies were not able to make the comparisons themselves, and thereby fully engage audiences outside of South Africa. |
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William K. Storey is the author of Science and Power in Colonial Mauritius (University of Rochester, 1997) and Writing History: A Guide for Students (Oxford, 1999; 2nd ed. 2004). He is assistant professor of history at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. |
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