Course Description

Environmental historical research began in the 1960s to interpret human history through the lens of both historical and ecological processes. The primary goal is to study the relationship between the physical and biological environments in past human societies. Firstly, there will be a review of the way environmental history thinks of processes in the disciplines and sub-disciplines that have developed. The second thematic unit of the course is the examination of the most important kinds of data that are used in environmental historical research. The classes will discuss scientific, archaeological, and historical sources about their use in the reconstruction of historical environments, climates and human-nature interactions. The third major group of classes is dedicated to the discussion of case studies. Some times and places societies display flexibility and resilience in the face of fluctuations in climate or human-induced changes that affect the immediate environment. At other times and places, small fluctuations or short-term solutions to environmental shifts can spell disaster to the subsistence base of the population, possibly with long-term consequences. Each class will introduce vulnerability and adaptation strategies on status, change, and crisis through examples from roughly the last two millennia.

Course Goals

The course introduces the key concepts and problems in global environmental history. By the end of the course, students should have a basic understanding of fundamental themes in environmental history and relate these, critically and comparatively, to present global environmental change.

The course goal is to offer some insights into how climate and environment affect various parts of the human experience such as agriculture and subsistence, disease and health, etc. and conversely, to address, how human agricultural, industrial, or military activities changed the landscapes, setting in motion possibly unanticipated actions and reactions that triggered a significant environmental change.

The course is designed to provide a deeper understanding of the interactions of nature and societies to show that human impacts on the different spheres of the Earth were fundamental well before the beginning of the so-called Anthropocene. The case studies are chosen to provide a balanced view of historical environmental processes from the Americas through Europe to East Asia.

 

Assessment

(1) Well-prepared participation at the seminars (30%)

(2) 10-12-minute oral presentation on a topic to be assigned at the beginning of the term (30%)

(3) A short written paper based on the critical reading of a source or an agreed secondary literature (40%)

(4) Regular attendance (at least 10 occasions)

SESSION 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE (30 minute-occasion)

 

SESSION 2: INTRODUCTION – DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH

The development of environmental history and archaeology, strongly connected to environmental thinking, has become widespread since the 1960s. However, through the 1980s, environmental history developed a moderately scientific direction after an initial period of experimentation. The class is intended to look at the development of the field, the research questions, and most importantly methods the different scholars use in historical environmental research.

– McNeill, John R., “Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History,” History and Theory 42/4 (2003), 5–43.

– Pfister, Christian, “The 1950s Syndrome and the Transition from a Slow-Going to a Rapid Loss of Global Sustainability,” in Uekoetter, F. (ed.): The Turning Points in Environmental History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 90–108.

 

SESSION 3: SOURCES AND RESEARCH METHODS IN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

 

In the last few decades not only scientific and archaeological research became widespread which aimed to reconstruct environmental processes but historians as well studied climate and environmental processes more extensively. Climate historians have built up a system based on which reliable quantitative climate reconstructions were carried out and several groups of evidence has been thoroughly studied. Several environmental impacts (changes in the forest cover, hydrological changes, landscape transformations) of human activity has been demonstrated by environmental historians in the last few decades.

Mandatory readings

– The Capitulare de villis. Several editions. Online: https://www.le.ac.uk/hi/polyptyques/capitulare/trans.html (Links to an external site.)

– Isabelle Chuine et al., “Grape Ripening as a Past Climate Indicator.” Nature 432/18 (2004): 289–290.

– Finn Arne Jørgensen and Malin Kristine Graesse. Past Photos in Present Landscapes: Rephotography as a Method in Environmental History. Online document. https://niche-canada.org/2024/06/07/past-photos-in-present-landscapes-rephotography-as-a-method-in-environmental-history/ (Links to an external site.)

 

Readings for presentations

– Popa, Ionel, and Kern, Zoltán, “Long-Term Summer Temperature Reconstruction Inferred from Tree-Ring Records from the Eastern Carpathians,” Climate Dynamics 32 (2009): 1107–1117.

 

SESSION 4: ADAPTATION TO CHANGING CLIMATIC, AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES – THE LITTLE ICE AGE

 

The Little Ice Age was one of the most vigorous cooling periods in historical times, beginning sometime between the 14th and 16th century and lasting until the late 19th century. At the time of the Little Ice Age on the peripheries of European agriculture (Scandinavia, Scotland, Alps) the growing season decreased significantly as did the area of available arable land causing serious regional supply crises. Sea storms became more frequent on the Atlantic coast. However, there were also regions which profited from the climate deterioration, at the same time. On the eastern edge of the Central Europe (from Poland until Hungary) a prospering agricultural export zone took shape. A large school of fish migrated from the seas around Norway into the southern zone of the North Sea as the result of global cooling boosting Dutch and English sea-fishing.

Mandatory readings

– Behringer, Wolfgang, The Cultural History of Climate (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 85–120.

 

Readings for presentations

– Degroot, Dagomar, “War of the Whales: Climate Change, Weather and Arctic Conflict in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Environment and History 26, no. 4 (2020): 549-577. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734019X15463432086801 (Links to an external site.)

– Grove, Richard H., “The Great El Niño of 1789–93 and its Global Consequences: Reconstructing an Extreme Climate Event in World Environmental History,” The Medieval History Journal 10 (2007): 75–96.

 

SESSION 5: THE BLACK DEATH – VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS (ORIGINS, SPREAD, FACTORS)

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, Europe had reached the upper, sustainable limit of demographic increase opportunities. The population of 85-90 million people had outgrown food supplies in addition to which environmental conditions had begun to turn wetter and cooler at the time of the Little Ice Age. The epidemic of the ‘black death’ caused a final demographic collapse between 1347‒1352 following the agricultural crisis of the 1310s. A considerable part of the European population fell victim to the plague, war, and poor harvests. These shocks to European social institutions took place on many levels. However, the long-term effects of the crisis in this era resulted in a period of ‘creative destruction’, opening the way for the development of the structures of the early modern period.

Mandatory readings/screenings

–  Campbell, Bruce M.S.: The Environmental Origins of the Black Death lecture. Rome, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x9Oh0-viyM

(Published in a revised form as: Campbell, Bruce. The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society In The Late Medieval World. Cambridge: CUP, 2016.)

– Horrox, Rosemary: The Black Death (Manchester Medieval Sources. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. 14-26.

Readings for presentations

– Green, Monica H., “The Four Black Deaths,” The American Historical Review 125 (2020): 1601–1631.

 

SESSION 6: PREDMODERN URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY – THE CASE OF BUDA (WALKING SEMINAR – HYBRID)

Buda, Pest, and Óbuda formed the largest settlement concentration in the territory of modern Hungary for the last millennium. As such it significantly transformed its environment, and of course the settings of the settlements that form present-day Budapest were largely influenced by the environment. The occasion is dedicated to the understanding of how this urban area transformed the waterscapes, and the surrounding hills.

Végh, András, “Buda in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and in the Ottoman Empire (1241–1541–1686) A brief urban history.” In: idem, Buda I. kötet, 1686-ig (Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2015), pp. 5–17.

https://varosatlasz.hu/images/pdf/atlaszok/budaI/03_Helyrajz_Topography_Buda1.pdf

 

 

SESSION 7: URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF A MODERN CITY  – THE CASE OF PEST (WALKING SEMINAR – HYBRID)

Pest saw an unprecedented growth in the modern times which went with a reconsideration of the relationship of the city with its environment. The occasion will be dedicated to the environmental factors that contributed to this urban sprawl as well as the environmental problems the metropolis had to face by the nineteenth century.

Eszik, Veronika et al. “Budapest – Environmental history of an emerging metropolis) (Manuscript to be distributed)

 

SESSION 8: WHAT CONSTITUTES A DISASTER – VULNERABILITY TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND WEATHER EVENTS

Disaster is constituted by context and as such can be perceived as a product of perception. Most of the events that our society and societies called disasters have always been present in the history of the Earth. Volcanic eruptions as well as floods are recorded for millions of years and had even more serious historical consequences than those in human history. The perception in itself is very complex, which can be closely associated with the educational, cultural background, with the political situation, etc. The class intends to question how much one could talk about weather events or floods as tragedies, or disasters.

Mandatory readings

– Davis, Mike, “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn,” Environmental History Review 19 (1995): 1-36.

Readings for presentations

– Bankoff, Greg, “Fire and Quake in the Construction of Old Manila,” The Medieval History Journal 10 (2007): 411–427.

– Rohr, Christian, “Man and Natural Disaster in the Late Middle Ages: The Earthquake in Carinthia and Northern Italy on 25 January 1348 and its Perception,” Environment and History 9 (2003): 127–149.

 

SESSION 9: THE ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES – THE EXAMPLE OF THE AMERICAS

The process of European discoveries in the Americas and other parts of the world previously unknown to Europeans, fundamentally transformed cultural developments around the world. The appearance of European pioneers presented huge challenges for native populations in terms of the introduction of disease and the introduction of plants and animals. At the same time, Europeans adopted many new elements from these new societies.

Mandatory readings

– Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism. The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 145–170.

 

Readings for presentations

-Barrett, T. “’The Land is Spoiled by Water’: Cossack colonization of the North Caucasus”. Environment and History 5 (1999): 27–52.

– Beattie, J. “Empire, Environment and Religion: God and the Natural World in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand”. Environment and History 13 (2007), 413–46.

 

SESSION 10: WARS AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Despite considerable overlap in their interests and subjects the historiographies of war and environment have rather developed in isolation from each other for many decades and centuries. The class will look at the ways environmental studies and military history can help in understanding the environmental impacts of cold as well as hot wars and ways in which mankind deliberately used nature in warfare.

Mandatory readings

– Hupy, J. P. “The Environmental Footprint of War,” Environment and History 14 (2008), 405–421.

–  Fitzgerald, Gerard J. “The Chemist’s War Edgewood Arsenal, the First World War, and the Birth of a Militarized Environment.” In Environmental Histories of the First World War, eds. Richard P. Tucker et al. Cambridge: CUP, 2018. 62-96.

 

SESSION 11: FORESTS AND RIVERS – WHOSE NATURE?

Environment and natural resources are not evenly distributed between different actors. While certain groups of society managed to appropriate an overwhelming majority of lands, forests, and other natural resources, some forms of property, until modern times, remained commonly owned. This occasion concentrates on the consequences of communal/private ownership of natural resources, traces the connection between early modern state power and the transformation of nature, and discusses the issue of scaling human systems.

– Székely Village By-Laws (manuscript, own translation)

– Appuhn, Karl. “Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry, and State Power in Renaissance Venice.” The Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 851–889. https://www.doi.org/10.1086/318548

– Zeheter, Michael. “Managing the Lake Constance Fisheries, ca. 1350–1800.” In Conservation’s Roots Managing for Sustainability in Preindustrial Europe, 1100–1800, edited by Abigail P. Dowling and Richard Keyser, 154–177. New York: Berghahn, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781789206937-009

– Warde, Paul, “The Invention of Sustainability.” Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 1 (2011): 153–170. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S1479244311000096

 

SESSION 12: ANTHROPOCENE – DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE?

One of the most controversial terms in present-day scientific research is Anthropocene. The class is dedicated to discussing whether the term has any explanatory value in discussing the environmental processes of the last millennia. Students will have to argue for or against the usage of the term on the one hand and should build up an argument for a starting date of the period of Anthropocene.

Mandatory readings

– Crutzen, Paul J. “Geology of Mankind.” Nature 415 (2002): 23.

– Simon, Zoltán Boldizsár: Why the Anthropocene has no history: Facing the unprecedented. The Anthropocene Review 4 (2017): 239–245.