CHAPTER 1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2011
Summary
As environmental history is maturing globally, historians are now less hesitant in asking questions about how environment shapes society and economy, and how society transforms environment. They are now willingly focusing on questions such as: Does the ecological basis of a society change over time? How does change occur? How does change affect various aspects of the society? How should some of these issues be addressed and what should be the focus? All these have been explained by historians. Considerable work has been done on environmental history and scholars have already dealt with the growth of this field in different parts of the world fairly in detail. Therefore, it hardly requires further repetition here. The roots of environmental history have been traced on one hand in the French Annales School which stresses the significance of natural geographical features and their role in shaping history and on the other in the United States where, in the wake of rise of environmentalism or environmental movements, historians focused on environmental issues. In the United States, voluminous works have been produced on environmental history in the recent decades and debates have moved on a considerably large range of issues. But Ted Steinberg has complained recently that ‘surprisingly, despite the profusion of work in the U.S. environmental history, the field still occupies a spot on the margins of the profession’. Many, however, do not share his views.
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- Himalayan DegradationColonial Forestry and Environmental Change in India, pp. 1 - 17Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2008