Pub Date : 2024-06-15DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903600
Lachlan Fleetwood
In the late nineteenth century, rumours of a large lake in Central Asia provided the material for a vexing ‘problem’ in imperial geography. That Lop Nor existed – or at least once had – was indicated by information in Chinese chronicles. However, identifying the lake proved challenging, not least because it did not always appear to have been located in the same place. Attracting romanticised epithets like ‘mysterious’ and ‘wandering’, Lop Nor became an important site for imperial scientific speculations about climatic stability and change. This article considers investigations by Russian, British, Swedish and American geographers (as well as the key roles of Loplyk brokers such as Ördek, who located the ancient city of Loulan that had once graced the shores of the lake and been abandoned in the face of changing habitability). In turn, the article examines the way Lop Nor was bound up in the formation of imperial imaginaries of the ‘Silk Roads’, as well as incorporated by geographers like Peter Kropotkin and Ellsworth Huntington into theories of desiccation and climate change within recent human history. More widely, considering debates over Lop Nor allows for an examination of the role of imperial geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences and the development of geography as a discipline.
{"title":"The ‘Mystery’ of Lop Nor: Empire, Geographical ‘Problems’ and Climate Change on the Silk Roads","authors":"Lachlan Fleetwood","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903600","url":null,"abstract":"In the late nineteenth century, rumours of a large lake in Central Asia provided the material for a vexing ‘problem’ in imperial geography. That Lop Nor existed – or at least once had – was indicated by information in Chinese chronicles. However, identifying the lake proved challenging, not least because it did not always appear to have been located in the same place. Attracting romanticised epithets like ‘mysterious’ and ‘wandering’, Lop Nor became an important site for imperial scientific speculations about climatic stability and change. This article considers investigations by Russian, British, Swedish and American geographers (as well as the key roles of Loplyk brokers such as Ördek, who located the ancient city of Loulan that had once graced the shores of the lake and been abandoned in the face of changing habitability). In turn, the article examines the way Lop Nor was bound up in the formation of imperial imaginaries of the ‘Silk Roads’, as well as incorporated by geographers like Peter Kropotkin and Ellsworth Huntington into theories of desiccation and climate change within recent human history. More widely, considering debates over Lop Nor allows for an examination of the role of imperial geographical ‘problems’ in the history of climate sciences and the development of geography as a discipline.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141337647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-07DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903594
David Clayton, Florence Mok
This article contributes to the water history of Hong Kong by using new archival and media sources to investigate an under-explored water crisis. This crisis, which was caused by climatic and economic factors, was mitigated by emergency measures that lasted from May 1963 to June 1964. Without these emergency measures, which affected supply and demand for mains water, local reservoirs would have become exhausted. The article shows how Hong Kong government departments and residents – specifically the Public Works Department and over six hundred thousand domestic households – were resilient in the face of prolonged and severe water shortages. The article considers the preconditions for that resilience, arguing for the importance of the delivery of clean, cheap mains water as a public good; for prior experience of coping with water shortages; for magistrates punishing those caught wasting water; and for civil society organisations striving for environmental justice. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .
这篇文章利用新的档案和媒体资料来研究一场未被充分探讨的水危机，为香港的水历史做出了贡献。这场由气候和经济因素引发的危机，通过1963年5月至1964年6月的紧急措施得到缓解。如果没有这些影响自来水供求的紧急措施，本地水塘的水就会枯竭。文章展示了香港政府部门和居民，特别是工务署和 60 多万个家庭，在长期严重缺水的情况下是如何顽强抵抗的。文章考虑了这种抗灾能力的先决条件，认为提供清洁、廉价的自来水作为公共产品的重要性、应对缺水的先前经验、治安法官对浪费水者的惩罚以及争取环境正义的民间社会组织。 本文以 CC BY 许可的方式公开发表：https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 。
{"title":"Bad Weather and State-Building: Effective Urban Water Management during a Drought in Colonial Hong Kong, 1963–1964","authors":"David Clayton, Florence Mok","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903594","url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to the water history of Hong Kong by using new archival and media sources to investigate an under-explored water crisis. This crisis, which was caused by climatic and economic factors, was mitigated by emergency measures that lasted from May 1963 to June 1964. Without these emergency measures, which affected supply and demand for mains water, local reservoirs would have become exhausted. The article shows how Hong Kong government departments and residents – specifically the Public Works Department and over six hundred thousand domestic households – were resilient in the face of prolonged and severe water shortages. The article considers the preconditions for that resilience, arguing for the importance of the delivery of clean, cheap mains water as a public good; for prior experience of coping with water shortages; for magistrates punishing those caught wasting water; and for civil society organisations striving for environmental justice.\u0000 \u0000 This article was published open access under a CC BY licence:\u0000 https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0\u0000 .\u0000","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141372919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-15DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903593
Tiphaine Robert
In 1921, General Motors chemists decided to add tetraethyl, a highly toxic lead additive, into petrol to reduce ‘knock’ or ‘pinging’ in internal combustion engines. Despite the opposition from health authorities, the lead additive would come to dominate the global market, particularly during the Great Acceleration (1950–2000). Before the progressive elimination of its use, many voices in the USA and in Europe spoke out against using this additive. How was such acceptance of widespread poisoning possible? We analyse the case of Switzerland to explain the acceptance of lead poisoning. Our aim is to show how concerns over health and environmental impacts from toxic lead were not publicised and how corporate interests trumped concerns over the wellbeing of the community, despite known human risks.
{"title":"Political Acceptance of Dangerous Technology: The Example of Leaded Petrol through the Case Study of Switzerland (1921–1970)","authors":"Tiphaine Robert","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903593","url":null,"abstract":"In 1921, General Motors chemists decided to add tetraethyl, a highly toxic lead additive, into petrol to reduce ‘knock’ or ‘pinging’ in internal combustion engines. Despite the opposition from health authorities, the lead additive would come to dominate the global market, particularly during the Great Acceleration (1950–2000). Before the progressive elimination of its use, many voices in the USA and in Europe spoke out against using this additive. How was such acceptance of widespread poisoning possible? We analyse the case of Switzerland to explain the acceptance of lead poisoning. Our aim is to show how concerns over health and environmental impacts from toxic lead were not publicised and how corporate interests trumped concerns over the wellbeing of the community, despite known human risks.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141127817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-07DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903590
Andrew Stuhl
Ignorance holds untapped explanatory power for environmental history, in the Arctic and beyond. I define ignorance as a state of limited knowledge, held by groups, and produced through social processes. The case study is the opening of an oil frontier in the Canadian Beaufort Sea between 1968 and 1976. Drawing from a growing body of scholarship on ignorance, as well as newly available governmental and oil industry records, I review three concepts environmental historians can use to analyse the production of ignorance. These concepts are: proprietary knowledge, selective transmission and undone research. Taken together, these concepts make visible a set of political, economic and environmental conditions that allowed ignorance to shape the approval of the first offshore drilling programme in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates that ignorance – like its cousins doubt or uncertainty – has been a resource that extractive industries and governmental regulators have manipulated to navigate evolving requirements of environmental planning.
{"title":"Ignorance and Environmental History: The Opening of an Arctic Offshore Oil Frontier, 1968–1976","authors":"Andrew Stuhl","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903590","url":null,"abstract":"Ignorance holds untapped explanatory power for environmental history, in the Arctic and beyond. I define ignorance as a state of limited knowledge, held by groups, and produced through social processes. The case study is the opening of an oil frontier in the Canadian Beaufort Sea between 1968 and 1976. Drawing from a growing body of scholarship on ignorance, as well as newly available governmental and oil industry records, I review three concepts environmental historians can use to analyse the production of ignorance. These concepts are: proprietary knowledge, selective transmission and undone research. Taken together, these concepts make visible a set of political, economic and environmental conditions that allowed ignorance to shape the approval of the first offshore drilling programme in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates that ignorance – like its cousins doubt or uncertainty – has been a resource that extractive industries and governmental regulators have manipulated to navigate evolving requirements of environmental planning.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141005796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-07DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903592
Xiaojie Li, David S. Jones
As Shanghai industrialised, its Chinese and European residents suffered the scourge of coal-powered cities: smoke. Air pollution became a multi-sensory reality. Residents could see, smell, feel and taste the smoke that shrouded the city. Inspired by anthropologists and historians of the senses, we mined Chinese- and English-language sources to document the emergence of experiences of air pollution in Shanghai. Concerns began earlier than other historians have appreciated. The vigorous complaints from all parts of Shanghai society illuminate how the city’s governments attempted to respond to the crisis and mitigate the toxic consequences of industrialisation. We found many obstacles to the success of the governments’ approaches. While other scholars have emphasised Shanghai’s fractured governance, we also found evidence of financial conflicts of interest, industry obfuscation and anti-Chinese racism. Our work expands the understanding of the history of air pollution in China and offers a model that can be used to extend global histories of air pollution beyond their traditional focus on Europe and North America.
{"title":"Shanghai and the Smoke Fiend: Obstacles to the Control of Urban Smoke, 1869–1943","authors":"Xiaojie Li, David S. Jones","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903592","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903592","url":null,"abstract":"As Shanghai industrialised, its Chinese and European residents suffered the scourge of coal-powered cities: smoke. Air pollution became a multi-sensory reality. Residents could see, smell, feel and taste the smoke that shrouded the city. Inspired by anthropologists and historians of the senses, we mined Chinese- and English-language sources to document the emergence of experiences of air pollution in Shanghai. Concerns began earlier than other historians have appreciated. The vigorous complaints from all parts of Shanghai society illuminate how the city’s governments attempted to respond to the crisis and mitigate the toxic consequences of industrialisation. We found many obstacles to the success of the governments’ approaches. While other scholars have emphasised Shanghai’s fractured governance, we also found evidence of financial conflicts of interest, industry obfuscation and anti-Chinese racism. Our work expands the understanding of the history of air pollution in China and offers a model that can be used to extend global histories of air pollution beyond their traditional focus on Europe and North America.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141002754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-07DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903591
Kristian Mennen
The paper provides a political history of nature conservation in the Netherlands during the Second World War, 1940–1945. Nature and nature conservation were not mere victims of Nazi German oppression or destruction; rather, conservationist organisations clearly had agency under difficult circumstances. The movement’s leaders were accustomed to using informal contacts, semi-formal arrangements and back channel deals with government authorities and agencies, and continued to exert influence on the new Department of Education, Science and Protection of Culture with considerable success after 1940. Although these consultation structures and the Department’s power to impose measures by decree could not always prevent severe damage, this story sheds new light on the history of the nature conservation movement as an historical actor in its own right under the conditions of war and occupation. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .
本文介绍了 1940-1945 年第二次世界大战期间荷兰自然保护的政治历史。自然和自然保护并不仅仅是纳粹德国压迫或破坏的受害者；相反，自然保护组织显然在困难的环境中发挥了作用。运动的领导者习惯于与政府当局和机构进行非正式接触、半正式安排和后道交易，并在 1940 年后继续对新成立的教育、科学和文化保护部施加影响，取得了相当大的成功。尽管这些咨询机构和教育、科学和文化保护部通过法令强制执行措施的权力并不能总是防止严重的破坏，但这个故事为自然保护运动的历史提供了新的启示，使其成为战争和占领条件下的一个历史性行动者。 本文以 CC BY 许可方式公开发表：https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 。
{"title":"Agency under German Occupation: Conservationist Policy-Making in The Netherlands, 1940–1945","authors":"Kristian Mennen","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903591","url":null,"abstract":"The paper provides a political history of nature conservation in the Netherlands during the Second World War, 1940–1945. Nature and nature conservation were not mere victims of Nazi German oppression or destruction; rather, conservationist organisations clearly had agency under difficult circumstances. The movement’s leaders were accustomed to using informal contacts, semi-formal arrangements and back channel deals with government authorities and agencies, and continued to exert influence on the new Department of Education, Science and Protection of Culture with considerable success after 1940. Although these consultation structures and the Department’s power to impose measures by decree could not always prevent severe damage, this story sheds new light on the history of the nature conservation movement as an historical actor in its own right under the conditions of war and occupation.\u0000 \u0000 This article was published open access under a CC BY licence:\u0000 https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0\u0000 .\u0000","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141002438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903588
Harrison Croft
{"title":"Joy L. K. Pachuau and Willem van Schendel,\u0000 Entangled Lives: Human-Animal-Plant Histories of the Eastern Himalayan Triangle","authors":"Harrison Croft","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903588","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141046100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903587
Benjamin W. Goossen
{"title":"Royden Loewen,\u0000 Mennonite Farmers: A Global History of Place and Sustainability","authors":"Benjamin W. Goossen","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903587","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141056836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903585
Amrita Dasgupta
{"title":"‘The Accommodative Apparatus’: Drawing the Life of Sex Work on the Eroding Coast of Sundarbans","authors":"Amrita Dasgupta","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903585","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141030614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-01DOI: 10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903583
Ruby Ekkel
{"title":"Mimicking Lyrebirds in Multispecies History","authors":"Ruby Ekkel","doi":"10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/whp.eh.63830915903583","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141057047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：