Pub Date : 2023-10-20DOI: 10.3828/096734023x16869924234804
ELIJAH DORO
During the first half of the twentieth century, white settler farmers in colonial Zimbabwe raised incessant complaints and alarm over ‘mysterious’ and inexplicably frequent incidences of cattle mortalities. These mortalities were attributed to poisoning from careless handling of arsenical dips, ingestion of arsenic sprayed grass and grazing in veld impregnated with arsenic trioxide. The arsenic question occupied the attention of experts from the colonial Branch of Chemistry, toxicologists, bacteriologists, veterinary officials and white settler farmers in contested cattle-centred narratives. Within the framing of colonial toxic politics, cattle poisoning disproportionately received more elaborate scrutiny and attention than that of humans and other species. The colonial archive only affords limited and vague visibility to the toxic encounters of humans and non-bovine species. This paper seeks to transcend and interrogate bovine-centric poisoning discourses with which colonial sources are replete and to use existing cattle poisoning records to amplify and construct multi-species toxic histories connecting cattle, humans, landscapes and other species in a co-constituted narrative of arsenic toxicities. The paper employs vicarious imagination of experiences to reframe Africa’s ‘arsenic century’ and colonial toxic histories outside the body-centric script, and examines the intricate and complex chemical relations enmeshing cattle, humans and other species in ecosystems of mutual toxic vulnerabilities and slow chemical violence. The paper uses archival sources, toxicological reports from the Branch of Chemistry and veterinary records of cattle poisoning in colonial Zimbabwe.
{"title":"No Body, No Crime? Vicariously Imagining Africa’s Arsenic Century: Bovines, Arsenic Poisoning and Multi-Species Toxic Histories in Southern Rhodesia (Colonial Zimbabwe), 1900–1940s","authors":"ELIJAH DORO","doi":"10.3828/096734023x16869924234804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734023x16869924234804","url":null,"abstract":"During the first half of the twentieth century, white settler farmers in colonial Zimbabwe raised incessant complaints and alarm over ‘mysterious’ and inexplicably frequent incidences of cattle mortalities. These mortalities were attributed to poisoning from careless handling of arsenical dips, ingestion of arsenic sprayed grass and grazing in veld impregnated with arsenic trioxide. The arsenic question occupied the attention of experts from the colonial Branch of Chemistry, toxicologists, bacteriologists, veterinary officials and white settler farmers in contested cattle-centred narratives. Within the framing of colonial toxic politics, cattle poisoning disproportionately received more elaborate scrutiny and attention than that of humans and other species. The colonial archive only affords limited and vague visibility to the toxic encounters of humans and non-bovine species. This paper seeks to transcend and interrogate bovine-centric poisoning discourses with which colonial sources are replete and to use existing cattle poisoning records to amplify and construct multi-species toxic histories connecting cattle, humans, landscapes and other species in a co-constituted narrative of arsenic toxicities. The paper employs vicarious imagination of experiences to reframe Africa’s ‘arsenic century’ and colonial toxic histories outside the body-centric script, and examines the intricate and complex chemical relations enmeshing cattle, humans and other species in ecosystems of mutual toxic vulnerabilities and slow chemical violence. The paper uses archival sources, toxicological reports from the Branch of Chemistry and veterinary records of cattle poisoning in colonial Zimbabwe.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135667105","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 : 2023-10-20DOI: 10.3197/096734022x16627150608050
M. Paulissen, R. van Beek, E. Huijbens
Scholars have radically turned away from the notion of ‘natural borders’ dictated by nature and now broadly agree that all borders are ‘artificial’ human constructs. However, there is a need to revisit environmental determinism in its nuances. We analyse the relation between distinct natural features and historical border development, using the notion of affordances and the example of raised bogs in the medieval and modern-period eastern Low Countries. For humans, bog landscapes in these periods functioned as both barriers and passageways through the spatiotemporal variability of these opposite affordances. At the scale of local settlement territories, large bog landscapes had the coercive agency to function as borderlands separating adjacent communities. Such coercion was absent on the larger spatial scale of princedoms. The growing economic importance of peat was a crucial driver for border demarcation at both scales from the late Middle Ages. Diplomatic risk calculation and path dependency explain the spatial concurrence and long persistence respectively of bog boundaries between successive polities.
{"title":"How Bogs Made for Borderlands: The Eastern Low Countries, c. 670 – c. 1900 CE","authors":"M. Paulissen, R. van Beek, E. Huijbens","doi":"10.3197/096734022x16627150608050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16627150608050","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have radically turned away from the notion of ‘natural borders’ dictated by nature and now broadly agree that all borders are ‘artificial’ human constructs. However, there is a need to revisit environmental determinism in its nuances. We analyse the relation between distinct natural features and historical border development, using the notion of affordances and the example of raised bogs in the medieval and modern-period eastern Low Countries. For humans, bog landscapes in these periods functioned as both barriers and passageways through the spatiotemporal variability of these opposite affordances. At the scale of local settlement territories, large bog landscapes had the coercive agency to function as borderlands separating adjacent communities. Such coercion was absent on the larger spatial scale of princedoms. The growing economic importance of peat was a crucial driver for border demarcation at both scales from the late Middle Ages. Diplomatic risk calculation and path dependency explain the spatial concurrence and long persistence respectively of bog boundaries between successive polities.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"2019 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74853904","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 : 2023-10-20DOI: 10.3828/096734023x16788762163696
FAHIMEH MOFRAD, MARIA IGNATIEVA
Canberra was built in harmony with its landscape setting, creating a legacy of urban form well-connected to the natural environment. Its urban design and planning not only amplified the surrounding natural landscape such as forested hills and mountains but also created a human-made green urban character. However, plans for future development as a compact city pose a challenge to conserving the city’s green spaces. A green infrastructure plan is necessary to consider the city’s green space design heritage and the linked socio-ecological values while minimising the urban footprint. The paper employs a historical literature review to understand the factors and characteristics that shaped Canberra’s green character and the socio-ecological values of its green spaces. The research found the influence of historical and modern design and planning concepts in consolidating green infrastructure and creating ecological corridors and social infrastructure. One of the essential conditions for maintaining the unique character of Canberra is the preservation of the socio-ecological values of its existing green spaces. A trade-off study must be conducted to balance green infrastructure planning while considering these values, in light of development changes.
{"title":"From a Grassland to a Bush Capital: A Historic Review of Canberra’s Green Infrastructure Development","authors":"FAHIMEH MOFRAD, MARIA IGNATIEVA","doi":"10.3828/096734023x16788762163696","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734023x16788762163696","url":null,"abstract":"Canberra was built in harmony with its landscape setting, creating a legacy of urban form well-connected to the natural environment. Its urban design and planning not only amplified the surrounding natural landscape such as forested hills and mountains but also created a human-made green urban character. However, plans for future development as a compact city pose a challenge to conserving the city’s green spaces. A green infrastructure plan is necessary to consider the city’s green space design heritage and the linked socio-ecological values while minimising the urban footprint. The paper employs a historical literature review to understand the factors and characteristics that shaped Canberra’s green character and the socio-ecological values of its green spaces. The research found the influence of historical and modern design and planning concepts in consolidating green infrastructure and creating ecological corridors and social infrastructure. One of the essential conditions for maintaining the unique character of Canberra is the preservation of the socio-ecological values of its existing green spaces. A trade-off study must be conducted to balance green infrastructure planning while considering these values, in light of development changes.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135667099","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 : 2023-10-20DOI: 10.3828/096734022x16627150608050
MAURICE PAULISSEN, ROY VAN BEEK, EDWARD H. HUIJBENS
Scholars have radically turned away from the notion of ‘natural borders’ dictated by nature and now broadly agree that all borders are ‘artificial’ human constructs. However, there is a need to revisit environmental determinism in its nuances. We analyse the relation between distinct natural features and historical border development, using the notion of affordances and the example of raised bogs in the medieval and modern-period eastern Low Countries. For humans, bog landscapes in these periods functioned as both barriers and passageways through the spatiotemporal variability of these opposite affordances. At the scale of local settlement territories, large bog landscapes had the coercive agency to function as borderlands separating adjacent communities. Such coercion was absent on the larger spatial scale of princedoms. The growing economic importance of peat was a crucial driver for border demarcation at both scales from the late Middle Ages. Diplomatic risk calculation and path dependency explain the spatial concurrence and long persistence respectively of bog boundaries between successive polities.
{"title":"How Bogs Made for Borderlands: The Eastern Low Countries, c. 670 – c. 1900 <scp>ce</scp>","authors":"MAURICE PAULISSEN, ROY VAN BEEK, EDWARD H. HUIJBENS","doi":"10.3828/096734022x16627150608050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734022x16627150608050","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have radically turned away from the notion of ‘natural borders’ dictated by nature and now broadly agree that all borders are ‘artificial’ human constructs. However, there is a need to revisit environmental determinism in its nuances. We analyse the relation between distinct natural features and historical border development, using the notion of affordances and the example of raised bogs in the medieval and modern-period eastern Low Countries. For humans, bog landscapes in these periods functioned as both barriers and passageways through the spatiotemporal variability of these opposite affordances. At the scale of local settlement territories, large bog landscapes had the coercive agency to function as borderlands separating adjacent communities. Such coercion was absent on the larger spatial scale of princedoms. The growing economic importance of peat was a crucial driver for border demarcation at both scales from the late Middle Ages. Diplomatic risk calculation and path dependency explain the spatial concurrence and long persistence respectively of bog boundaries between successive polities.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135667100","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 : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.3197/096734022x16384451127384
R. G. Kirk, Neil Pemberton, Thibaut Serviant-Fine
This article examines health, human–animal relationships and environments within nineteenth-century France, focusing on Hirudo medicinalis, the medicinal leech. Drawing upon medical, environmental and ‘more than human histories’, we investigate how a ‘mania’ for bloodletting in the wake of Parisian medicine and what Michel Foucault has characterised as the ‘birth of the clinic’ produced a trade in leeches that threatened to push the species to extinction. While urban-educated naturalists, physicians, pharmacists, merchants and politicians worried over the scarcity of what was widely considered a commodity of national economic and medical importance, rural ‘leech gatherers’ quietly developed ways to breed leeches artificially. The outcome was hirudiculture: the farming of leeches on an industrial scale. We argue that the birth of hirudiculture was more than a practical and commercial response to the needs of medicine; it reflected and embodied similar shifts in knowledge and reveals the complex and diverse ways in which rural and urban environments, human and non-human relationships, have shaped each other in the pursuit of shared visions of health.
{"title":"The Birth of Hirudiculture: Parisian Medicine, Leech Farming and the Transformation of Marshland in Nineteenth-Century France","authors":"R. G. Kirk, Neil Pemberton, Thibaut Serviant-Fine","doi":"10.3197/096734022x16384451127384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16384451127384","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines health, human–animal relationships and environments within nineteenth-century France, focusing on Hirudo medicinalis, the medicinal leech. Drawing upon medical, environmental and ‘more than human histories’, we investigate how a ‘mania’ for bloodletting in the wake of Parisian medicine and what Michel Foucault has characterised as the ‘birth of the clinic’ produced a trade in leeches that threatened to push the species to extinction. While urban-educated naturalists, physicians, pharmacists, merchants and politicians worried over the scarcity of what was widely considered a commodity of national economic and medical importance, rural ‘leech gatherers’ quietly developed ways to breed leeches artificially. The outcome was hirudiculture: the farming of leeches on an industrial scale. We argue that the birth of hirudiculture was more than a practical and commercial response to the needs of medicine; it reflected and embodied similar shifts in knowledge and reveals the complex and diverse ways in which rural and urban environments, human and non-human relationships, have shaped each other in the pursuit of shared visions of health.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76153874","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 : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.3828/096734022x16552219786627
R. ASHTON MACFARLANE
In the late 1960s, New Zealand and the United States collaborated to establish a southern hemispheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) monitoring station on New Zealand’s coastal cliffs. The New Zealand CO 2 Project, as it came to be known, is an underappreciated landmark in the history of environmental monitoring. The archival record of its early years reveals the extent to which efforts to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations interacted closely with one of the most hotly debated political issues of the mid-twentieth century: urban air pollution. The designation of CO 2 as air pollution on a planetary scale had profound legal implications in an era in which clean air legislation increasingly brought air pollution within the scope of governmental regulation, and administrative agencies began to jostle for control of the monitoring enterprise. The precise nature of CO 2 as an air pollutant, however, was difficult to pin down. In these initial years of concerted carbon dioxide monitoring, when the lines between climate science and air pollution research were still blurred, CO 2 developed its many pollutant identities. The nature of these identities – and the ways in which scientists and science administrators negotiated their boundaries – retain their relevance today, as nations continue to link air pollution and climate legislation in the twenty-first century.
{"title":"The Many Pollutant Identities of Carbon Dioxide: Global Climate Monitoring and Air Pollution Research in New Zealand, 1968–1975","authors":"R. ASHTON MACFARLANE","doi":"10.3828/096734022x16552219786627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734022x16552219786627","url":null,"abstract":"In the late 1960s, New Zealand and the United States collaborated to establish a southern hemispheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) monitoring station on New Zealand’s coastal cliffs. The New Zealand CO 2 Project, as it came to be known, is an underappreciated landmark in the history of environmental monitoring. The archival record of its early years reveals the extent to which efforts to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations interacted closely with one of the most hotly debated political issues of the mid-twentieth century: urban air pollution. The designation of CO 2 as air pollution on a planetary scale had profound legal implications in an era in which clean air legislation increasingly brought air pollution within the scope of governmental regulation, and administrative agencies began to jostle for control of the monitoring enterprise. The precise nature of CO 2 as an air pollutant, however, was difficult to pin down. In these initial years of concerted carbon dioxide monitoring, when the lines between climate science and air pollution research were still blurred, CO 2 developed its many pollutant identities. The nature of these identities – and the ways in which scientists and science administrators negotiated their boundaries – retain their relevance today, as nations continue to link air pollution and climate legislation in the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135944420","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 : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.3197/096734022x16552219786627
R. Macfarlane
In the late 1960s, New Zealand and the United States collaborated to establish a southern hemispheric carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring station on New Zealand’s coastal cliffs. The New Zealand CO2 Project, as it came to be known, is an underappreciated landmark in the history of environmental monitoring. The archival record of its early years reveals the extent to which efforts to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations interacted closely with one of the most hotly debated political issues of the mid-twentieth century: urban air pollution. The designation of CO2 as air pollution on a planetary scale had profound legal implications in an era in which clean air legislation increasingly brought air pollution within the scope of governmental regulation, and administrative agencies began to jostle for control of the monitoring enterprise. The precise nature of CO2 as an air pollutant, however, was difficult to pin down. In these initial years of concerted carbon dioxide monitoring, when the lines between climate science and air pollution research were still blurred, CO2 developed its many pollutant identities. The nature of these identities – and the ways in which scientists and science administrators negotiated their boundaries – retain their relevance today, as nations continue to link air pollution and climate legislation in the twenty-first century.
{"title":"The Many Pollutant Identities of Carbon Dioxide: Global Climate Monitoring and Air Pollution Research in New Zealand, 1968–1975","authors":"R. Macfarlane","doi":"10.3197/096734022x16552219786627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16552219786627","url":null,"abstract":"In the late 1960s, New Zealand and the United States collaborated to establish a southern hemispheric carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring station on New Zealand’s coastal cliffs. The New Zealand CO2 Project, as it came to be known, is an underappreciated landmark in the history of environmental monitoring. The archival record of its early years reveals the extent to which efforts to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations interacted closely with one of the most hotly debated political issues of the mid-twentieth century: urban air pollution. The designation of CO2 as air pollution on a planetary scale had profound legal implications in an era in which clean air legislation increasingly brought air pollution within the scope of governmental regulation, and administrative agencies began to jostle for control of the monitoring enterprise. The precise nature of CO2 as an air pollutant, however, was difficult to pin down. In these initial years of concerted carbon dioxide monitoring, when the lines between climate science and air pollution research were still blurred, CO2 developed its many pollutant identities. The nature of these identities – and the ways in which scientists and science administrators negotiated their boundaries – retain their relevance today, as nations continue to link air pollution and climate legislation in the twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79155932","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 : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.3828/096734022x16384451127401
NEIL HUMPHREY
The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.
{"title":"Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England","authors":"NEIL HUMPHREY","doi":"10.3828/096734022x16384451127401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734022x16384451127401","url":null,"abstract":"The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135944418","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 : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.3828/096734022x16470180631460
SEMIH ÇELIK, CHRISTINA LUKE, CHRISTOPHER H. ROOSEVELT
The study of Ottoman lakes and wetlands from the perspective of management and conservation is an emerging field. Scholars have explored Ottoman strategies for managing agricultural and extractive landscapes, yet detailed investigation of socio-political responses to dynamic wetlands, particularly during periods of drastic climate shifts, requires deeper investigation. Our research on wetlands and lakes moves from the purview of waqf s (pious foundations) to the emergence of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). By examining the shifting perspectives of institutional authority and community responses to it from the early modern period to the nineteenth century, we discuss the complexities of wetland management in the Marmara Lake Basin within the sancak of Saruhan (contemporary Manisa) in western Anatolia. We argue that intimate knowledge of this specific ecosystem played a critical role in mitigating attempts at reclamation and land grabbing and ultimately in developing legal structures of and policies for Ottoman conservation strategies. We situate our discussion within the paradigm of environing made possible by detailed longue-durée archival narratives; these micro-histories afford a dynamic perspective into non-linear responses to ecological and political changes and provide a local lens into the scalar impacts of human agency.
{"title":"Ottoman Lakes and Fluid Landscapes: Environing, Wetlands and Conservation in the Marmara Lake Basin, Circa 1550–1900","authors":"SEMIH ÇELIK, CHRISTINA LUKE, CHRISTOPHER H. ROOSEVELT","doi":"10.3828/096734022x16470180631460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734022x16470180631460","url":null,"abstract":"The study of Ottoman lakes and wetlands from the perspective of management and conservation is an emerging field. Scholars have explored Ottoman strategies for managing agricultural and extractive landscapes, yet detailed investigation of socio-political responses to dynamic wetlands, particularly during periods of drastic climate shifts, requires deeper investigation. Our research on wetlands and lakes moves from the purview of waqf s (pious foundations) to the emergence of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). By examining the shifting perspectives of institutional authority and community responses to it from the early modern period to the nineteenth century, we discuss the complexities of wetland management in the Marmara Lake Basin within the sancak of Saruhan (contemporary Manisa) in western Anatolia. We argue that intimate knowledge of this specific ecosystem played a critical role in mitigating attempts at reclamation and land grabbing and ultimately in developing legal structures of and policies for Ottoman conservation strategies. We situate our discussion within the paradigm of environing made possible by detailed longue-durée archival narratives; these micro-histories afford a dynamic perspective into non-linear responses to ecological and political changes and provide a local lens into the scalar impacts of human agency.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135944422","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 : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.3197/096734022x16384451127401
N. Humphrey
The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.
{"title":"Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England","authors":"N. Humphrey","doi":"10.3197/096734022x16384451127401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16384451127401","url":null,"abstract":"The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84740687","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}
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