Thông tin tài liệu
_Encountering_
__the_PAst__
__in_NAture=_
=Essays_in=Environmental=History=
=edited_by_Timo=Myllyntaus_and_Mikko_Saikku=
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
“This short book from a small country [Finland] is rich in imaginative, inno-
vative contexts. Ranging expertly over several continents, including North
America, it argues that nature is everywhere an active presence, a formative
influence, in the making of human history. An excellent introduction to the
kind of history most needed in the twenty-first century.”
—Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History,
University of Kansas
“In a field traditionally dominated by works on the United States, the [book
offers] a fresh international perspective, finding fertile ground for the study of
people and nature in diverse lands.”
—Economic History Review
A deeper understanding of contemporary environmental problems requires
us to understand the interaction between humans and nature in the past.
How have human societies affected their environment and vice versa? What
does history tell us about ecological change?
The essays in Encountering the Past in Nature provide various approaches to
the new discipline. Experts with diverse educational backgrounds tackle
important issues ranging from the intellectual formation of environmental
concepts to case studies of forest history and animal extinction. Most essays
focus on the issue of wilderness and the various uses of forest resources.
Introductory essays elaborate on the historiography and methodology of the
new field of historical study.
Encountering the Past in Nature is a welcome addition to the introductory
texts currently available in the United States.
Timo Myllyntaus is senior lecturer of economic and social history at the
University of Helsinki. Mikko Saikku is assistant director of the North
American Studies Program at the Renvall Institute for Area and Cultural
Studies, University of Helsinki.
SERIES IN ECOLOGY AND HISTORY
designed by Bonnie Campbell
=Ohio=University=Press=
_Encountering_the_Past_in_Nature_
_Encountering_the_Past_in_Nature_
Timo Myllyntaus and
Mikko Saikku, eds.
Ohio
ISBN 0-8214-1358-9
,!7IA8C1-ebd58g!
Encountering the Past in Nature
Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History
James L. A. Webb, Jr
., Series Editor
Conrad Totman
,
The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan
Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku, eds.
,
Encountering the Past in Nature: Essays in
Environmental History
Encountering
the Past
in Nature
Essays in
Environmental History
Revised Edition
Edited by
Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku
Foreword by
Alfred W. Crosby
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Athens
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
Series Editor’s Foreword © 2001 by James L. A. Webb, Jr.
Copyright © 1999 Timo Myllyntaus, Mikko Saikku, the other
contributors, and Helsinki University Press
First published in Finland by Helsinki University Press, 1999
Second, revised edition, 2001
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1
Cover art adapted from Mark Catesby’s eighteenth-century illustration of
the “Largest White Bill’d Woodpecker and the Willow Oak,” from
The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands
(London, 1731–43)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encountering the past in nature : essays in environmental history / edited
by Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku ; foreword by Alfred W. Crosby.
—Rev. ed.
p. cm. — (Ohio University Press series in ecology and history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8214-1357-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8214-1358-9 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Human ecology—History. 2. Nature—Effect of human beings
on—History. 3. Forests and forestry—History. I. Myllyntaus, Timo. II.
Saikku, Mikko. III. Series.
GF13 .E5 2000
304.2'09—dc21
00-057994
TM
Contents
Figures and Table vii
Series Editor’s Foreword
James L. A. Webb, Jr.
ix
Foreword
Alfred W. Crosby
xi
Preface xvii
Contributors xix
Environmental History: A New Discipline with Long
Tr aditions
Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku 1
Modernization and the Concept of Nature: On the
Reproduction of Environmental Stereotypes
Ari Aukusti Lehtinen 29
Life in the Borderland Forests: The Takeover of Nature
and Its Social Organization in North Karelia
Ismo Björn 49
The Vanishing and Reappearing Tropical Forest: Forest
Management and Land Use in Thailand
Olavi Luukkanen
74
vi
v
Contents
“Home in the Big Forest”: Decline of the Ivory-Billed
Wo o dpecker and Its Habitat in the United States
Mikko Saikku 94
Environment in Explaining History: Restoring Humans
as Part of Nature
Timo Myllyntaus 141
Index 161
vii
Figures and Table
Figures
1. Finland and the Baltic Sea Rim 6
2. The North Karelian Biosphere Reserve 51
3. Thailand 76
4. Major subdivisions of the Eastern Deciduous Forest
in the United States as it existed at the time of
European conquest 97
5. The original and late-nineteenth-century distribution
of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States 105
6. The pyramid of orientations in environmental history 154
Table
Key factors affecting the state of the environment in the
North Karelian Biosphere Reserve 53
ix
Series Editor’s Foreword
he Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History is
pleased to publish Encountering the Past in Nature, a collection
of essays in environmental history by a group of Finnish scholars
that was ¤rst released by the Helsinki University Press in 1999. This
new edition provides a provocative and eclectic set of six readings
that is suitable for adoption in both world history and global envi-
ronmental history courses.
Three essays deal with change over time in forested zones, in
different parts of the Northern Hemisphere and in different histori-
cal periods—the northernmost forests of the European taiga, from
the Stone Age to the present; the subtropical lowlands of North
America in the period c. 1600–c. 1940; and the wet tropics of main-
land Southeast Asia, c. 1950 to the present. The other essays address
topics in historiography and intellectual history—the evolution of
historical writing about the environment in Finland and the United
States; the contradictory concepts about the natural world that in-
form We stern thinking about “nature”; and the role that the idea of
the environment can play as an explanatory factor in human his-
tory. There are essays in “big history” here, as well as challenging
case studies.
Encountering the Past in Nature also provides instructive exam-
ples of how environmental historians are working with a wide vari-
ety of interdisciplinary approaches to shed light on the complex
T
[...]... conservation in latenineteenth-century Finland At the time, their ideas were new and pathbreaking—not only in their home country but also in the rest of the Nordic countries These efforts showed at least a certain degree of environmental awareness, akin to that of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt in the United States.22 In the interwar years, the conservation movement gained momentum In Finland as in many... Environmental History (EAEH) to continue discussions on the historical interactions between humans and the environment The founding meeting was attended also by a Finnish representative, botanist Yrjö Vasari, who has studied human-induced changes in the rural environments of northeastern Finland.35 The beginnings of the European association were promising The proceedings of the First International Workshop on... forests thinned by the ecologically unsophisticated Finns need their forests for their peace of mind, their export trade—for their futures—and therefore must learn to think of them ecologically as well as economically Finns need to harvest their forests in accordance with the intent of “sustainable yields,” but these are ambiguous words The scientists xiv v Alfred W Crosby may be able to tell what they... allied with industrialization Humans are in danger of losing their control of the development, since their minds have been captured by the rational outlook of the Enlightenment The book by Wright aroused a lot of interest not only in Finland but Environmental History v 13 also in Sweden The criticism of reason stimulated the consideration of the development of the entire Western culture from another, more... southern part of the country were genuine old growth (more than 200 years old) In northern Finland, which covers the area from the region around the River Oulu and Lake Oulu in the boreal zone to the treeless fjells in northern Lapland, the proportion was almost half of the forested area At present, 6 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku the percentage of old-growth forests in the southern part of the country... most Finns, or at least a plurality of such, live on or near the southern coast and travel to the countryside, as Ari Lehtinen puts it, on vacations, in ¶ight “from the repressions of modern life in the cities.” The forest is reoccupying some of the land it lost to the farmers and loggers; starlings, which depend on meadows for access to their food, are decreasing in number Minor native ¶ora, kept in. .. is prominent in the historiography of human ideas about the environment, or the study of how humans have viewed the natural world in their science, religion, art, and ethics.5 In environmental historiography, there has often been a deliberate effort to create an interdisciplinary synthesis, often by combining existing information from diverse disciplines in a new way Not surprisingly, the research topic... Finland as in many other Western countries, it was a reaction to rising industrialization and modernization The trailblazer of the Finnish conservation movement, Rolf Palmgren, criticized the “blind materialism” of his time The movement gained political support, and the parliament passed the ¤rst conservation law in 1923 In the following year, Palmgren was nominated to the new post of superintendent of conservation.23... since the 1970s At the time, the geographer Ilmari Hustich and the economic and social historian Sven-Erik Åström at the University of Helsinki were in uential in introducing modern environmental history to Finland.29 Although they were open to new ways of valuing the environment and aware of the arguments of both old and new environmentalists, Hustich and Åström did their research strictly within their... has been re¶ected by academic research Like other scholars, historians have dealt with these pivotal elements of nature in their works In Finland, the tradition of research into climatic history has its beginnings in the eighteenth century The French school of economists, Physiocrats, and the Enlightenment in general inspired scholars such as the ¤rst Finnish professor of chemistry, Pehr Adrian Gadd, . Campbell =Ohio=University=Press= _Encountering_ the_ Past_ in_ Nature_ _Encountering_ the_ Past_ in_ Nature_ Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku, eds. Ohio ISBN 0-8214-1358-9 ,!7IA8C1-ebd58g! Encountering the Past in Nature Ohio. change? The essays in Encountering the Past in Nature provide various approaches to the new discipline. Experts with diverse educational backgrounds tackle important issues ranging from the intellectual. the environment in Finland and the United States; the contradictory concepts about the natural world that in- form We stern thinking about nature ; and the role that the idea of the environment
Ngày đăng: 28/03/2014, 22:20
Xem thêm: Encountering the Past in Nature doc, Encountering the Past in Nature doc