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Each of the world wars has been examined intensively from highly specialized social, economic and political viewpoints, but the immediate environmental effects—like the infinitely more elusive impacts on environmental ideas and attitudes—have been relatively neglected. Other major events and trends of the first half of the twentieth century are chronologically less discrete and their environmental history is generally better understood, yet in terms of their penetrating international influences… Continue

From the United States to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Russian empire and the infant Soviet Union, utilitarian anthropocentric management strategies were aimed at maximizing or sustaining resource yields. The hints about ecological integrities and broadranging ethical rights were only accepted as promising seeds by a few enthusiastic activists. Foremost amongst these was American poet-scientistphilosopher John Muir, who championed the cause of wilderness conservation and questioned the au… Continue

The term ‘ecology’ was not then current, but the idea of comprehensive holism in Nature had been common enough in religious and scientific quarters since the seventeenth century. Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus published a treatise entitled The Oeconomy of Nature in 1749 and that phrase seems the most likely precursor of ‘ecology’. Certainly it was cited in late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century appeals for the protection of rare species whose place in the ‘oeconomy’ had not been determ… Continue

Familiar with the lessons of land degradation in the ancient Mediterranean world, Marsh was also well versed in the classical literature on society-Nature relationships and had witnessed the searching impacts of deforestation in his native state of Vermont. Accordingly, Man and Nature drew on field and historical evidence from both hemispheres, supplemented by the author’s correspondence with selected European technocrats. In lively and accessible language Marsh demonstrated that the world was b… Continue