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It has been suggested, however, that the North American historian's apparently
'new' and arguably radical take on this subset of their academic discipline after the
1960s and 1970s actually served to reopen existing debates on what, for many,
were fairly old issues (Williams, 1994, p. 3). Geographers have long dealt with the
environmental problems of past and present (Baker, 2003, p. 75), and the degree
of overlap has encouraged strong links to be drawn between historical geography
and environmental history. As McNeill (2003, p. 9) suggests 'the subject matter' of
both (sub) disciplines 'is essentially the same, and the differences are mainly matters
of style, nuance and technique'.
The roots of British environmental history, for example, are in fact thought to
have stemmed directly from geography-based studies of natural and landscape
history, drawing on archaeological, palaeecological and historical evidence. Much
environmental history research is and has been conducted under the banners of
historical geography, which has remained a vibrant fi eld in Britain (MacKenzie,
2004, p. 376). Practitioners in the distinctive subfi eld of cultural geography, more-
over, have made particularly signifi cant contributions to the interpretation of land-
scape as texts.
The emergence of environmental history in other parts of the world may have
had similar origins. In Europe generally, but perhaps especially in Scandinavia,
landscape studies have long focused on integrating information similarly derived
from both scientifi c and cultural evidence. Likewise, although environmental history
in Australia was argued to be a burgeoning 'new' fi eld in the mid-1990s, Joe Powell
(1996, p. 257) was among the fi rst to suggest that Australia's historical geographers
had in fact long been covering much of the ground 'pegged out' for environmental
history at that stage.
It is clear that environmental history is 'many things to many people' (McNeill,
2003, p. 6). As a result, there have evolved many different 'species' of the subject
(Stewart, 1998), each tending to be relatively narrowly defi ned, legitimising one or
other disciplinary perspective on the topic (Sorlin and Warde, 2005). Given these
competing traditions, it is not surprising that there is a lack of genuine coherence,
numerous defi nitions and an unwieldy breadth in environmental history (Weiner,
2005) as well as persistent institutional and disciplinary cleavages.
The different ancestral routes of environmental history, the disputes and debates
over its origins and its competing defi nitions, however, have resulted in an immensely
diverse - and, thanks to a rather challenging degree of intellectual scrutiny in recent
years - a dynamic fi eld of enquiry. But precisely what kinds of issues and concerns
have been studied under the remit of environmental history and how have these
changed over time? How is environmental history practised? What are the current
and new directions in the fi eld? Moreover, what contributions can and have geog-
raphers made to the study of environmental history?
Agency, Method and Multidisciplinarity
in Environmental History
The role of human and non-human agency in environmental change has tradition-
ally been, and continues to be, a fundamental concern within the study of environ-
mental history. Geographers have long investigated the way in which humans have
shaped and transformed the landscape and how they situate themselves in nature.
Anthropogenic modifi cation of the environment has featured conspicuously in geo-
