Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
make a signifi cant impact in cross-boundary environmental histories. There have
been a number of environmental histories of mountain regions (e.g., McNeill, 2004)
and water courses. Evenden's (2004) exploration of the contestation between dam
development and salmon conservation on the Fraser River, British Columbia, rep-
resents a case in point, as does Mark Cioc's (2006) investigation of the historical
political, economic and ecological dimensions of the Rhine from the early nineteenth
century.
Some of the avenues which have been heralded as 'new' for environmental his-
torians have already been subject to the geographers' gaze. Recent reviews of work
on smell and aural histories have highlighted a niche for sensory environmental
histories (Coates, 2005), though there is also a body of geographical work that
addresses the themes of work and music (Jones, 2005), art and sound (Butler, 2006)
and smell and taste (Law, 2001). Environmental historians have also begun to
explore the association of environment and international trade, and the complexities
of the relationship between production and consumption (Klingle, 2003, p. 94).
Again, their arguments might be usefully informed by the considerable geographical
literature on these themes (e.g., Hughes, 2006; Klooster, 2006).
Frontiers in Environmental History
There are very many other new possible avenues of environmental history research.
The following subsections focus on a number of vibrant themes, selected for three
key reasons. First, they refl ect- but might also benefi t from recent multidisciplinary
developments; second, they have the potential to take the study of environmental
history beyond the spatial confi nes of the political boundary or nation state;
and third, they impinge upon and incorporate some of the other relatively new
departures in environmental history to which geographers are making important
contributions.
The environmental history of the oceans and seas
Beyond a focus on pollution, environmental historians have, until recently, tended
to neglect water as a medium for investigation (McNeill, 2003). The oceans in par-
ticular have remained 'outside of history' (Bolster, 2006). Contemporary concerns
over depleted fi sh stocks, the destruction of marine habitats, especially coral reefs,
and the threat of ship-borne biological invasions have served to highlight the vulner-
ability of the oceans. It is now being recognised that these problems are part of a
much longer history of human impact (Igler, 2005; Van Sittert, 2005). In this
context, it is perhaps not surprising that the sea is now being recognised as one of
the new frontiers for environmental historians (Bolster, 2006).
Geographers have again already made some valuable contributions to this theme.
Philip Steinberg, for example, has adopted a political geography perspective to
examine how nations and peoples have viewed and used the oceans in his 2001
'Social construction of the oceans'. A recent special issue of the
Journal of Historical
Geography
, moreover, has highlighted the potential for more work on the imagina-
tive geographies, conceptualisations and representations of the sea, on the oceans
as sites of biological, economic and cultural exchange and scientifi c investigation,
on the geography of seafaring and maritime disaster and the sea as a militarised
space (Lambert et al., 2006).
