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Doğa ve İktidar: Global Bir Çevre Tarihi
İnsanlığın çevre sorunlarıyla mücadelesinin tarihi, sanıldığı gibi yeni değil, binlerce yıllıktır ve insani pratiklerin çevre açısından sürdürülebilir olup olmaması tarihi şekillendiren en temel unsurlardan biridir. Değişen insan-doğa ilişkisini dünya tarihini anlama çabasında merkeze koyan bu kitap, kapsamlı bir dünya çevre tarihidir; ekolojik krizlere insanların nasıl cevap vermeye çalıştıklarını, bunların devlet iktidarı ve maddi menfaatlerle ilgili meselelere nasıl bağlandığını ele almaktadır.
Türkçede önemli bir açığı kapatacağını umut ettiğimiz bu seçkin tarih çalışması 2009 yılında World History Association ödülüne layık görülmüştür.
Türkçede önemli bir açığı kapatacağını umut ettiğimiz bu seçkin tarih çalışması 2009 yılında World History Association ödülüne layık görülmüştür.
724 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
11 people are currently reading
304 people want to read
About the author
Joachim Radkau
21 books6 followersProfessor of Modern History at the University of Bielefeld, specialising in the environment, technology and mentalité.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 16, 2020
tüfek, mikrop ve çelik, sapiens vb. kitapları, daha genel anlamda tarihi bu kitaplara yakın bir vizyon ve üsluptan okumayı seviyorsanız şiddetle tavsiye ediyorum. öte yandan bugün, eğer kendinizi ekolojik mücadelenin içinde konumlandırıyorsanız, radkau'nun doğa ve iktidar'ının çok öğretici bir deneyim olacağından eminim.
sevgiler.
sevgiler.
March 12, 2014
This isn't a book I can really recommend to casual readers, even casual readers who are interested in environmental history. It is just so dense. Part of the problem might be that it is a translation, but part of it is also that there really isn't a narrative through-line...Radkau has a point to make about environmental history, and he provides example after example after example of that point.
It's a good point though. This is an interesting read after something like "Mosquito Empires," which was more of a determinist sort of environmental history. "Mosquito Empires" was about how ecological developments in the Americas (basically the rise of malaria and yellow fever) affected 18th and 19th century American history. The people in "Empires" didn't know they were creating conditions that fostered disease though - that book isn't really about human decision making. "Nature and Power" is about human responses to ecological crises, and how those responses have tended to be all wrapped up in issues of state power and financial interests, and how those responses have tended to address one problem while creating new problems. The underlying message is that human history and natural history are inseparable. An environmental history cannot, therefore, be merely a history of environmental occurrences; it must “become a history of human nature,” and examine the ways people have interacted with their environments, altering them and sometimes being conditioned by them. This means that environmental historians cannot work in isolation from political, economic, or social historians. The field must work in concert with these other fields, and in fact (as Radkau demonstrates throughout) it can globalize these fields, providing countless cross-national comparisons of societal responses in various continents and epochs to floods, or deforestation, or epidemic disease.
This book also tries to take the focus off America a bit, and focus on the "old world." Environmentalism in the USA tends to be about protecting "wilderness," and the very concept of wilderness "makes no sense in the environmental history of the Old World." (It also doesn't make much sense in the environmental history of the New World...it encourages the false notion that Europeans found a primitive untouched wilderness when they arrived in the Americas) Instead of concentrating on separating people from landscapes, Radkau argues that we should study the way people have interacted with landscapes for hundreds (and thousands) of years. This is valuable...this point and some of his illustrations of it are probably what will stick with me from the book.
It's a good point though. This is an interesting read after something like "Mosquito Empires," which was more of a determinist sort of environmental history. "Mosquito Empires" was about how ecological developments in the Americas (basically the rise of malaria and yellow fever) affected 18th and 19th century American history. The people in "Empires" didn't know they were creating conditions that fostered disease though - that book isn't really about human decision making. "Nature and Power" is about human responses to ecological crises, and how those responses have tended to be all wrapped up in issues of state power and financial interests, and how those responses have tended to address one problem while creating new problems. The underlying message is that human history and natural history are inseparable. An environmental history cannot, therefore, be merely a history of environmental occurrences; it must “become a history of human nature,” and examine the ways people have interacted with their environments, altering them and sometimes being conditioned by them. This means that environmental historians cannot work in isolation from political, economic, or social historians. The field must work in concert with these other fields, and in fact (as Radkau demonstrates throughout) it can globalize these fields, providing countless cross-national comparisons of societal responses in various continents and epochs to floods, or deforestation, or epidemic disease.
This book also tries to take the focus off America a bit, and focus on the "old world." Environmentalism in the USA tends to be about protecting "wilderness," and the very concept of wilderness "makes no sense in the environmental history of the Old World." (It also doesn't make much sense in the environmental history of the New World...it encourages the false notion that Europeans found a primitive untouched wilderness when they arrived in the Americas) Instead of concentrating on separating people from landscapes, Radkau argues that we should study the way people have interacted with landscapes for hundreds (and thousands) of years. This is valuable...this point and some of his illustrations of it are probably what will stick with me from the book.
February 23, 2022
Environmental history written only from today’s trends will lead us to dead ends: current issues with over fertilization should not be seen separated from the miseries of no fertilizers era, and taming the destructive consequences of rampant free market selfishness should not hinder businesses (Radkau 2008, 2–3).
Idea of “untouched nature” is a phantom, and hence an impartial environmental history should recount hybrid human-nature combinations (Radkau 2008, 4) and their co-evolution in a destructive and creative process. Therefore, the notion that nature is by itself a blooming garden is an illusion because plantations, more so in gardens, require human action of continual weeding (Radkau 2008, 57). When it comes to urban setting, Venice is an example of artificial nature wherein human managed drainage in the lagoon was the earlier triumph only to be harnessed later by the interventions for continuous water circulation to avoid miseries of stagnant water (Radkau 2008, 119).
Technology detached from an environment in which it arose and adapted in another environment can bring new environmental risks (Radkau 2008, 11).
Environmental discoveries can flip certain ideas: the story of Eucalyptus from environmental protectant for reforestation to an environmental terrorist hindering growth of other plants (Radkau 2008, 22) is an example
Liebig’s thesis: the fertility of the soil is based not on a self-regenerating life force, but on mineral components (Radkau 2008, 12)
Contemporary analysis puts the era of coal and oil as centerpiece for environmental crises history of water and air but the issues have existed far before in reality, and men have struggled to deal with these. There is need for analysis of times before industrialization and even in prehistory. Looking back into the past will help an environmental historian see how our current environmental behaviors are programmed (Radkau 2008, 15-16)
Controversy of anthropocentrism (human centered universe) vs. non-anthropocentrism is as old as Aristotle’s time (Radkau 2008, 17)
Solutions for a common problem can vary spatially: forests can be a solution to soil erosion but pastures are better in mountainous regions (Radkau 2008, 23), similarly the artificial lakes can dry up some regions of downstream flow as in Alps of southern Europe while these can also lessen the burden of decreasing groundwater in areas where evaporation rates are not high (Radkau 2008, 257)
In a contest between wilderness and economic outcome, less developed countries might not have appreciation for the earlier (Radkau 2008, 26)
Subsistence economy of local scale protects environment more because its own survival is contingent upon environment while the market economy promotes resource drain for profit thus harming environment (Radkau 2008, 38–39). The environmental protection enforced from above, mostly through a government law, is usually unpopular (Radkau 2008, 61). European peasant cooperatives were a subsistence economy that resulted in preservation of forests (Radkau 2008, 141).
Slash and burn agricultural tradition prized on fire as an herbicide (Radkau 2008, 42) while simultaneously provided nutrients from burned vegetation to the soil, though temporarily, and more so in area where soil lacked nutrients like in tropical rainforests (Radkau 2008, 45)
Humans as animal hunters for food supply practiced population control, or rather control on population density, which was essentially required for their survival on limited wildlife at particular locale, but the concept of sustainability of animal species is not evident among them because of their role noted in destruction of mega fauna. Food supply from wildlife required humans to form sporadic settlements thus spatially expanding their power over nature (Radkau 2008, 46-48). While hunting activity recognized the locale as a resource and promoted sporadic habitation, the agriculture realized the soil and generated sedentary attitudes among humans (Radkau 2008, 64).
Efficiency of treatment plant needs critical questioning because they could possibly reduce nutrients thus harming the wildlife (Radkau 2008, 51)
Relationships among various actors in nature vary geographically and characteristically: cattle and agriculture can be mutually supportive in plain fields but possibly conflicting in terraced agriculture. Similarly they could be mutually enhancing because animals offer fertilizer source to the soil but possibly daunting as animals could harm the crops (Radkau 2008, 66)
Agricultural output has continued to cost other lands like pastures, heathland, forests and so forth because it extracted nutrients sources from other lands for its own recharge (Radkau 2008, 75)
Water is both a promise and a threat. Same region can be inundated by too much water at one time and suffered a drought at another (Radkau 2008, 87). Irrigation efforts in dry regions can cause water logging leading to salinization if not properly drained (Radkau 2008, 89). Similar can happen for river. Slopes of the rivers affect siltation levels: Euphrates and Tigris had smaller slopes that Nile and caused siltation thus waterlogging the nearby fields due to inadequate drainage (Radkau 2008, 93).
Infrastructure design needs to adapt to natural processes instead of dominating them for example smoothly adapting to the force of water tide instead of resisting water head-on in case of building water dams (Radkau 2008, 88)
Environmental laws would vary geographically: British riparian law could not work on principle of priority to land adjacent to flowing stream in Australia where regions were dry and water distribution was major goal (Radkau 2008, 88)
Irrigation contains temptation for central governments to expand control and increase revenues; and develop systems of such a scale that would need response from higher levels of government in times of crises (Radkau 2008, 91-92)
Environmental historians have been interested in population burdened China sometimes praising its model of returning human excreta to the soil while on other times attributing its survival to natural loess soils (Radkau 2008, 103–5) while others criticize her inconsideration to the forests that led to soil erosion and flooding (Radkau 2008, 114–15)
Venice can be understood as pioneer of environmental policy in the wake of linking forest economy with water economy. The city needed wood supply but could not possibly harm the closer forests, which were not many, to avoid an increase in river caused siltation resulting from deforestation (Radkau 2008, 122)
Though initially considered as a savior from malaria, excessive use of insecticide DDT caused harmful effects to wildlife which provoked Rachel Carson to call attention to in her 1962 Silent Spring (Radkau 2008, 131)
Deforestation in mountainous regions occurred majorly from nineteenth century onwards, though for plains and hilly countryside it happened earlier. The resource of wood was decisive for sea trade and Western or Northwestern Europe’s access to this resource gave it an edge (Radkau 2008, 134–35)
In urban setting, the pit coal smoke first became a public scandal in London in sixteenth century as John Evelyn railed again it in his treatise (Radkau 2008, 143) while the metal smelting in twentieth century occurred as threat to the wood (Radkau 2008, 149). Early industry in London caused many environmental challenges as the city became first western city to inhabit a million residents in the nineteenth century. A useful response was a Public Health Act in 1848 ensuring local self-governance of urban settings which was later adopted in Germany as well (Radkau 2008, 237).
Sewage systems in cities remained largely focused on using human excreta as fertilizer until the chemical fertilizers took over and the excreta was just to be drained through a properly developed sewerage system (Radkau 2008, 144)
Commercial colonialism destroys the self-regulating elements of the subsistence economy while the settlement colonialism causes biological invasion i.e. spread of many species far beyond their original regions including diseases that caused demographic collapse. Further, colonial attitudes of environmental inconsideration left a long term mark on colonized world that continue even today. And even environmental consciousness becomes futile with such attitudes because it is something seen from above or from distance. (Radkau 2008, 152-53)
Overgrazing of pastures is a type of environmental crises that occurs relatively faster and brings harmful consequences to those responsible (Radkau 2008, 160)
Sugarcane plantations of colonial world caused massive deforestation (Radkau 2008, 161)
Power has many implications on environment. A colonial example is from central African regions where colonial powers forbade, apparently as an environment protection effort, indigenous population from hunting large animals only ending up promoting the advance of the tsetse fly which lives through large animals. Another example can be found in a region which was never colonized: Ethiopia. Political power can create environmental crises as evident from famines, in otherwise fertile, Ethiopia that followed forced resettlement of more than a million peasants in 1980s (Radkau 2008, 163)
Environmental awareness equally rose from the fears of the colonizers from the distant diseases as it did from usually believed London’s (or cities of the kind, scale or time) poor sanitation. British botanical gardens in colonized India offer the example. Colonizers also feared lack of resources like timber shortage in India which was essential for their shipbuilding survival. Further, the consequence of environmental abruptions like destruction of tropical rainforests and soil erosion were realized far more starkly in tropical regions, more so in tropical Islands that offered isolated laboratories for the study of ecological interrelationships, than in Europe (Radkau 2008, 164–65)
In Mughal India, tax was levied on harvest and not land itself thus forbidding Indians from intensifying cultivation. Indian villages were a subsistence economy with monsoon tanks and well irrigation in which evaporation remained minimal and salinization of the soil was avoided. This system worked in precolonial India without any centralized control. Yet colonial British changed this by introduction of institutionalized irrigation as the plains of Indus and Ganges offered ideal opportunities for large scale irrigation. These large scale hydraulic system weakened self-regulation of the villages (Radkau 2008, 170–72).
The forest history of India in precolonial times hails from eminent elephant forests and reverence for trees like Neem for healer of ills or fruit bearing trees like mangoes or resourceful trees like timber. Animals pastured into forests and leaf fall of the woodlands served as fertilizer. Forests offered last refuge in times of famine while agriculture was traditionally on slash-and-burn model. Commercial consumption of Indian forestry started with British colonization as in case of Timber and Oak for construction of battleships shifted from London to Bombay. Enormous forest destruction, primarily of sal and deodar forests of northern India, occurred during escalated demand for railway sleepers. Later preservations of forests in British India, or maybe better put: controlled by Lords instead of locals, also emerged from the awareness that woodlands were being extracted rapidly and needed control as a resource. Such control of forests for commercial use generated conflicts as local woodland uses were prohibited against which locals rebelled. Started after 1970 monsoon floods, a post-independence forest movement Chipko still opposes commercial logging of the forests. The ���Green Revolution’ of 1970s in South Asia intensified agriculture but imparted burden on water resource (Radkau 2008, 173–76).
Dust Bowl of 1930s deeply influenced environmental awareness in US to which the obvious response was to construct large scale hydraulic projects which only ended up creating different kinds of challenges of water scarcity (Radkau 2008, 181–82). In European context, the large scale transhumance in Spain during commercial rise of Merino wools destroyed agriculture for the sake of pastures and caused deforestation of Iberian Peninsula for cattle fodder. In England, the coppice forest was a provider of firewood and sustained for longer period owing to type of woodcutting that left behind a stool capable of re-sprouting. Moreover, England’s agriculture sustained fertility through use of guano imported from Peru in 1840s. Cattle farming in England had one distinction from that of Spain: it was done in enclosures often surrounded with trees thus generating a balance between agriculture and pastureland. In Europe, Germany’s afforestation efforts have remained persistent because it had no colonies like other European colonial crowns to extract resource from and therefore had to reserve its own resource (Radkau 2008, 188–93).
Humanity entered into a new era of environment in eighteenth century when first fossil energy system (coal) fueled the steam engine and later the electrification and gasoline engine disseminated the technology in every corner of the world. Further, the increased life expectancy after the great plagues led to population growth thus raising concerns for limited natural resources. Transportation networks starting with railroads allowed access to vast and faraway lands while land reclamation efforts at potential locations were witnessed around the globe. Large scale irrigation and drainage projects intensified agriculture while the dikes or dam construction brought apparent control of nature’s might. Yet later instances hinted that tight barriers to water bodies resulted in floods and associated threats. Another pernicious intervention for riverine was to expose them to the sewerage of nearby settlements that converted streams to sewers. Industry and technology initially presented itself as improver of environment but it later made the world an ugly place: coal and carbon industry emitted hazardous chemicals into air and water which was not the problem in the age of wood. Air and water were such resources that the rightful users could not possibly be entailed and therefore these resources needed an overall protection (Radkau 2008, 195–205).
Thrust of eighteenth and early nineteenth century agrarian reformers was to remove the fallow period by crop rotation and fodder plants alongside barn feeding of animals on private lands. These reforms brought following consequences: fallow was replaced with fodder, overgrazing of pastureland was replaced with domestication of cattle in barn enclosures, and cattle manure collected in barn was used for fertilizing the fields. Yet only response to the weed induced hazards to the agriculture was to plough the field and pests were usually thought to be contained by other wildlife especially birds as in biological pest control. The virtues of agrarian reformers were perturbed by various phenomena: barn feeding increased the demand for leaf fodder which threatened forests, and increased market demands for flax, sugar beet and potato affected crop rotation. Mineral fertilizers like potash started being used from nineteenth century with their benefits but later extractive traits only to be replenished by other chemical fertilizers (Radkau 2008, 206–12).
Early modern period set the city as a stage for environmental policy: for example urban sanitation called for laying networks for water supply, sewerage, and drainage. Moreover, wastewater treatment was another requirement wherein pandemics like cholera intensified the urgent need for action which shifted the action from urban scale to the centralization of public health policy. Similarly, local smoke inspector in US cities around 1940s regulated the containment of coal burning smoke which later shifted to the national level (Radkau 2008, 237–38).
While industrial age produced many environmental challenges, it would be wrong to believe that no actions were taken for mitigation. Social question of the problem of water pipes and ventilation for tenements was raised to which social policy aimed to respond, issue of wages and working hours was addressed by workers’ movement, disposal of waste was considered a challenge and addressed through municipal system, excrement removal was taken up by poudrette industry to make fertilizer out of it, industry emissions containing sulphuric and hydrochloric acids were planned to be developed as byproducts, and pandemics arising from polluted water was avoided by inducing water cleaning interventions (Radkau 2008, 241–42).
Globalization has given birth to a new era of environmental challenges because resource consumption in these times exceeded far in extent that ever before. For example, the world utilizes energy sources like fossil fuels created over millions of years at an alarming pace and such uses generate unintended synergistic effects. In this context, we are now in the age where challenge is not as much the lack of resource but is rather over exploitation of these. Therefore environment is not threatened by lack of resources: for example the concern of energy sources during 1973 oil crises but rather the abundance of cheap energy sources in current age. Similar shift has occurred in agriculture where and new challenges are over fertilization or excessive use of herbicides and pesticides. Problem in soil is shifted from erosion to the irreversible process of sealing the soil through concrete constructions on fertile land. Air pollution has become an emergent concern as declining oil prices and resulting increase in the use of automobiles in post 1950s era generated new type of greenhouse gases emissions that were at a scale unparalleled before. Excessive use of plastic has generated trash that pollutes the world in all kinds of geographies and for good deal of years. Hydropower and building of dams or artificial lakes, once propagated and funded by international agencies like The World Bank, generated questions of water cycle: for example the impacts on Alp valleys which dried up when the water flow was disrupted through dams. Nuclear power, a promising alternative of energy back in time, generated the concerns of possible hazards like Chernobyl and more than that, the availability of energy through this alternative has its own possibilities of exploitation (Radkau 2008, 250–60).
US induced high consumption attitudes brought many imperative ecological challenges to the world and major antithesis to this was the autarky (economic self-sufficiency) of German National Socialism, and not Russi
Idea of “untouched nature” is a phantom, and hence an impartial environmental history should recount hybrid human-nature combinations (Radkau 2008, 4) and their co-evolution in a destructive and creative process. Therefore, the notion that nature is by itself a blooming garden is an illusion because plantations, more so in gardens, require human action of continual weeding (Radkau 2008, 57). When it comes to urban setting, Venice is an example of artificial nature wherein human managed drainage in the lagoon was the earlier triumph only to be harnessed later by the interventions for continuous water circulation to avoid miseries of stagnant water (Radkau 2008, 119).
Technology detached from an environment in which it arose and adapted in another environment can bring new environmental risks (Radkau 2008, 11).
Environmental discoveries can flip certain ideas: the story of Eucalyptus from environmental protectant for reforestation to an environmental terrorist hindering growth of other plants (Radkau 2008, 22) is an example
Liebig’s thesis: the fertility of the soil is based not on a self-regenerating life force, but on mineral components (Radkau 2008, 12)
Contemporary analysis puts the era of coal and oil as centerpiece for environmental crises history of water and air but the issues have existed far before in reality, and men have struggled to deal with these. There is need for analysis of times before industrialization and even in prehistory. Looking back into the past will help an environmental historian see how our current environmental behaviors are programmed (Radkau 2008, 15-16)
Controversy of anthropocentrism (human centered universe) vs. non-anthropocentrism is as old as Aristotle’s time (Radkau 2008, 17)
Solutions for a common problem can vary spatially: forests can be a solution to soil erosion but pastures are better in mountainous regions (Radkau 2008, 23), similarly the artificial lakes can dry up some regions of downstream flow as in Alps of southern Europe while these can also lessen the burden of decreasing groundwater in areas where evaporation rates are not high (Radkau 2008, 257)
In a contest between wilderness and economic outcome, less developed countries might not have appreciation for the earlier (Radkau 2008, 26)
Subsistence economy of local scale protects environment more because its own survival is contingent upon environment while the market economy promotes resource drain for profit thus harming environment (Radkau 2008, 38–39). The environmental protection enforced from above, mostly through a government law, is usually unpopular (Radkau 2008, 61). European peasant cooperatives were a subsistence economy that resulted in preservation of forests (Radkau 2008, 141).
Slash and burn agricultural tradition prized on fire as an herbicide (Radkau 2008, 42) while simultaneously provided nutrients from burned vegetation to the soil, though temporarily, and more so in area where soil lacked nutrients like in tropical rainforests (Radkau 2008, 45)
Humans as animal hunters for food supply practiced population control, or rather control on population density, which was essentially required for their survival on limited wildlife at particular locale, but the concept of sustainability of animal species is not evident among them because of their role noted in destruction of mega fauna. Food supply from wildlife required humans to form sporadic settlements thus spatially expanding their power over nature (Radkau 2008, 46-48). While hunting activity recognized the locale as a resource and promoted sporadic habitation, the agriculture realized the soil and generated sedentary attitudes among humans (Radkau 2008, 64).
Efficiency of treatment plant needs critical questioning because they could possibly reduce nutrients thus harming the wildlife (Radkau 2008, 51)
Relationships among various actors in nature vary geographically and characteristically: cattle and agriculture can be mutually supportive in plain fields but possibly conflicting in terraced agriculture. Similarly they could be mutually enhancing because animals offer fertilizer source to the soil but possibly daunting as animals could harm the crops (Radkau 2008, 66)
Agricultural output has continued to cost other lands like pastures, heathland, forests and so forth because it extracted nutrients sources from other lands for its own recharge (Radkau 2008, 75)
Water is both a promise and a threat. Same region can be inundated by too much water at one time and suffered a drought at another (Radkau 2008, 87). Irrigation efforts in dry regions can cause water logging leading to salinization if not properly drained (Radkau 2008, 89). Similar can happen for river. Slopes of the rivers affect siltation levels: Euphrates and Tigris had smaller slopes that Nile and caused siltation thus waterlogging the nearby fields due to inadequate drainage (Radkau 2008, 93).
Infrastructure design needs to adapt to natural processes instead of dominating them for example smoothly adapting to the force of water tide instead of resisting water head-on in case of building water dams (Radkau 2008, 88)
Environmental laws would vary geographically: British riparian law could not work on principle of priority to land adjacent to flowing stream in Australia where regions were dry and water distribution was major goal (Radkau 2008, 88)
Irrigation contains temptation for central governments to expand control and increase revenues; and develop systems of such a scale that would need response from higher levels of government in times of crises (Radkau 2008, 91-92)
Environmental historians have been interested in population burdened China sometimes praising its model of returning human excreta to the soil while on other times attributing its survival to natural loess soils (Radkau 2008, 103–5) while others criticize her inconsideration to the forests that led to soil erosion and flooding (Radkau 2008, 114–15)
Venice can be understood as pioneer of environmental policy in the wake of linking forest economy with water economy. The city needed wood supply but could not possibly harm the closer forests, which were not many, to avoid an increase in river caused siltation resulting from deforestation (Radkau 2008, 122)
Though initially considered as a savior from malaria, excessive use of insecticide DDT caused harmful effects to wildlife which provoked Rachel Carson to call attention to in her 1962 Silent Spring (Radkau 2008, 131)
Deforestation in mountainous regions occurred majorly from nineteenth century onwards, though for plains and hilly countryside it happened earlier. The resource of wood was decisive for sea trade and Western or Northwestern Europe’s access to this resource gave it an edge (Radkau 2008, 134–35)
In urban setting, the pit coal smoke first became a public scandal in London in sixteenth century as John Evelyn railed again it in his treatise (Radkau 2008, 143) while the metal smelting in twentieth century occurred as threat to the wood (Radkau 2008, 149). Early industry in London caused many environmental challenges as the city became first western city to inhabit a million residents in the nineteenth century. A useful response was a Public Health Act in 1848 ensuring local self-governance of urban settings which was later adopted in Germany as well (Radkau 2008, 237).
Sewage systems in cities remained largely focused on using human excreta as fertilizer until the chemical fertilizers took over and the excreta was just to be drained through a properly developed sewerage system (Radkau 2008, 144)
Commercial colonialism destroys the self-regulating elements of the subsistence economy while the settlement colonialism causes biological invasion i.e. spread of many species far beyond their original regions including diseases that caused demographic collapse. Further, colonial attitudes of environmental inconsideration left a long term mark on colonized world that continue even today. And even environmental consciousness becomes futile with such attitudes because it is something seen from above or from distance. (Radkau 2008, 152-53)
Overgrazing of pastures is a type of environmental crises that occurs relatively faster and brings harmful consequences to those responsible (Radkau 2008, 160)
Sugarcane plantations of colonial world caused massive deforestation (Radkau 2008, 161)
Power has many implications on environment. A colonial example is from central African regions where colonial powers forbade, apparently as an environment protection effort, indigenous population from hunting large animals only ending up promoting the advance of the tsetse fly which lives through large animals. Another example can be found in a region which was never colonized: Ethiopia. Political power can create environmental crises as evident from famines, in otherwise fertile, Ethiopia that followed forced resettlement of more than a million peasants in 1980s (Radkau 2008, 163)
Environmental awareness equally rose from the fears of the colonizers from the distant diseases as it did from usually believed London’s (or cities of the kind, scale or time) poor sanitation. British botanical gardens in colonized India offer the example. Colonizers also feared lack of resources like timber shortage in India which was essential for their shipbuilding survival. Further, the consequence of environmental abruptions like destruction of tropical rainforests and soil erosion were realized far more starkly in tropical regions, more so in tropical Islands that offered isolated laboratories for the study of ecological interrelationships, than in Europe (Radkau 2008, 164–65)
In Mughal India, tax was levied on harvest and not land itself thus forbidding Indians from intensifying cultivation. Indian villages were a subsistence economy with monsoon tanks and well irrigation in which evaporation remained minimal and salinization of the soil was avoided. This system worked in precolonial India without any centralized control. Yet colonial British changed this by introduction of institutionalized irrigation as the plains of Indus and Ganges offered ideal opportunities for large scale irrigation. These large scale hydraulic system weakened self-regulation of the villages (Radkau 2008, 170–72).
The forest history of India in precolonial times hails from eminent elephant forests and reverence for trees like Neem for healer of ills or fruit bearing trees like mangoes or resourceful trees like timber. Animals pastured into forests and leaf fall of the woodlands served as fertilizer. Forests offered last refuge in times of famine while agriculture was traditionally on slash-and-burn model. Commercial consumption of Indian forestry started with British colonization as in case of Timber and Oak for construction of battleships shifted from London to Bombay. Enormous forest destruction, primarily of sal and deodar forests of northern India, occurred during escalated demand for railway sleepers. Later preservations of forests in British India, or maybe better put: controlled by Lords instead of locals, also emerged from the awareness that woodlands were being extracted rapidly and needed control as a resource. Such control of forests for commercial use generated conflicts as local woodland uses were prohibited against which locals rebelled. Started after 1970 monsoon floods, a post-independence forest movement Chipko still opposes commercial logging of the forests. The ���Green Revolution’ of 1970s in South Asia intensified agriculture but imparted burden on water resource (Radkau 2008, 173–76).
Dust Bowl of 1930s deeply influenced environmental awareness in US to which the obvious response was to construct large scale hydraulic projects which only ended up creating different kinds of challenges of water scarcity (Radkau 2008, 181–82). In European context, the large scale transhumance in Spain during commercial rise of Merino wools destroyed agriculture for the sake of pastures and caused deforestation of Iberian Peninsula for cattle fodder. In England, the coppice forest was a provider of firewood and sustained for longer period owing to type of woodcutting that left behind a stool capable of re-sprouting. Moreover, England’s agriculture sustained fertility through use of guano imported from Peru in 1840s. Cattle farming in England had one distinction from that of Spain: it was done in enclosures often surrounded with trees thus generating a balance between agriculture and pastureland. In Europe, Germany’s afforestation efforts have remained persistent because it had no colonies like other European colonial crowns to extract resource from and therefore had to reserve its own resource (Radkau 2008, 188–93).
Humanity entered into a new era of environment in eighteenth century when first fossil energy system (coal) fueled the steam engine and later the electrification and gasoline engine disseminated the technology in every corner of the world. Further, the increased life expectancy after the great plagues led to population growth thus raising concerns for limited natural resources. Transportation networks starting with railroads allowed access to vast and faraway lands while land reclamation efforts at potential locations were witnessed around the globe. Large scale irrigation and drainage projects intensified agriculture while the dikes or dam construction brought apparent control of nature’s might. Yet later instances hinted that tight barriers to water bodies resulted in floods and associated threats. Another pernicious intervention for riverine was to expose them to the sewerage of nearby settlements that converted streams to sewers. Industry and technology initially presented itself as improver of environment but it later made the world an ugly place: coal and carbon industry emitted hazardous chemicals into air and water which was not the problem in the age of wood. Air and water were such resources that the rightful users could not possibly be entailed and therefore these resources needed an overall protection (Radkau 2008, 195–205).
Thrust of eighteenth and early nineteenth century agrarian reformers was to remove the fallow period by crop rotation and fodder plants alongside barn feeding of animals on private lands. These reforms brought following consequences: fallow was replaced with fodder, overgrazing of pastureland was replaced with domestication of cattle in barn enclosures, and cattle manure collected in barn was used for fertilizing the fields. Yet only response to the weed induced hazards to the agriculture was to plough the field and pests were usually thought to be contained by other wildlife especially birds as in biological pest control. The virtues of agrarian reformers were perturbed by various phenomena: barn feeding increased the demand for leaf fodder which threatened forests, and increased market demands for flax, sugar beet and potato affected crop rotation. Mineral fertilizers like potash started being used from nineteenth century with their benefits but later extractive traits only to be replenished by other chemical fertilizers (Radkau 2008, 206–12).
Early modern period set the city as a stage for environmental policy: for example urban sanitation called for laying networks for water supply, sewerage, and drainage. Moreover, wastewater treatment was another requirement wherein pandemics like cholera intensified the urgent need for action which shifted the action from urban scale to the centralization of public health policy. Similarly, local smoke inspector in US cities around 1940s regulated the containment of coal burning smoke which later shifted to the national level (Radkau 2008, 237–38).
While industrial age produced many environmental challenges, it would be wrong to believe that no actions were taken for mitigation. Social question of the problem of water pipes and ventilation for tenements was raised to which social policy aimed to respond, issue of wages and working hours was addressed by workers’ movement, disposal of waste was considered a challenge and addressed through municipal system, excrement removal was taken up by poudrette industry to make fertilizer out of it, industry emissions containing sulphuric and hydrochloric acids were planned to be developed as byproducts, and pandemics arising from polluted water was avoided by inducing water cleaning interventions (Radkau 2008, 241–42).
Globalization has given birth to a new era of environmental challenges because resource consumption in these times exceeded far in extent that ever before. For example, the world utilizes energy sources like fossil fuels created over millions of years at an alarming pace and such uses generate unintended synergistic effects. In this context, we are now in the age where challenge is not as much the lack of resource but is rather over exploitation of these. Therefore environment is not threatened by lack of resources: for example the concern of energy sources during 1973 oil crises but rather the abundance of cheap energy sources in current age. Similar shift has occurred in agriculture where and new challenges are over fertilization or excessive use of herbicides and pesticides. Problem in soil is shifted from erosion to the irreversible process of sealing the soil through concrete constructions on fertile land. Air pollution has become an emergent concern as declining oil prices and resulting increase in the use of automobiles in post 1950s era generated new type of greenhouse gases emissions that were at a scale unparalleled before. Excessive use of plastic has generated trash that pollutes the world in all kinds of geographies and for good deal of years. Hydropower and building of dams or artificial lakes, once propagated and funded by international agencies like The World Bank, generated questions of water cycle: for example the impacts on Alp valleys which dried up when the water flow was disrupted through dams. Nuclear power, a promising alternative of energy back in time, generated the concerns of possible hazards like Chernobyl and more than that, the availability of energy through this alternative has its own possibilities of exploitation (Radkau 2008, 250–60).
US induced high consumption attitudes brought many imperative ecological challenges to the world and major antithesis to this was the autarky (economic self-sufficiency) of German National Socialism, and not Russi
May 9, 2022
Отходы — и нет им конца
Как говорил Конфуций, если уж читать учебник, то хотя бы на интересующую тему.
Окружающая среда и экология — однозначно то, что меня волнует, а потому почитать о них в историческом контексте представлялось неплохой идеей.
Спойлер: это была ошибка.
Во-первых, данная книга все-таки не научпоп, а вполне себе научный, исследовательский текст. Грузный, сложный, изобилующий сносками и отсылками. Без хоть какого-то знания в области биологии и экологии воспринимать данную работу сложно: не столько потому что не понятно, столько потому что очень мало смысла вычленяешь. Первые несколько глав приходилось вливаться, что было весьма болезненно, но надо отдать должное автору, чувство "понятно, что ничего не понятно" все-таки получилось преодолеть и вникнуть в "историю истории", которую ученый пытается обрисовать. Однако, уверена, без надлежащего бэкграунда я упустила больше половины информации, которую книга предлагает.
Во-вторых, хоть автор и написал к русскому изданию отдельное предисловие, в том числе и в нем он указал: об истории экологии на территории России и бывшего СССР ему известно очень мало. Йоахим Радкау — немец, а потому и история в книге имеет в своем центре именно Германию и с натяжкой Европу. Да, в книге чуть охвачена Америка, по большей части как колонизированная европейцами земля, и уж совсем отрывочно Азия. Тем не менее, о многих экологических зонах нет ни слова. О той же Австралии, например. А потому цельная картина во время прочтения книги, хоть убей, не складывается. Текст получился слишком тяжелым для эссе-размышления, и слишком сумбурным и не структуризированным для полноценного обзора темы.
И наконец, моя третья и главная проблема с работой Радкау. Внимание: она просто не актуальна как история окружающей среды. "Природа и власть" впервые была опубликована в 2000 году. И если при изучении обычной истории мы привыкли пренебрегать новейшей ее частью (еще бы, сколько интересностей было до), то для истории экологии, по моему мнению, это катастрофическая ошибка.
Даже из этой книги понятно, что цельной экологии как таковой до 20 века не было. Решения по охране среды принимались по большей части интуитивно, а потому именно крестьяне, а не правители, чаще оказывались правы и оказывали благотворительное влияние. Ни о какой глобальной централизованной экологической политике и речи не шло.
Даже сам автор указывает на то, что экология в конце 20 века — абсолютно другое и намного более обширное явление, чем было столетиями до этого.
По факту, предыдущие 19 с половиной столетий — просто очень затяжной приквел к тому, что происходит сейчас, в 21 веке. Именно сейчас творится история окружающей среды. Именно сейчас мы влияем на окружающую среду в устрашающих масштабах. И именно сейчас пытаемся перейти от потребительской модели "беспокоюсь про природу, когда мне это выгодно" к стратегии выживания на общемировом уровне: "если не остановим озоновые дыры/распространение микропластика/глобальное потепление, то исчезнем как вид" (которая, впрочем, тоже модель выгоды, но уже не отдельным индивидуумам/территориям/государствам, а всему населению Земли).
Именно поэтому абсолютное отсутствие информации о 21 веке делает работу устаревшей и не дающей хоть сколько-то цельную картину истории окружающей среды.
Но есть кое-что, что в этой книге мне очень понравилось. Это ее философская сторона. Хоть Радау говорит об экологии, многие размышления и заметки я готова перенести и на другие сферы.
Например, само определение понятия "природа" и того, что природно, а что нет. Ведь этим аргументом так часто обосновывают какие-то социальные конструкты и нормы, тогда как даже на примере самой окружающей среды можно наблюдать: "природность" относительна.
Или например, вот эта цитата:
Об экологии сложно говорить. Ее причинно-следственные связи настолько сложны и не очевидны, что верный путь мы просто не можем ни высчитать, ни окинуть взором. Мы просто барахтаемся, в песке ли, в грязи ли, в пластике ли. Мы сначала разрушаем, забираем без меры, а реагировать начинаем, только когда что-то пойдет не так. Мы идем вслепую. Всегда так было и, наверно, всегда так будет. Но идти надо, практически любой ценой, и это надо осознать. Природа сильнее нас, она останется, восстановится, залечит раны. А вот гомо сапиенс? Большой вопрос.
Ведь именно природа породила человека, а не наоборот. И я надеюсь, что ей не придется его убивать.
Audio: The 1975 –The 1975 (2019)
Как говорил Конфуций, если уж читать учебник, то хотя бы на интересующую тему.
Окружающая среда и экология — однозначно то, что меня волнует, а потому почитать о них в историческом контексте представлялось неплохой идеей.
Спойлер: это была ошибка.
Во-первых, данная книга все-таки не научпоп, а вполне себе научный, исследовательский текст. Грузный, сложный, изобилующий сносками и отсылками. Без хоть какого-то знания в области биологии и экологии воспринимать данную работу сложно: не столько потому что не понятно, столько потому что очень мало смысла вычленяешь. Первые несколько глав приходилось вливаться, что было весьма болезненно, но надо отдать должное автору, чувство "понятно, что ничего не понятно" все-таки получилось преодолеть и вникнуть в "историю истории", которую ученый пытается обрисовать. Однако, уверена, без надлежащего бэкграунда я упустила больше половины информации, которую книга предлагает.
Во-вторых, хоть автор и написал к русскому изданию отдельное предисловие, в том числе и в нем он указал: об истории экологии на территории России и бывшего СССР ему известно очень мало. Йоахим Радкау — немец, а потому и история в книге имеет в своем центре именно Германию и с натяжкой Европу. Да, в книге чуть охвачена Америка, по большей части как колонизированная европейцами земля, и уж совсем отрывочно Азия. Тем не менее, о многих экологических зонах нет ни слова. О той же Австралии, например. А потому цельная картина во время прочтения книги, хоть убей, не складывается. Текст получился слишком тяжелым для эссе-размышления, и слишком сумбурным и не структуризированным для полноценного обзора темы.
И наконец, моя третья и главная проблема с работой Радкау. Внимание: она просто не актуальна как история окружающей среды. "Природа и власть" впервые была опубликована в 2000 году. И если при изучении обычной истории мы привыкли пренебрегать новейшей ее частью (еще бы, сколько интересностей было до), то для истории экологии, по моему мнению, это катастрофическая ошибка.
Даже из этой книги понятно, что цельной экологии как таковой до 20 века не было. Решения по охране среды принимались по большей части интуитивно, а потому именно крестьяне, а не правители, чаще оказывались правы и оказывали благотворительное влияние. Ни о какой глобальной централизованной экологической политике и речи не шло.
Даже сам автор указывает на то, что экология в конце 20 века — абсолютно другое и намного более обширное явление, чем было столетиями до этого.
Исторически подходить к вопросам экологии означает сегодня прежде всего постоянно помнить о том, что современная экономика по своему характеру полностью выпадает из всей предыдущей истории. За один год она выпускает в атмосферу дым от ископаемых энергоносителей, на образование которых ушли миллионы лет, и при этом не способна даже охватить взором последствия этого процесса, не говоря уже об управлении ими.
По факту, предыдущие 19 с половиной столетий — просто очень затяжной приквел к тому, что происходит сейчас, в 21 веке. Именно сейчас творится история окружающей среды. Именно сейчас мы влияем на окружающую среду в устрашающих масштабах. И именно сейчас пытаемся перейти от потребительской модели "беспокоюсь про природу, когда мне это выгодно" к стратегии выживания на общемировом уровне: "если не остановим озоновые дыры/распространение микропластика/глобальное потепление, то исчезнем как вид" (которая, впрочем, тоже модель выгоды, но уже не отдельным индивидуумам/территориям/государствам, а всему населению Земли).
Именно поэтому абсолютное отсутствие информации о 21 веке делает работу устаревшей и не дающей хоть сколько-то цельную картину истории окружающей среды.
Но есть кое-что, что в этой книге мне очень понравилось. Это ее философская сторона. Хоть Радау говорит об экологии, многие размышления и заметки я готова перенести и на другие сферы.
Например, само определение понятия "природа" и того, что природно, а что нет. Ведь этим аргументом так часто обосновывают какие-то социальные конструкты и нормы, тогда как даже на примере самой окружающей среды можно наблюдать: "природность" относительна.
Или например, вот эта цитата:
«Хорошая» среда – та, которая допускает существование множества мелких миров, представляющих собой как психологические, так и экологические единицы.
Она настолько точна и прекрасна, что так и хочется перенести ее на какую-нибудь социологию.
Об экологии сложно говорить. Ее причинно-следственные связи настолько сложны и не очевидны, что верный путь мы просто не можем ни высчитать, ни окинуть взором. Мы просто барахтаемся, в песке ли, в грязи ли, в пластике ли. Мы сначала разрушаем, забираем без меры, а реагировать начинаем, только когда что-то пойдет не так. Мы идем вслепую. Всегда так было и, наверно, всегда так будет. Но идти надо, практически любой ценой, и это надо осознать. Природа сильнее нас, она останется, восстановится, залечит раны. А вот гомо сапиенс? Большой вопрос.
Ведь именно природа породила человека, а не наоборот. И я надеюсь, что ей не придется его убивать.
Audio: The 1975 –The 1975 (2019)
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December 27, 2020Zor bir kitap... Okumak büyük emek istiyor. Ben bir ara yarım bıraktım, araya başka kitaplar girdi. Sonra atlaya zıplaya güç bela bitirebildim. Yazar bir mevzuyu anlatmak için insanı örnek bombardımanına tutuyor, asıl anlatmak istediğini takip etmek de güçleşiyor. Radkau belli ki yetkili bir abi, ama çevre konularıyla ilgili daha ufak, benim gibi genel okur kitlesine hitap eden daha hafif bir kitabını okumak isterim. Genel olarak kitapta çevresel sorunlarla ilgili tek bir reçete olmadığı ve tek tek vakaya göre değerlendirme yapılması gerektiği anlatılıyor. İyi bir tarih kitabında olması gerektiği gibi meselelerin hiçbir zaman siyah ve beyaz olmadığı özellikle vurgulanıyor. Çevre sorunlarını açgözlü kapitalistler-çiçek çocuklar, sömürenler-sömürülenler basitliğinde ifade etmek görünüşe göre mümkün değil. Örneğin İngiliz idaresi altında Hindistan’ın durumu ya da Nazilerin doğa ve çevre konularına yaklaşımları ilginç bölümler...
Son olarak çevirmeni ve yayınevini de tebrik ederim. Böyle bir kitabı Türkçeleştirmek kolay olmasa gerek.
Son olarak çevirmeni ve yayınevini de tebrik ederim. Böyle bir kitabı Türkçeleştirmek kolay olmasa gerek.
September 4, 2018
Çevre tarihi konusunda oldukça kapsamlı ve yoğun bir eser. Konu ile ilgililer için çok faydalı iken, genel okuyucu için biraz ağır olabilir. Konusuyla ilgili ciddi bir bibliyografya birikimi ve analizi de içeriyor. Teknik bilgi dışında özellikle çevre konusunun iktidarlarca olumlu kullanımı ve istismarı, meşruiyet sağlama organı olarak görme konularının detaylı işleyişi çok fikir açıcı.
December 6, 2019
Fascinating.
February 4, 2012
This book is dense. It's German style history, which means it assumes that the reader has a solid foundation in basic topics and throws complex concepts at the reader nonstop. There's a sneaky, Frankfurt School bias to the book, but that doesn't make the topics it covers any less valuable.
I have to emphasize that reading this book is work, and if you aren't interested in a Global History of the environment, you'll find little pleasure here.
I have to emphasize that reading this book is work, and if you aren't interested in a Global History of the environment, you'll find little pleasure here.
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April 6, 2019Good history of environmental ideas, very thorough.
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