Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England

by T.C. Smout

This book is about four centuries of conflict over some of the most valued landscapes in Europe. Combining social and cultural history with ecology and geography T. C. Smout has written one of the most profound, as well as one of the most entertaining works of environmental history ever published. The highlands, islands and borders of Scotland, the Lake District and northern moors of England form a natural region, whose wildness has inspired some and oppressed others. The crags and moorlands have been both treasured for their beauty and biodiversity and reviled as unproductive deserts to be improved and reclaimed. The context between these two views of nature - conservation versus development; jobs versus birds; landscape versus forestry; use versus delight -- is at the centre of the book.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2000

About the author

Thomas Christopher Smout CBE, FBA, FRSE, FSA Scot, FRSGS is a Scottish academic, historian, author and Historiographer Royal in Scotland.

He has written extensively on demographic history and many aspects of economic history. Since the mid-1990s, he has developed the new discipline of environmental history in Scotland, giving the Ford Lectures in Oxford in 1999, published under the title of Nature Contested, Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600. His most recent publications in this field have been in woodland history and an environmental history of the Firth of Forth.