11 - Environmental History

Summary

In Chapter 10, I used the history of technology to illustrate the potential for evolutionary history to broaden fields that might seem to have little to do with evolution. The task of this chapter is easier. Environmental history is the field that studies the interaction between people and their environments over time. Environmental historians have always been interested in the impact of people on other species, and vice versa, so the relevance of evolutionary history seems clear.

One could consider evolutionary history a subfield or research program of environmental history, and I am comfortable with such terms. But evolutionary history can also be a subfield or research program in the history of technology (and, as I will argue in the next chapter, other fields). This realization led me to some awkward locutions. After suffering through a seminar in which I referred to evolutionary history as a cross-cutting subfield or research program in environmental history and other fields, a colleague recommended that I slice through the Gordian knot of terminology and call evolutionary history a field. I have followed his advice ever since.

This chapter begins by noting the curiously low profile that evolution has played in environmental history. It suggests some reasons that might be responsible for this pattern. We will contrast evolutionary history with efforts in disciplines outside history to apply evolutionary ideas.