Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:00:40.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economy, Environment and Environmental History: Case Notes from Agriculture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Michael Turner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1956 in an international symposium at Princeton on the theme Man's role in changing the face of the Earth, one of the principal contributors, Carl Sauer, reflected that as much as anything it was a festival of remembrance to George Perkins Marsh. Marsh was perhaps the inspiration for viewing man within his natural world, within his ecological setting, but a setting which had evolved as much as anything by the actions of his own hand as it had been by natural agents. Marsh's great work Man and Nature, has been dubbed ‘the fountainhead of the conservation movement.’ Thus Sauer suggests that this study is based on man's:

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 1997 , pp. 125 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Sauer, C., ‘The agency of man on the Earth’, in Thomas, W.L. (ed.), Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago, 1956), p. 49.Google Scholar

2. So dubbed by Lewis Mumford originally and repeated by David Lowenthal in his introduction to Lowenthal, D. (ed.), Man and Nature by George Perkins Marsh (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. ix.Google Scholar

3. Sauer, C., ‘The agency of man’, p. 49.Google Scholar

4. Chase, M., ‘Can history be green? A prognosis’, Rural History 3 (1992), 243–51;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSheail, J., ‘Green history – the evolving agenda’, Rural History 4 (1993), 209–23;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMerricks, L., ‘Environmental history’, Rural History 1 (1996), 97–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Williams, M., ‘The relations of environmental history and historical geography’, Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994), 3–21;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDemeritt, D., ‘Ecology, objectivity and critique in writings on nature and human societies’, Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994), 22–37;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCronon, W., ‘Comment: Cutting loose or running aground?’, Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994), 38–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See the rapporteur's summary by Crouzet-Pavan, E. and Poussou, J-P., ‘Rapport’, in Morin, C. (ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Historical Sciences (Montreal, 1995), pp. 369–87.Google Scholar

7. Chase, , ‘Can history be green’, 249.Google Scholar

8. Collins, E.J.T., ‘Why wheat? Choice of food grains in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Journal of European Economic History 22 (1993) 7–37.Google Scholar

9. Carruthers, S.P., Miller, F.A. and Vaughan, C.M.A., Crops for Industry and Energy, Centre for Agricultural Strategy, Report no. 15 (University of Reading, 1994);Google Scholar‘Rapeseed for diesel fuel grown on set-aside land’, The Times (June 7 1994), 8.Google Scholar It can also be used for the production of plastics, ‘Scientists develop cheap plastics from oil-seed rape’, The Times (May 31 1994), 1.Google Scholar

10. Pretty, J.N., ‘Farmers' extension practice and technology adaptation: agricultural revolution in 17–19th century Britain’, Agriculture and Human Values VIII (1991), 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Figures quoted in Holdgate, M.W., Kassas, M., White, G.F. (eds.), The World Environment 1972–1982: A Report by the United Nations Environment Programme (Dublin, 1982), pp. 250–52.Google Scholar

12. Social Sciences 17 (December 1992), 4. The ESRC in conjunction with the Joint Nature Conservancy Council is sponsoring research into the wider rural implications of these changes through its Countryside Change Programme.

13. ‘Fields that grow nothing yield lucrative harvest’, The Times (March 21 1994), 7.Google Scholar

14. Ansell, D.J. and Vincent, S.A., An Evaluation of Set-Aside Management in the European Union with Special Reference to Denmark, France, Germany and the UK, Centre for Agricultural Strategy, CAS Paper 30 (University of Reading, 1994), p. 15.Google Scholar

15. Ansell, and Vincent, , An Evaluation, pp. 44–5,Google Scholar with specific reference to Denmark.

16. Ansell, and Vincent, , An Evaluation, pp. 45, 56.Google Scholar For an example of farm and rural land use diversification into non-agricultural enterprises in Ireland, and in the light more generally of changing EC policy on farm subsidies, see Kelly, C.E., Ilbery, B.W., and Gillmor, D.A., ‘Farm diversification in Ireland: Evidence from county Wicklow’, Irish Geography 25 (1992), 23–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar And for changes within agriculture in the same country see Walsh, J.A., ‘A regional analysis of enterprise substitution in Irish agriculture in the context of a changing Common Agricultural Policy’, Irish Geography 24 (1991), 10–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. ‘Birds find refuge on set-aside land’, The Times (August 27 1994), 7.Google Scholar

18. Darby, H.C., ‘The clearing of the woodland in Europe’, in Thomas, , Man's Role, especially p. 191, but generally pp. 183–216.Google ScholarCrossley, D. and Saville, R. (eds.), The Fuller Letters 1728–1755: Guns, Slaves and Finance (Sussex Record Society, Volume 76 for 1988 and 1989, published Lewes, 1991), especially pp. xi, xvii,Google Scholar and passim wood and timber. See also Ponting, C., A Green History of the World (London, 1991), esp. pp. 69–87,Google Scholar for an account of the collapse of early societies because of the unfulfilled demands placed on indigenous agricultures.

19. Brown, E.H., ‘Man shapes the Earth’, The Geographical Journal 136 (1970), 76–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. The Times (26 August 1994), 18.Google Scholar

21. Cowper, William, The Task, Book 1 (London, 1785), line 672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This was a poem and an idea first drawn to my attention in Darby, H.C., ‘On the relation of geography and history’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 19 (1953), 6.Google Scholar

22. Recalled by Lowenthal, , ‘Introduction’, Man and Nature, p. ix.Google Scholar

23. For which see Prince, H.C., Parks in England (Isle of Wight, 1967).Google Scholar

24. Turner, M., Enclosures in Britain, 1750–1830 (London, 1984), p. 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. See in particular Humphries, J., ‘Enclosures, common rights, and women: the proletarianization of families in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Journal of Economic History L (1990), 17–42;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNeeson, J.M., Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993),CrossRefGoogle Scholar especially Part I containing chapters 2–6 entitled ‘Survival’. See also Turner, M., ‘Common property and property in common’, Agricultural History Review 42 (1994), 158–62;Google ScholarTurner, M. and Woodward, D., ‘Theft from the common man: the loss of ‘common’ use rights in England’, chapter 3 in Brotherstone, T. and Pilling, G. (eds., History, Economic History, and the Future of Marxism: Essays in Memory of Tom Kemp 1921–1993) (Porcupine Books, London, 1995), pp. 51–78.Google Scholar To this extent I must be talking at definitional cross purposes with Linda Merricks who suggests that good though it is, the primary concerns of Neeson's book ‘are with the history of those involved, not with their environment’, Merricks, ‘Environmental history’, 106.

26. For a contrary view which suggests that the stinting of commons and commonable places was not always well managed see Turner, M., English Parliamentary Enclosure (Folkestone, 1980), chapter 6.Google Scholar

27. Quoted many times, for example Turner, , English Parliamentary Enclosure, p. 88.Google Scholar

28. For example, see Cleave, M.B., ‘Dispersed and nucleated settlements in the Yorkshire wolds, 1770–1850’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (1962), 105–18.Google Scholar

29. See Turner, M., ‘The landscape of parliamentary enclosure’, chapter 4 of Reed, M. (ed.), Discovering Past Landscapes (London, 1984), pp. 132–166, especially pp. 144–59.Google Scholar

30. Turner, M., ‘Enclosure commissioners and Buckingham parliamentary enclosure’, Agricultural History Review 25 (1977), 127–8.Google Scholar

31. Shoard, M., The Theft of the Countryside (London, 1980), p. 34.Google Scholar

32. Shoard, , The Theft of the Countryside, p. 34.Google Scholar

33. Beckett, J.V., A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford, 1989);Google Scholar Inspector's Report on the Braunton Great Field, Policy BVVC119 Braunton By-Pass [Great Field Route], especially paragraph 10.12.8, a note of the objections to the proposed by-pass brought by The Devonshire Association; The Devon History Society; The University of Exeter, Centre for South-Western Historical Studies; The British Agricultural History Society; The Devon Archaeological Society; The North-Devon Archaeological Society; The Society for Medieval Archaeology; and The International Medieval Bibliography. The objectors successfully made the claim that Braunton Great Field was ‘an area of significant historical importance’; and for the remnant of open field farming in Boscastle in North Cornwall see, Millward, R. and Robinson, A, The South-West Peninsula (London, 1971), pp. 90–6.Google Scholar

34. Darby, H.C., The Draining of the Fens (Cambridge, 2nd ed., 1956).Google Scholar

35. Summers, Dorothy, The Great Level: A History of Drainage and Land Reclamation in the Fens (Newton Abbot, 1976), pp. 251–7.Google Scholar See also Brown, , ‘Man shapes the Earth’, p. 81.Google Scholar

36. Summers, , The Great Level, p. 254.Google Scholar

37. Summers, , The Great Level, pp. 252–3.Google Scholar And for what is probably, historically the more usual form of environmental loss through water management, see the effects of irrigation and salinisation on the environment of the very cradle of civilisation in Ponting, A Green History, esp. pp. 69–71.

38. See for example, Thirsk, Joan, Fenland Farming in the Sixteenth Century (Dept. of English Local History, Leicester University, Occasional Paper No. 3).Google Scholar

39. Sotnikov, V.P., ‘Farming problems in the zones of the USSR and the tasks of Soviet geographers’, Soviet Geography, 1 (10) (1960), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. This paragraph based on Volin, L., ‘Khrushchev and the Soviet agricultural scene’, in Karcz, J.F. (ed.), Soviet and East European Agriculture (University of California, Berkeley, 1967), esp. pp. 12–15;Google ScholarJackson, W.A.D., ‘The Soviet approach to the good earth: myth and reality’, in Laird, R.D., Soviet Agriculture and Peasant Affairs (University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1963), pp. 171–85;Google ScholarAnderson, J., ‘A historical-geographical perspective on Khrushchev's corn programme’, in Karcz, Soviet and East European Agriculture, pp. 104–28;Google ScholarJackson, W.A.D., ‘The virgin and idle lands of Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan: a geographical appraisal’, Geographical Review 46 (1956), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Durgin, F.A., ‘The virgin lands programme 1954–1960’, Soviet Studies 13 (1962), 262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. Pokshishevskiy, V.V. et al. , ‘On basic migration patterns’, Soviet Geography 5 (10) (1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. McCauley, M., Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture: The Virgin Land Programme 1953–1964 (London, 1976), pp. 156–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. See for example Brown, A., Kaser, M. and Smith, G.S. (eds), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the Former Soviet Union (Cambridge, 1994), p. 9Google Scholar ‘The Aral Sea disaster’.

45. See Taskin, G.A., ‘The falling level of the Caspian Sea in relation to the Soviet economy’, Geographical Review 44 (1954), 508–27, esp. 516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In his turn Marsh noted the fall in the level of the Caspian and Aral seas and related this to the removal of the forests and the resultant acceleration in the evaporation of ground water. Lowenthal, (ed.), Man and Nature, pp. 255–6n.Google Scholar See also Brown, et al. The Cambridge Encyclopedia, pp. 9, 21.Google Scholar

46. MAFF, Agricultural Research Projects, refs, CTE 9405, 9406 and 9407 respectively.

47. Paraphrasing from Lowenthal, (ed.), Man and Nature, p. xxvi.Google Scholar