Environmental History

Time: Thursdays 12:30-14:00, unless otherwise stated

Meeting Location: Room 20.421, History Hub, Schwarzman Centre, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG, unless otherwise stated

Environmental History Writing Workshop
Further details to be announced soon!

A workshop for undergraduates and master’s students who are writing or considering writing essays and dissertations in environmental history. The workshop will cover some of the major themes and modes of writing in environmental history and act as a forum to ask questions to DPhil students working with diverse geographies, time periods, and approaches to the field.

Week 3 (5 February)
Niklas Groschinski (DPhil History)
Environing from Below — Supplications, Denunciations, and Other Sources for Rewriting Early Modern Environmental History

The ‘environment’ emerged as a global crisis concept after WWII. Environmental history as a field has its roots in political movements of the late 1960s and 70s. Thus, both the term and the field have had, from their impetus, a strong political and global flavour. Environmental history is still driven by approaches that are akin to the field of political ecology, i.e. based on critical social theory. Early modern environmental history often finds its raison d'être in either attempting to take on a global perspective, or in pointing out power imbalances and the centralisation of state control over natural resources. Similar binary narratives of power used to define the historical study of state-building; however, already since the late 90s, the focus here has shifted onto ‘state-building from below’, which has not only questioned previous meta-narratives but also ascribed more agency to local actors lower down the social scale. Many of the sources used by these scholars (especially supplications/petitions) can also help us take on more locally embedded perspectives in understanding that environmental interests of governments and the governed were not always binary, and that ‘commoners’ had more power in shaping the land, or ‘environing’ (Sörlin and Wormbs) from below, than has been acknowledged.

Week 5 (19 February)
Louis James Henry (PhD Medieval Environmental History, University of Stavanger, Visiting Student at KCL)

Timely Courts and Immediate Responses: Waste Management as a Temporal Issue in Late Medieval England

The leet court served as a means for medieval English communities to police themselves. It did not deal with private suits or have jurisdiction over felonies. It was concerned with misbehaviour which disturbed the public. Local officials were appointed to keep note of issues and at the annual court session, offenders would be presented and fined. Amongst the business of the leet were several environmental offences such as incorrect dung disposal, poor gutter maintenance, and illegal latrine placement. The records of these courts provide valuable insight into communal responses to the problems affecting the medieval urban environment. However, because leet court sessions were usually held annually, they can present a static image of what was a dynamic and pressing issue. When gutters are blocked, flooding can occur just as how a poorly placed latrine can pollute drinking water. These events required an immediate response and could not be left unresolved until the next court session. The court rolls record final judgements and fines but give very little detail as to what might have happened at the time of the offence. This paper examines waste management as a temporal issue in two fenland towns: Peterborough and Ramsey, between c.1300-c.1500. It seeks to shed further light on what might have happened at the moment of these crimes occurring and explore how medieval communities managed the urban environment. Utilising the records of the leet court, this paper demonstrates the use of environmental management as a means to understand the lived reality of crime and policing in medieval England.

Week 7 (5 March)
Jessica Chirboga (MPhil US History)
Burning Issues: Fire Management in Metropolitan Los Angeles, 1892-1938

In 1892, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison designated a forest reserve in the San Gabriel Mountains to protect the watersheds supplying an expanding Los Angeles. Local developers and politicians supported the reserve, believing it would curtail fires set by sheepherders and campers that threatened agricultural and residential development in the foothills of the San Gabriels. Over the course of the early twentieth century, the U.S. Forest Service and the Los Angeles city and county fire departments advanced an aggressive policy of fire suppression in Los Angeles’s mountains and canyons. Growing scientific expertise and substantial firefighting infrastructure failed to contain the year-by-year increase in human-caused fires as developers, undeterred by increasing risk, expanded into foothill and coastal areas. Drawing upon regional newspapers, the papers of local conservationists, and city, county, state, and federal records, this presentation examines how fire management practices in Los Angeles came to prioritize total fire suppression over land use restrictions and prescribed burning in fire and flood-prone communities.