ABSTRACT
Environmental history deals with the various dialogues over time between people and the rest of nature, focusing on reciprocal impacts. This fresh perspective, Clio’s new greenhouse, recognizes that humans themselves are a part of, as well as apart from, nature. As Crosby insists, ‘[m]an is a biological entity before he is a Roman Catholic or a capitalist or anything else’ (1972:xiii). Environmental history starts from a rather different assumption from most other branches of the discipline, which, whether concerned with high politics or forgotten folk, have tended to deal exclusively with intrahuman relations. In Cronon’s words it is: ‘a history which extends its boundaries beyond human institutions-economies, class and gender systems, political organizations, cultural rituals-to the natural ecosystems which provide the context for those institutions.’ Such a history, he notes, ‘inevitably brings to center stage a cast of nonhuman characters which usually occupy the margins of historical analysis if they are present in it at all’ (1983:vii).
