ABSTRACT
Foreign policy – as with politics in general – has always been informed by questions of resources but the environmental influences on and consequences of statecraft and conflict became more apparent with industrialization. As well as the environmental causes and consequences of war and imperialism becoming more apparent, the political recognition of this grew in nineteenth-century Britain. It was the loss of trees, rather than people, that finally led to a recognition of the limits of market forces in the cause of resource distribution and make the case for intervention in the name of sustainability. The twentieth century, of course, saw the environmental and humanitarian costs of warfare worsen even further, but the seeds of laws proscribing ecocide and human rights abuses sewn at the end of the nineteenth century were eventually able to, at least partially, grow.
