ABOUT US
Welcome to the newest international group committed to conducting work in environmental history, to publishing that work, and to disseminating the work of not only the ASAEH but that of environmental historians concerned about South Asia and the world. I would like to first thank all the benefactors whom helped make the dream of a South Asia environmental history group and programme possible. Second, I would like to thank all the current members for having trust in our efforts. Third, I would like to thank you in advance for encouraging other people to consider membership in our organisation. Without your sustaining membership fees, we would not exist. Finally, I would encourage you to attend the fourth international seminar in South Asia environmental history held March 3, 2008, at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India.
Professional historians in India and abroad appear to be reluctant to come forward to undertake the development of an environmental historians organisation in a concerted and coordinated manner. To answer this critical question of what is environmental history one needs a commendable knowledge in philosophy of history and a great deal of skill to map out the ongoing changes in philosophy of history. Initially, the study of environmental history appeared to be a devise to arouse public consciousness to environmental crisis the scientists, engaged in various branches of biology and ecology, had identified. One can quickly bring to mind Jacob Riis’ How The Other Half Lives and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. However, it is increasingly being acknowledged now that the recent environmental crisis calls for a new and independent role of the historians to develop a new paradigm for the future: One that includes long duree studies of the interactions and activities of man and the environment.
India has one of the earliest traditions of understanding and working with nature. In ancient India, forests were regarded as abodes of spiritual solace and the concept of preserving forests and wild life developed around the ashrams of the sages. These forest-based ashrams propagated aranya sanskriti or a forest culture and human understanding of the fundamental ecological utility of forest ecosystems and their economic importance, which led to trees and animals being treated with veneration. Environmental history as a separate sub-discipline is very rich in the United States. It was here that self-conscious environmental history first began to take shape. Environmental history in America grew out of the history of conservation as an ideal and as a social movement. It drew its stimulus from a tradition: A tradition of loving nature for hunting, beauty, and living – much like India’s. However, one serious problem in American environmental historiography is the lack of enthusiasm to face American engagement with the rest of the world. American historians are just now making a sincere attempt to come out of this shell of insularity.
Broadly speaking there are four categories of environmental history: 1) Environment oriented environmental history, 2) Cultural or intellectual environmental history, 3) Environmental history that uses environment as a site for the exercise of power and 4) Environmental histories that bounce around among all three. Environment oriented environmental history is primarily preoccupied with changes in biological or physical environments and how those changes affect human beings or how human actions affect the physical environment. Cultural and intellectual environmental history is very rich and it is concerned with representations of images of nature in ideas arts and letters. It traces the shifts in these representations and what light they throw on the societies that produced them. The third variety uses environment as a site for the exercise of various type of power. It includes ideas, law and state policy in relation to the natural world. It attempts to make systematic studies of how state power approached and used nature and how different interest groups struggled over it. The final variety of environmental history moves around with one or more of the issues stated above. It is essentially ragbag in character, yet, very absorbing.
Environmental historians do not always deliberately dash out human agency to the sideline, it depends more on the question of strategy and methodology the historian pursues. Micro-level environmental history, like social history may be written with the human agency in the forefront but macro-scale environmental history would inevitably tend to underline the long duree forces, both cultural and natural rather than human beings as the key players. Historians engaged in environmental history should have rudimentary knowledge of such basic concepts like ecosystem, atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, epidemic diseases, medical science, forestry, climate, soil, vegetation, fauna etc, but such borrowing of knowledge from other disciplines does not necessarily make environmental history an interdisciplinary field. When the methodologies of two or more disciplines combine to produce a fresh methodology, only then we can call it an interdisciplinary study. The notion that experts from the natural sciences are better placed to pursue environmental history; history of medicine or history of science has little substance. Such notions actually are the result of absolute lack of historical sense from which many scientists unfortunately suffer. Apropos, essentialist arguments fail here too.
Luckily, Indian environmental history has become more academic and less partisan in character. In addition, environmental history has survived the initial unfriendliness it experienced from the mainstream discipline. The attitude toward environmental history has undergone a qualitative change in recent years. The sub-field is now robust and it is now being treated with great respect and admiration not only by historians but also by scholars belonging to other disciplines. There are other indicators of the growing impact of environmental history in India and the wider world: More and more universities and colleges from around the world are beginning to specialize and offer concentrations in environmental history, collaborations and exchanges are becoming increasingly common between those institutions and others concerned with environmental history, and acknowledgment of the permanence of environmental history can now be commonly found in history textbooks. The ASAEH is simply a natural byproduct of this maturation process.
Environmental history shares a very undefined border with economic and social histories, history of science and technology, disease history and even with various other disciplines. It shares a lengthy border with historical geography and historical ecology. Roughly speaking, the environmental historians, the historical geographers and historical ecologists try to answer similar sorts of questions though their methodologies vary. For example, historical ecologists are usually trained in anthropology or archeology and their work is collaborative in nature. Environmental historians, on the other hand, are expected to work alone. Climate history too, shares a porous border with environmental history. Climate historians, who work on textual sources, are very similar to environmental historians. Although there are hundreds, if not thousands, of types of environmental history, the following represent the broad themes used in the study of South Asian environmental history:
1) Social, economic, cultural and intellectual histories under the umbrella of environmental history and study of themes like race, ethnicity, class, community, gender, power, and knowledge, etc.
2) Forest, deforestation, soil erosion, resistance, politics of environment, subsistence, the animal(s), the insect world in tropical forests, hunting or shikar, poaching, forest crime, and smuggling, etc.
3) Climate, impact of climatic changes on history, demography, natural calamities, earthquake, cyclonic storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, flood, rainfall, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, mudslides, and forest fires, etc
4) Air and water pollution, history of sound and smell.
5) History of public health, epidemics, and medicine.
In conclusion, the time has long passed when South Asia should be recognized for its commitment to the publication and dissemination of the region’s environmental history. We at the ASAEH, with your support and financial commitment, will make your voices heard in the historical profession.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ranjan Chakrabarti,
Founder and Executive Director
Office 91.33.24146136 or Mobile 9330920309
