The Environmental History of Africa

Topic 1 - Introduction: Environmental History

  1. Environmental history is the examination, over time, of the relationship humans and the natural worl
    1. Some historians have attempted to define environmental history purely as a history of natural, physical processes, such as climate, geology, vegetation, and fauna that specifically excludes humans.
    2. Approach of this course is that of landscape history in which humans interact with flora and fauna along with longer term processes of geological formation and climate patterns.
    3. A fundamental premise of this course is that African landscapes are all anthropogenic, i.e. formed by interactions with humans.
    4. Landscapes are physical forms, but also shaped by cultural ideas and contested by local and global forces of economics and politics.

  2. The key elements of the physical world that form landscapes (both physical and human) are:
    1. Geology (including soils and topography).
    2. Climate (patterns of temperature, rainfall, and wind that change from year to year and over periods of longue duree).
    3. Hydrography (movements of water as rivers, oceans, lakes, and the action of rainfall). Water movements affect the physical dimensions of landscapes over time and affect temperature over long and short time frames.
    4. Vegetation (crops, forests, savanna) and plant life
    5. Fauna (including domestic and wild animals as well as disease organisms, including viruses)
    6. Demography/population (the characteristics of human population growth/decline) and labor.
    7. Tools and technology (the means by which human action changes the physical world around them).
    8. Environmental history is the examination of the interaction of these forces over time.  Landscapes are the most visible manifestation of the result and represent the cumulative effect of that interaction.

  3. In this course we will treat environmental history within the framework of 18 distinct topics that follow the following themes
    1. Myths and Images of the African environment
    2. Population and Demography
    3. Disease
    4. Narratives of Degradation
    5. Agriculture
    6. Famine
    7. Conservation and Colonial Rule
    8. Africa’s Environmental Future