The Environmental History of Africa

Topic 4 - Sources for environmental history

  1. Sources for Environmental History
    1. Historical methods involve the search for "signs" of the past. If the subject is the environment then what signs of landscape, climate, disease, and human responses to these would exist?
    2. Study of environmental history necessarily involves identifying sources for specific aspects of the environment. Climate is an excellent example of the problems involved.
    3. We know about climate change and its effects over a long time in certain parts of the world that we may be able to extrapolate for Africa. Only useful for long epochs and large scale.
      1. Before 1300 agriculture was major activity in Iceland; 1degree celcius reduces growing days by 27%.
      2. At same point English grape growing declined, indicating a cooling of the climate in northern Europe and, possibly, changes in the Gulf Stream (ocean temperatures)
      3. 2300 B.C. Sahara ended major wet phase when hunting, cattle keeping, and agriculture were possible
      4. Lake Chad levels have fluctuated dramatically over time. Lake core samples tell us the lake levels there, but few similar sources exist for elsewhere in Africa
      5. New historical evidence on El Nino phenomena (cooling of the Pacific near Peru) traces over time from lake cores and climate records may indicate periods of low rainfall in Africa.
    4. Africa provides particular problems with source materials on environment; will contrast European case with African and then focus on possible sources for African history

  2. Climate reconstruction in developed world, and Africa in particular, is problematic but possible: a wide variety of sources
    1. Scientific records only exist for 19th century/time series in spots go back several more centuries.
    2. Presence of dense written tradition of data recording allows use of some economic factors to create time series which may indicate climate change. The dates of southern European grape harvests are an example. No similar systematic collections of data exist within African documentary traditions.
    3. "Proxy" data is also well developed; this involves use of tree rings (dendrochronology), pollen (palynology), glacial records; and other biological sources which involve cooperation with scientists.
    4. Problem of separating economic from environmental causation.
    5. Prospect of historical climate modeling using computer system such as at National Center for Atmospheric Research, only rough approximations and probably not regional.

  3. Africa presents more complex problems.
    1. Some climate trends developed for Europe are applicable to Africa (eg. little Ice Age) but not others. Ras Dashen (Ethiopia's highest peak) had snow in the late 18th century but none by the late 19th century. An effect of the Little Ice Age?
    2. Africa does not have time series data before 1940 or so; even present data is problematic because of collection methods and low number of collection stations.
    3. No density of written accounts even for Islamic areas and Ethiopia or East Coast. Ethiopian church records, for example, sometimes refer to droughts or famine, but rarely offer detail or quantifiable data on climate conditions. Some rainfall records kept by French in Saint Louis (Senegal) go back 200 hundred years, but have not yet been used systematically.

  4. African Potential Sources: Long and 150-year term
    1. Nilometer at Rodah (near Cairo)provides a set of measurements of the annual levels of Nile floods in Egypt. Some historians have used this method to estimate East Africa rainfall. This is a dangerous method since most of the water reaching Egypt (c. 87%) comes from the Ethiopian highlands and not the East African Great Lakes.
    2. Oral Tradition of droughts, disease, environmental shocks are imprecise in their dates and may only reflect local conditions. Oral evidence is best for assessing local responses to environmental shocks of disease, drought, etc.
    3. Ethiopian records from church documents make occasion references to locusts, drought, crop disease, earthquakes
    4. Mission stations from late 19th century recorded local events contemporaneously, but often misinterpreted social and cultural meaning.

  5. Best source for environmental/ecological history is proxy approach
    1. Key indicators of certain environmental conditions can be traced, esp. for last 150 years (this course) Historians need to know more about technical characteristics. They are:
    2. Demography (density, settlement patterns, patterns of aging, gender.
    3. Vegetation types, crops.
    4. Presence of game animals, condition of livestock.
    5. Price changes in livestock and grain.
    6. Most travelers were sensitive to conditions of soils, climate, game, economic potential (less so to people), but have inherent cultural bias regarding religion, social practice. Often a language barrier.

  6. Current sources and science that allow us to project environmental conditions into historical periods.
    1. Observation of small farm economies/social institutions
    2. Patterns of adaptation to environmental instability
    3. Patterns of interannual rainfall variation (more than long-term trends or even droughts)
    4. Studying crop responses to change and stress
    5. Characteristics of diseases (rinderpest/typhus) that are understood now and whose characteristics and behaviors can be read into past disease events.