This course will focus on the evolution of African environmental and ecological systems over the past 150 years. Subjects will include aspects of the physical environment such as climatic change and hydrography, as well as key issues of human/environmental interaction, such as agriculture, deforestation, conservation, famine, and the role of colonialism and economic development in environmental change. The course will also examine the ways in which outsiders have created myths about the African environment and how Africans have managed their natural resources. The final section of the course will examine the causes and social effects of famine. The course will cover Eastern Africa from Ethiopia and Sudan to Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Readings and lectures will include films and visual materials.

Graduate students enrolling in HI895 will be expected to complete additional readings, attend a fortnightly seminar with the instructor, and prepare an extended bibliographic essay or research paper.

Teaching Method:
As an advanced undergraduate course, HI394 will use a combination of lectures, reading, focused discussion, and film to present and analyze course content. Beyond the historical content of the course, students will be given experience in expository writing, library research, and group discussion skills.

In addition to lectures, class meetings will consist of occasional group discussions and a final project. Each class member will also be a member in a discussion group which will serve as a basis for discussing readings as well as organizing the group project at the end of the course. In the first half of the course groups will discuss readings and questions posed by the instructor. Group discussions of readings will be organized around questions provided by the instructor in advance. Graduate students enrolled in the course will serve as group discussion leaders. During the second half of the course each group will undertake a country study, the purpose of which is to examine the nature and history of environmental management issues in a particular African country.

Evaluation:
Grades will be based on performance on papers, participation, and group work. Written work will include at least two short (3-4 page) opinion papers which will integrate reading assignments with lecture material. Each student will also complete a longer 15-20 page research assignment based on their group-work country study.

Reading:
Student are expected to have read the week's readings in advance of the sessions for which they are assigned. The following books have been ordered from the bookstore:

• Anderson and Grove, Conservation in Africa (Cambridge)
• Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (Athens, OH).
• Maddox, Giblin, and Kimambo, Custodians of the Land (Athens, OH).
• Beinart and Coates, Environment and History (London)
• Leach and Mearns, The Lie of the Land (Portsmouth).
• Bonner, At the Hand of Man (New York).

In addition to these books, there will be a number of African Studies Center Working Papers for purchase. A final set of readings will be included in packet of articles on reserve at Mugar Library. Students may read that packet at the library or make their own copies. That packet will also include a reader on general East African history for those without previous background. Additional readings are in the form of African Studies Center Working Papers which should be purchased along with other course materials. Copies of all readings are also on reserve at the Mugar Library Reserve Reading Room.

Attendance and Class Rules
Like all courses at Boston University, attendance in HI394 is required. Students who miss class because of illness should notify the instructor as soon as possible after the absence. Other absences should be reported ahead of the class to be missed. Whenever possible written notification should be provided (health center slip, note from academic advisor, etc.). Students who must leave class early on a particular day should notify the instructor ahead of time.

Please observe university regulations against consuming food or drink during class sessions.

Class Schedule

Week 1 (January 13-15)
	T 13th	Introduction: Environmental history/Environmental Stories?
	Th 15th	Africa's environmental systems/Group discussion of images of the African environment Reading:
Week 2 (20-22 January)
	T 20th	Myth making and Narratives of the African Environment: King Solomon's Mines
	Th 22nd	Sources for environmental history/ Reading:
Week 3 (27-29 January)
	T 27th	Population in African History: Boserup versus Malthus
	Th 29th	Maragoli: Film and Discussion on Population and Gender in Africa, Reading: Maddox, Custodians
Week 4 (4-6 February)
	T 4th	Disease in the East African Environment: Influenza,1917-19
	Th 6th	Animal: The Rinderpest Epizootic 1889-92; Group Discussion: Disease Contol and African Environment Writing Assignment Distributed (Due 13 February), Reading:
Week 5 (11-13 February)
	T 11th	Creeping Desert, Human Hands?
	Th 13th	Film and Discussion: The Desert Doesn't Bloom Here Anymore, Reading:
Week 6 (18-20 February)
	T 18th	(Monday schedule of classes)
	Th 20th	A Tale of Two Forests: Deforestation in Ethiopia, Reading:
Week 7 (25-27 February)
	T 25th	Group discussion on Desertification/deforestation in Africa (Questions distributed/paper due March 6)
	Th 27th	Ethiopia's Agricultural Paradox, Reading:
Week 8 (4-6 March)
	14th	Roots of Famine: Alternative Accounts
	16th	Famine and the Media, Reading:
Week 9 (11-13 March)		Spring Break
Week 10 (18-20 March)
	T 18th	Film and Discussion: Ethiopia after the Famine
	Th 20th	Famine Solutions: Agricultural Modernization in Ethiopia I, (new tools, social change), Written Assignment Distributed (due April 4), Reading: Musambachime article (packet)
Week 11 (25-27 March)
	T 25th	Famine solutions: Black Soil, New Tools
	Th 27th	South Africa: Environmental Determinism and Mfecane, Reading:
Week 12 (1-4 April)
	T 1st	Competing Landscapes: Afrikaner and Basotho
	Th 4th	Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, Reading:
Week 13 (8-10 April)
	T 8th	Soil Erosion in Lesotho
	Th 10th	Conservation, environmentalism, and colonialism in Africa, Reading:
Week 14 (15-17 April)
	T 15th	Policy Questions and Options for Africa's Environmental Resources Role of History(Group discussions)
	Th 17th	Group Discussion of Homewood versus Bonner and Country Project Planning Reading:
Week 15 (22-24 April)
	T 22nd	Group Country Reports
	Th 24th	Group Country Reports
Week 16 (29 April)
	T 29th	Synthesis: East Africa's Environmental Future(s)

• Anderson, David and Johnson, Douglas. "Introduction: Ecology and society in northeast African history," in Anderson and Johnson, eds. The Ecology of Survival. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988.
• Tierney, John. "Fanisi's Choice," Science 86 (January/February 1986), 26-42. Anderson, David. "Cultivating pastoralists: ecology and economy among the Il Chamus of Baringo, 1840-1980," in Anderson and Johnson, eds. The Ecology of Survival. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988.
• Hartwig, Gerald. "Social Consequences of Epidemic Diseases: The Nineteenth Century in Eastern Africa," in Hartwig and Patterson, eds. Disease in African History. Durham: Duke University Press, 1978.
• Good, Charles, M. "Man, Milieu, and the Disease Factor: Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever in East Africa," in Hartwig and Patterson, eds. Disease in African History. Durham: Duke University Press, 1978.
• Waller, Richard. "Tstese Fly in Western Narok, Kenya," Journal of African History, 31 (1990), 91-101.
• Anderson, David. "Depression, dust bowl, demography, and drought: the colonial state and soil conservation in East Africa during the 1930s," African Affairs, 83 (1984), 321-45.
• Musambachime, Mwelma. "The Fate of the Nile Crocodile in African Waterways," African Affairs, 86 (1987), 197-207.
• McCann, James. "History, Drought, and Reproduction: Dynamics of Society and Ecology in Northeast Africa," in Anderson and Johnson, eds. The Ecology of Survival. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988.
• McCann,James, "A Great Agrarian Cycle? A History of Agricultural Productivity and Demographic Change in Highland Ethiopia 1900-87," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 20, 3 (1990), 389-416.
• Waller, Richard, "Emutai: crisis and response in Maasailand 1883-1902," in Anderson and Johnson, eds. The Ecology of Survival. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988.
• Ambler, Charles, "The Great Famine, 1897-1901," in Charles Ambler, Kenyan Communities in the Age of Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
• Hoben, Allan. "The Origins of Famine," New Republic (January 21, 1985), 17-19. Lofchie, Michael. "The Roots of Economic Crisis in Tanzania," Current History (April 1985), 159-63.

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