Introduction Paul Sutter wrote about the state

In 2013, Paul Sutter wrote about the state of environmental history in the

twentyfirst century, that environmental history has grown within the last twenty years

since

1990 due to an emphasis on the concept of hybridity as it relates to the environment. In

2019, I would argue that this concept of hybridity remains crucial, because environmental

historians remain committed to this understanding of the lasting impact of the forces that

change the environment. And because environmental historians are greatly concerned

about the dichotomy that exists between both human and nonhuman agents, there needs

to be a shift from simply explaining this dichotomy, as a means to explain environmental

change in favor of understanding the greater impact of nonhuman agents on the

environment.

I affirm with Sutter that the concept of environmental causation, that is to say the

factors to dictate change, are part of an environmental historians work, but where I look

to move beyond Sutter’s work is how environmental historians must assume that

humanity is living in a more nonhuman state of mind. In 2018, humanity has become

increasingly reliant on technology to survive, especially with the increased use of

smartphones and tablets to hold information, but also as our technology has increased, so

has our need to increase the space of the Anthropocene.

The shift in ideology can be best determined by the contemporary treatment of

human nature. Contemporary ideology of humanity bases human equality by race,

gender, and social structure, but we still think of ourselves as superior or inferior to

others, a dualism that is part of human nature because they possess the free will to

determine the causality of existence. This idea of free will, as exercised by humanity, is

the main factor to allow humanity to justify acting upon the environment. Further, the

increase of the Anthropocene has cemented humanity’s agency on the environment,

especially since humanity has increased efforts to act against the environment within the

last ten years. As the climate changes, there have become more frequent natural disasters

and encroachment of invasive species on new territories. Albeit small examples to

discuss, I argue that now is the time for environmental historians to reassess agency, as it

relates to the direct impact of nonhuman agents on environmental change, especially

since these examples reflect the current trend of the natural world.

Environmental historians must also not be so quick to discourage or downgrade

the role of agency as it relates to environmental change, because this concept has been

utilized to investigate how humans and nonhumans separately impacted the environment.

This assessment of independent agency on the natural world is unfair, because with every

major environmental change that humanity commits, there is always a pushback by

natural forces, a reaction against the Anthropocene by nature, be it through the form of an

infestation or a natural disaster, and that environmental historians should become more

increasingly concerned about how nonhumans act as a reactionary to human progress,

and provide a greater change on the environment in the process.

I also argue that this emphasis of nonhuman environmental change also refers

back to my original point about the world humanity lives in in the twenty-first century. I

get up every day to the sound of my alarm from my smartphone, and every day, after I

use at least three household appliances to make my breakfast. I turn on my television, or I

use my cellular telephone to find out some new form of medium to help humanity do and

think better: Hiring people to deliver groceries by other humans, new information about

the health benefits of certain foods, places around the world that are advertised as

paradise on Earth, and most recently, the use of robots for customer service aid.

Everyday, the natural world is destroyed to serve this human improvement, while

the after effects of these improvements are more prevalent, examples of which include

deforestation, waste, and certainly pollution. Humanity needs the natural space to

improve its condition, which is the reality of our contemporary comforts, our advanced

societies, and our more informed age of living. The reality of these comforts is that the

natural world is more prone to ecological destruction in the last twenty years than in the

last 200. In the wake of this, the environmental historian must be able to understand the

role of nature in environmental history not just the inevitable success of humanity against

nature, but how nature can influence environmental change in the process.

Methodology

The methodology for this work is complex, using multiple theoretical

terminologies to explain the emphasis of nonhuman agency. The use of the word

“agency”, in the case of environmental history, does apply to the causal factors for

environmental change. However, environmental historians have used agency to strictly

discuss the role of humanity in environmental change. Humanity’s interaction with the

natural world is self-evident, and for environmental history to move forward with its

historiography, agency towards nonhumans must take precedence.

The origins of nonhuman agency began as rhetoric in the 1960s, when

environmental history started in America as a separate school of thought. For this first

generation of environmental historians, their serious regard was to investigate how

humanity acted upon the environment, but there were also historians that advocated how

nature played a role in the changes to the environment.

However, to understand the greater presence of nonhuman agents, this discussion

of the historiography also needs to assess how nonhuman agents pushed back against

humanity’s concepts of “progress”, “civilization”, and “urbanization”. By the

1980s1990s, postmodernist theory challenged the legitimacy of history as an academic

profession, and environmental history began to quietly investigate the concept of agency

as it relates to changes on the environment, providing credit where credit is due. Finally,

environmental history in the twenty-first century has grown to do three key things: It

expanded as a topic of discussion to historians in Europe and Asia, American

environmental historian shifted their attentions towards the American South, and the

concept of environmental history itself became host to an array of newer histories that

stemmed from environmental history: Disaster history, climate history, etc.

Despite the changes throughout environmental history’s historiographical

narrative, there is one question that still remains: Can nonhuman agents of environmental

change able to influence new theories on environmental history? Yes, nonhuman agents

do influence environmental change, but no, because on the context that the historians

studies it. To give nonhuman agents their due credit, the environmental historian must

place them in a global context. In fact, this global context is required of environmental

history, because it limits our profession to think about the environment as it changes

independently in countries throughout the world.

The importance of getting environmental history to drift away from regional fields

of study, I.E. American history, European history, etc., will also the aid profession’s

ability to understand how nonhumans from one country affect the environment of

another, particularly with the outbreak of spotted lanternflies (Lycorma delicatula), native

to Asia, in Berks County, Pennsylvania. In fact, the use of this global context also

provides more information on the state of the global environment, but we need to have

more objective approaches to scientific disciplines such as zoology and ecology, because

while environmental historians use their works as sources, they, as of yet, do not directly

concern themselves with these scientific fields of academia.

The Anthropocene: Humanity’s Limitless Ambitions

While environmental historians have gone to great lengths to understand the

minutia of environmental change between humanity and nature, I propose that

environmental history must cast aside the human element of environmental change, in

order to understand environmental change in a posthuman world. Justifying posthumanity

is in response to the strides by postmodernist theorists, that since posthmodernism

legitimized history as an academic profession, posthumanity can legitimize nonhuman

agency towards environmental change. To understand this concept of environmental

change in a posthuman world, which for many historians is the historical analysis of life

with the extinction of humanity, I propose that environmental history can utilize a

posthuman analysis to exclude humanity’s accomplishments, that environmental

historians are able to understand how nonhumans interact with natural space. Further, this

posthuman discussion by environmental historians must not separate humans from

nonhumans, in terms of competition against each other for survival, but rather an

interconnectedness between both humans and nonhumans, which in this case, nature. In

fact, by studying both humans and nonhumans together, the environmental historian is

able to understand how nonhumans are making a much larger impact on natural space due

to the influences of humanity.

In accompaniment with posthuman analysis to justify nonhuman environmental

change, what has also allowed nature to become the environmental historian’s primary

subject of analysis is through works on the concept of the Anthropocene. Spearheaded by

scholars such as Dipesh Chakrabarty and Zoltan Simon, the Anthropocene has placed the

efforts of humanity to improve their condition of sustainability into one single concept.

Further, the Anthropocene has revealed some stark contradictions about environmental

history, that humanity has conditioned nature to a state of global environmental

catastrophe. In sum, the Anthropocene has presented the limitless ambitions to which

humanity will interact with the world. And for the environmental historian, the

Anthropocene has justified all human interactions as a foregone conclusion.

To be frank, why should environmental historians still care about humanity in

today’s age of information and technology? Because of globalization, humanity is in a

juxtaposition where their interactions with natural and human space will always lead to

the same outcome: Changes to both forms of space. Why should environmental historians

spend their time focusing on the history of the human condition, when they already know

this outcome? One could argue it is the discourse, the we need to elucidate just how great

a length humanity has gone to shape the Earth in their own image: An image of a perfect

world prompted on a billboard amidst an ocean of waste.

I ask this not for the discredit of environmental historians who have spent their

time to understand the human condition, but rather to emphasize that these works written

on environmental change tell a different perspective of the same story: Humanity does

“X”, Nature responds with “Y”. That dichotomy is disingenuous to Nature itself, because

the reactions that Nature provides to human and natural space, which is also

disingenuous, are not reactions at all. They are responses. Responses that reflect how

humanity’s need to improve, which forever grows as its appetite for improvement

increases throughout history, undercuts the power of nature. Nature’s responses are due to

the conditions humanity has created, but because humanity will continue to improve their

conditions, environmental historians do not need to study what is already selfevident.

This criticism of environmental history’s practices comes directly from Simon’s criticism

of historical understanding, that philosophers of history like Reinhardt Kosellect debated

on studying humanity in a historical context, that the course of human events throughout

history were supposed to happen. However, Simon also contends that the origins of

posthumanity came from transhumanist ideology, that the immediate presence of

technologies that improve the human condition. However, in Simon’s discusses of the

relationship between transhumanism and the human condition, he is ultimately

concluding that posthumanity exists as “the temporal other of humanity”. Further, to

Simon, Western historical narratives allows posthumanity’s placement as a temporal

other, but with the intention to balance humanity’s role by assessing the telos to which

humanity’s role exists in history.

Applying this information provided by Simon, from this posthuman analysis, can

the environmental historian study Nature’s responses? How does the Anthropocene

legitimize the role of nature as a direct form of environmental change? This is ultimately

a question of agency. Nature has always had its own responses to any form of changes

towards natural space, utilizing forces of nature as part of Nature’s efforts to regulate any

and all imbalances to natural space. On the other hand, because humanity continues,

throughout its history, to improve its condition, Nature’s processes of regulating

imbalance, before humanity’s intervention, have now been forced to speed up, responses

by Nature of which that are having to cater to human industrialization and pollution on

such grandeur of a scale in the globalized age. What must now be explained is the

discourse of Nature’s responses, the size and scope of their destructive force, as well as

how environmental historians must theorize about how Nature can respond to human and

natural space.

Organization

The organization of this work will be divided up into four chapters, each of which

discuss the trends in historiography for to allow environmental history to move forward

into this posthuman perspective, as well as specific examples of Nature’s responses that

emphasize a posthuman perspective. Chapter Two will discuss the historiography of

environmental history, tracing the origins of the profession in America during the1960s

into the present day. I specifically start in the 1960s, because the post-World War Two

period allowed newer histories, which include environmental histories, to become

legitimate institutions by the twenty-first century onward. Throughout the chapters in this

section, there will be an analysis of the socio-political conditions that allowed

environmental history to grow and establish itself as a separate school of thought, while

also discussing what environmental historians were writing about during this period (and

each subsequent historiographical period). By tracing the historiography, what I do not

want to do is summarize the historiographical changes, rather I want to discuss, in tandem

with the historiographical narrative, how nonhuman agents have quietly grown to become

a direct agent of environmental change. In the end, this emphasis of the nonhumans in

environmental history will be the main focus of this work, and the main purpose to trace

the historiography.

Further, Chapter Two will discuss environmental history from 1960 and into the

1980s. Starting here is important because 1960 is where environmental history became a

separate school of thought, formulated from the social awareness of the environment by

Americans in the 1960s, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in the

1970s, and the lack of environmental interest by the 1980s. During this period, nonhuman

agents such as infestations and natural disasters were part of the rhetoric, not as intensely

discussed, because these early historians were concerned strictly with how humanity has

impacted environmental change. However, they did make note of their existence, but the

1980s did not allow Americans to give great thought about environmental history. In fact,

environmental history in the 1980s quietly professionalized with the creation of the

Journal of Environmental History.

Chapter Two will also investigate the factors that expanded environmental history

from the 1990s up until 2013. During this period, there is an increased study of social

histories such as the history of gender, and environmental history undergoes radical

changes to its theory and historical scholarship. What allowed environmental history to

change was the growth of historical fields that stemmed out of environmental history,

examples of which include disaster history, history of the germ, climate history, etc. What

became most prominent about environmental history in the 1990s is how it became more

regionally focused, as historians expanded their academic prose out of America to

environmental histories across continents, particularly in areas where environmental

information is most prominent in Europe like Great Britain, or in Asian countries such as

China and Japan. Further, environmental historians that possessed an American historical

background began to shift focus to the American South to study environmental history,

which had before been seen as backwards, but environmental history dispelled any notion

of the American South possessing any backwardness, revealing how connected humanity

is to the environment in the process. In fact, from this emphasis on the American South,

this is where the notion of a nonhuman agent was given direct influence in environmental

history. In fact, during the early 2000s, environmental historians began to discuss the

roles of nonhumans, as they related to environmental change, and from this, birthed the

dichotomy between human and nonhuman environmental change.

Chapter Two will also discuss how the historiography of environmental history

has drifted to studying nonhuman agent from 2013 to the present day. I start at 2013,

because this is where environmental historian Paul Sutter reassesses environmental

history’s historiographical trajectory, and what measures have been taken to move the

profession forward. Further, Sutter also becomes one of the first historians to analyze the

presence of a nonhuman agent in environmental history. The works printed after 2013

also provide a continuation of what was previously introduced in the early 2000s, this

idea of a nonhuman agent, except the difference with these later works is an increased

emphasis to use scientific sources to explain how the nonhuman agent is present in

environmental history. It should not take a blunt work, one that needs to directly address

an issue of the increasing nonhuman reactionary process against humans like Ted

Steinberg’s Acts of God: An Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, to

elucidate the destruction nonhumans can wrought on the natural world.

In fact, environmental historians need, with the utmost urgency, to understand

nonhumans as a major cause for environmental change, particularly as a direct causal

factor. We have used the last five years since 2013 to print works that address the

nonhuman element, but we need to understand that power those nonhumans have. To look

at this in a contemporary context, moving forward into the twenty-first century, the

progress of humanity has become increasingly needing to prepare itself to face natural

disasters, its agricultural practices involve taking precautions against species that will

ravage crops. This world we now live in is in a perfect stage for environmental history to

step in and persistently ask what are the conditions these nonhumans are living in to

allow their presence to become increasingly detrimental to humanity.

However, to move the historiography beyond examples of environmental change

historians have discovered, and the elucidation of their importance, I will use Chapter

Three to explain the role of climate as a form of posthuman environmental change. This

chapter will serve what I see as a crystallizing moment for environmental historians,

where we should think less about practical explanations of environmental history, in favor

of more theoretical applications of where we can elucidate the presence of the

nonhumans, no longer being The Other of environmental history. Environmental history

has already mapped the extent of humanity’s destruction upon the natural world, but we

have yet to successfully scratch the surface of how an infestation or a natural disaster can

impact the natural world. In the case of climate, it is its own agent of environmental

change, conditioned by humanity, for years, acted on its own to provide the conditions

which upset the human condition, but also how does climate react to the human

condition. Namely, what are the conditions that force climate to provide natural

occurrences humanity is all too familiar with?

Chapters Four, and Five, will be used to discuss specific examples where

nonhuman entities have become direct forces towards environmental change, infestations

and natural disasters, in that order. The analysis of both chapters will come from old

works beginning in the 1960s, where environmental history first began, and into the

present day. Both infestations and natural disasters reflect practical examples where a

nonhuman entity of environmental change was present, explain their own historiography

the same as climate, as well as how a posthuman analysis of these subjects can be

asserted.

From accomplishing this, I do run a risk of running parallel with several other

well-established historiographies, most notably the history of life sciences and medicine,

the history of science and technology, and certainly agricultural history. However, I see

this as an excellent juxtapostion, because even though I am aware of the potential at

stepping into other historiographies, I intend to analyze from strictly an environmental

context. I do not want to cross over to other histories, because I want to explain how the

conditions that allowed the nonhumans to become prominent. Further, my carefulness

against any crossover of historiography is my deliberate attempt to understand where

other histories have allowed for environmental history to take prose, because the separate

histories aforementioned have given environmental history the legitimacy to exist, but

also to allow environmental historians to step in and question where environmental

change seeks to legitimize these other histories. It is the symbiotic relationship between

multiple historiographies that have lent environmental history aid in its own legitimacy as

a school of historical thought. From all of these cases, the environmental historian must

look at them as a global concept of study, and in fact, from these cases, the idea of

regional environmental history is directed to lose favor, because we must analyze how

catastrophes travel across continents, examples of which include migratory patterns of

insects, or understand the pattern of travel for a natural disaster such as a hurricane.

Chapter Four will talk about my analysis of the role of infestations in the

environment. From this chapter, an infestation does imply an emphasis on insects, but an

infestation could also mean an influx of atypical species of animals, or plants, or disease,

that are starting assimilate into urban settings, as a means of adaptation to the changing

environment. So I structure this chapter, following the historiography of infestations, to

emphasize the practical influence of environmental change, epitomized by plants, insects,

and disease as forms of infestations. My main accomplishment with this chapter will be

to both present enough literature to support this notion of a nonhuman entity, but also to

show the power of the creatures that encroach and ravage human landscapes, and in some

cases, leave of legacy of fear to humanity that transcends generations. In the end, this

chapter will seek to understand the inherent endgame of infestations, be it actually

reacting against humanity’s environmental impact, or if these creatures of nature have

their own intended purpose of doing things such as encroachment on humanity’s sphere

of existence, as well as the ravaging of natural landscapes, be it known or foreign to

infestations, either through migration or search for food.

Chapter Five will discuss an all too familiar subject to environmental historians:

Natural disasters. In fact, while disaster history has become a major subfield of

environmental history in the twenty-first century, histories of natural disasters have been

around since the 1960s. What allowed natural disasters to gain steam as a subfield is

through the emphasis of nonhuman agency, but the discussions of natural disasters as an

entity has always taken some form in environmental history. In each of their works,

environmental historians view natural disasters as the reactionary against human

interaction on the environment, and it becomes a dichotomy of humanity’s attempt to

defend housing developments or a city against disasters such as an earthquake or a

hurricane. In fact, some works spend time to look at the events leading up to a disasters

arrival in an area, and it is worth mentioning that the reactionary factor environmental

historians pose a disaster is presented when looking at works dealing with nineteenth

century and twentieth century disasters such as the Johnstown Flood of 1889 and the San

Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

Where I choose to take the discussion of natural disasters is how environmental

historians view the destruction disasters wrought. When analyzing natural disasters in a

posthuman world, some questions must come to mind, namely the following: What were

the repercussions for things such as land retreat due to changes in sea level? Why would a

natural disaster be forced to travel from Jamaica, through Florida, and up through Egg

Harbor, New Jersey, bringing with it its own destructive force? Are these disasters

becoming more frequent due to the designs of humanity, because the building of

skyscrapers, gas stations and shopping malls are forcing natural occurrences to become

more frequent, or are the disasters occurring out of their own volition?

When speaking about natural disasters as an entity, the historian must ask these

questions, so as to judge the placement of disasters in relationship to humanity’s actions

upon the environment. In fact, my own analysis of natural disasters, as they relate to

being entities of environmental change, would suit the environmental historian well,

because we must understand the economic implications for which humanity changes the

natural world. In its simplest form, humanity has been driven by economic gain to act

upon the natural world, without even the slightest regard to the repercussions that

followed, until social awareness of environmental change in the 1960s allowed humanity

to reassess its impact on the planet.

In my discussions of natural disasters, I will also be analyzing the amount of

financial loss and gain humanity faced to both prepare against (if any attempts were

made) and defend itself against disasters. The purpose of this being to disprove any

ignorance by humanity to understand the natural world, particularly as several industrial

revolutions spawned throughout Europe and America in the nineteenth century. Further,

this discussion of human finances will be to also allow environmental historians to gauge

how much concern humanity gives towards both the natural world and the spaces that

humanity lives in. In the end, by assessing economic decisions made by humanity, this

section will dispel any notion of environmental awareness, reveal the commentary that

humanity made about the natural world in modernizing times, but also to elucidate

another important avenue that give natural disasters their own place as a subject of human

change and conditioning of the natural world.

The Historiography of Global Environmental History

The ultimate challenge of the historian is to discuss historiography, but with every

topic discussed, there needs to be this historiographical basis so as to prove worth of

historical scholarship. Historians must not shrug this theoretical base, and must not avoid

historiography, especially with topics like environmental history, where the

historiography has not only been minutely determined, but also leaves open questions for

new scholarship to be written going forward into the next century. This is not to suggest

that environmental history is unfinished, because environmental history, like any

historical subject, remains in constant flux. However, what separates environmental

history’s historiography from others is how it is able to remain in this state of flux. Within

the last twenty years, humanity has increased their need for consumption, but also an

increased need for alternative fuels, in accompaniment with scientists across the world

becoming increasingly concerned about the world’s average climate increasing due to

climate change, causing drastic changes to the natural world as a result. This is a pivotal

moment for environmental history both influence the power of environmental change, as

well as to take another great leap forward with its historiography.

It is important to understand that environmental history is not a typical historical

subject, uniquely situated as a bridge between the scientific and historical communities.

In fact, because environmental history is that bridge for science and history, the historian

can reinforce scientific claims of agency towards environmental change, while using

history to justify the scientific state present. What remains is the direction of historical

scholarship to understand this information presented by these scientists.

The focus will be on the global perspective on environmental history, which will

elucidate the growth of environmental history as a global topic. The benefit of a global

perspective with environmental history is that it bridges established and fledgling

historiographies, but the challenge comes from those historiographies that are fledgling,

because there is either little to no information on the regions environmental history, or

that the environmental history being written by the region is askew when compared to

others. Further, this perspective eliminates the bias from academic elitist attitudes such as

Americanist or Europeanist beliefs.

To this end, I argue, global environmental history does not argue one solitary

group of historians to be the group that defines the course of the historiography. Rather,

global environmental history places each regions history, analyzing its growth, while also

determining how does the theoretical influence of American environmental history allow

a Chinese environmental historian to rethink their own environmental history. What this

cross-analysis of global environmental history, region by region, has ultimately

accomplished, is determine another new phase for environmental history, that this group

of scholars has ultimately been driven to think about environmental change the same way

that contemporary scientists study the natural world: With a relationship to another part of

the world.

Why should historians be concerned about global perspectives if Americanists or

Europeanists can exist among environmental history? We should seek to eliminate this

bias from environmental history, because it ill suits the profession’s scholarship to be

enwrapped by this regional favoritism. Further, the future of environmental history

depends on this global effort, because with the contemporary consensus of understanding

environmental change across the planet, environmental historians also need to follow this

model in the process. Towards this end, we understand the direction of each regions

natural world, and already have an established historical base to understand the changes

to the natural world as a whole. However, while the debate of methodology and bias

remains consistent, especially the slant towards the power of region, what has been

established is the genesis of environmental history, namely how a period of social change

influenced greater environmental consciousness among historians.

Environmental History’s Origin

The genesis of environmental history started in America. Looking at the earliest

incarnations of environmental history, historians can debate that the theoretical origin of

environmental history began in Ancient Greece, with Herodotus’s observance of the

changes to the natural world over time, that this is the start of environmental history13.

Others could argue that environmental history began with the Frontier Thesis by

Frederick Jackson Turner, that this is a predecessor to environmental history that argued

the components of environmental change. I would say that while these examples can be

argued as environmental history’s progenitors, these early incarnations of environmental

history were never put into the academy, viewed as theoretical rhetoric that did not have

enough of an academic base to blossom. Instead, the social climate of America after

World War Two became the primary catalyst for environmental history’s fruition.

When analyzing this influence, America, particularly in the 1960s, was already in

a state of major social revolution. With the Civil Rights movement redefining race in

13 Alfred W. Crosby “The Past and Present of Environmental History” American Historical Review, Vol.

100, No. 4 (Oct., 1995) 1183

America, the Vietnam War testing American foreign policy, and the Women’s Right’s

movement allowed for greater comprehension of a non-male dominated society in

America, which subsequently allowed for gender rights for non-heterosexual

communities to blossom in the process. With environmental history, it became situated in

this important period in American history, and what allowed environmental history to

approach historical thought was the environmental movement, in accompaniment with

Rachel Carson’s pivotal book Silent Spring, which discussed the effects of the misuse of

pesticides, both of which gave Americans ideas about environmental consciousnessFrom

this social consciousness about the environment in America, environmental history was

able to take off in the academy, with the earliest writings in the 1960s discussing the

relationship between humanity’s consumption as humanity ravaged the natural world.

In accompaniment with social implications, environmental history was also able

to fruition due to the influence of postmodernist theories on historiography. With the

works of scholars like Michel Foucault, postmodernist theory legitimized history as an

academic profession, particularly through epochs such as exchanges of ideas and

representation of the self. From this structural perspective presented by Foucault,

environmental history is in juxtaposition with natural history, that the continuity of the

natural world, and the historical analysis of such, is in relationship to the degree of space

that the natural world provides for both humanity and animals.

In fact, the use of space is what brings postmodernist theory to environmental

history. In its simple form, space, and the use of space, is what environmental history

discusses, namely because humanity acts upon areas of land in the natural world for

human progress. However, through the use of space, changes to the natural world can

only be determined from the character that only humanity can possess to change the

natural world. In order for environmental history to exist beyond the issues between the

natural world and human progress, the environmental historian needs to assess the

continuity of nature, how it has been able to condition itself over the course of time. In

fact, the conditioning of the natural world, along with the discussion of space, is another

aspect that the environmental historian focuses on, because while humanity uses the

space provided by the natural world to increase their need for progress, the conditioning

of the environment acts as a reactionary power by nature towards human progress, but

also provides the environmental historian with the degree of influence humanity has

towards the natural world. Further, human conditioning of the natural world remains

important because the environmental historian is also able to establish the relationship

humanity has to the natural world; beyond human progress, beyond human use of space

in the natural world, humanity’s ability to think about the natural world, the manners and

reasons through determinate knowledge of the natural world that only humanity can

utilize, is what has allowed environmental history to become a school of thought in the

academy.

Environmental History in the 1960s

In the 1960s, American environmental historians discussed the relationship of

human environmental change to American intellectual history. To these historians,

environmental change was about the human institutions that shaped the environment, but

with little regard to the natural world. Samuel P. Hay’s work on the Progressive Era

conservation movement in the early twentieth century began with the lack of attention

Americans gave towards the natural world, but still created policies on environmental

regulation, i.e. the creation of dams and irrigation.

Hays was able to present conservation as it related to American political decisions,

and that conservation of the natural world, to early twentieth century Americans, is not

worth the time nor effort. To historians of the 1960s, Hays also argues that they should

care about conservation, that this concept allows environmental history to progress by

emphasizing how technology has influenced humanity’s influence on environmental

change. Further, Hays uses this work to also argue the potential for environmental history

to grow can also be accomplished if the historian focused their attention towards the

groups that conservation was able to thrive, because Hays understood conservation as it

related to human consumption. Humanity’s need for resources was never about

conserving as much as possible, rather Hays argues that the conservation movement

intended to regulate the amount of resources consumed, because the conservationists

determined that humanity, in all forms of capitalist progression, will consume natural

resources, but larger factories and corporations had more influence on environmental

change. For Hays, this example of the conservation movement helped spearhead

environmental history, and determined the degree of attention historians must give to

understand environmental change as a historical subject.

Where Hays focused on a historical example of environmental change, Roderick

Nash focused on a particular subject that environmental historians can get behind: Nature.

In his book Wilderness and the American Mind, Nash is adamant that for historians to

understand human environmental change, environmental historians must not focus

entirely on what humanity has done to change the environment. Rather, Nash elucidates

at the power of nature itself, and that humanity must be able to determine what constitutes

a wilderness, which in itself lies a challenge from the complex and subjective definitions

that humanity has given the wilderness. However, these attempts to define the wilderness,

while fruitless, have left what Nash argues to be an opportune moment for Americans to

think about the wilderness, to understand not only what constitutes the wilderness, but

also how did the concept of the wilderness change for Americans over the course of time,

especially when for Nash, Americans possessed an “alien presence” during the

colonization of North America26.

Using this survey of American history to explain the changing concepts of the

wilderness, Nash determines that Europeans that came to the New World saw the

wilderness in North America as a harsh environment that could only be described by

references to the Christian Bible and Greek Mythology. From this, the Europeans used

this template to teach each other to be aloof towards the wilderness.

During the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century, the concept of the

wilderness manifested as a condition of human-induced environmental change. To Nash,

this conditioning of the environment was due to Americans emphasis on a prospective

market, financed by a civilized landscape rife with farms and factories, viewing the

wilderness as an “obstacle”. During the course of the nineteenth century, on the other hand,

as Romanticism and Transcendentalism gained ground in American societies, these

concepts transformed the wilderness to Americans by being a place of mystery and awe.

Further, the use of these ideas in the nineteenth century allowed the wilderness, particularly

the American wilderness, to become an exceptional place. While this idea of an exceptional

wilderness was prevalent throughout the nineteenth century, Transcendentalist Henry

David Thoreau spearheaded the beauty of the American wilderness, but he argued that

American society is able to thrive with the wilderness. Towards this end, American

intellectual brought the wilderness into a new perspective, which continued into the next

century

In the wake of the wilderness’s intellectual transformation in America,

transitioning from the wilderness being a savage landscape to an exceptional paradise,

this change in ideology transitioned into greater conscientiousness among Americans

about preservation of the natural world. To Nash, American preservation of the

wilderness ran in conflict with American growing material culture, namely the observed

disappearance of the West as it became open up for farming and the building of railroads,

in accompaniment with increased buffalo slaughters. Further, this effort to preserve the

wilderness also ran in conflict as Americans increased clearing forests that resulted in

dramatic abnormal climate changes such as erosion, drought and flood across the country.

As a result, American consciousness about the wilderness saw the rise of political

legislation the second half of the nineteenth century onward that intended to preserve

certainly areas of the American wilderness, namely the Adirondack mountains in New

York, and the Yellowstone region in Utah.

However, despite this progress towards environmental consciousness, Nash still is

adamant that the preservation of the wilderness will still face conflict with progress, that

Americans still continue to argue progress but still find methods to live with nature

despite destroying nature in the process. In the end, Nash has used the theory to

contextualize the transformative intellectual history of the environmental, putting the

environment, particularly in America, as a testament to human intervention. However,

from this work, environmental history in the 1970s would also transform same as the

American concept of the wilderness did with Nash.

Environmental History in the 1970s

Following the introduction of environmental history in the 1960s, the 1970s

allowed the profession to gain steam. Even though environmental history is still dominant

in America, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, in accompaniment with

various legislations such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, as well as

the creation of Earth Day, increased social consciousness about the natural world. Further,

environmental history also became an established school of thought, with academic

journal publishing works on environmental history, as well as the establishment of the

Journal of Environmental History.

In the wake of this series of changes made to the profession, environmental

history increases their focus on human environmental change, but due to the influence of

Nash, environmental historians also began to emphasize the role of nature as it related to

human environmental change. Further, nature becomes a central character for

environmental historians, especially when more information was published on climate,

but it remained as a secondary character to humanity, because this generation was still

focused on the power humanity possessed to change the natural world. However, while

humanity remained the focal point for environmental historians, the power of nature was

also starting to emerge, with historians emphasizing the reactionary force of nature. To

this group of historians, forces of nature we know of today as natural disasters were the

primary focus, presenting cataclysmic periods in American history where humanity’s

ability to prosper was tested.

For this generation of historians, shifting the narrative away from humanity’s

environmental destruction is important to note, because this remains a trend for

environmental history that continues into the present day. The 1970s allowed this idea of

nature, namely nature’s role in environmental change, to flourish. However,

environmental historians in the 1970s analyze nature’s role as reactionary to human

environmental change, still concerned with human environmental change, but argue that

nature has means to fight back against environmental change. What has resulted has been

described by historian Richard White as a more “ethical basis of the human relationship

to nature”.

To renowned historian Donald Worster, the Dust Bowl is a testament to nature’s

reactionary power towards environmental change. In the events leading up to the Dust

Bowl, Worster argues that this natural disaster was a result of America’s capitalist need

for progress, that Americans in the Midwest were content to “deliberately,

selfconsciously, set itself to the task of dominating and exploiting the land for all its

worth”. In the wake of the Dust Bowl’s reactionary power in the Midwest, this disaster

promoted New Deal era policies to understand the ecological comprehension of the Dust

Bowl. To Worster, these policies concluded that nature was intended to help sustain

humanity, however Worsters work mirrors Hay’s theories of human sustainability, but

moves away from Hays because of the Dust Bowls destruction to the Midwest. Further,

Hays focused on a major period of human consumption, at a time where American

capitalism was taking a new phase, in order to understand the relationship between both

consumption and conservation of the natural world, whereas Worster analyzed a period of

environmental change where human consumption was increased, but because American

capitalism was in a state of depression, nature was able to exploit with a disaster that

upset economic progress. This connection between economic growth and environmental

change is the primary connection that environmental historians make from the 1970s

onward. While environmental historians in the 1960s are the first to understand this

connection, they were disinterested with the reactionary power of nature, only the power

of human environmental change. In the end, Worster was able to pioneer a new direction

for environmental history that helped piece together what historians in the

1960s were only able to theorize.

While environmental historians Donald Worster focused on environmental change

as it related to economic change, others like William McNeill presented another aspect of

environmental change, but strictly focused on a nonhuman subject: Disease. To McNeill,

disease has been a direct influence on human history, but what McNeill argues previous

books on disease were missing was a historicized component to determine “how varying

patterns of disease circulation have affected human affairs in ancient times as well a

modern. When compared to Worster, Worster focuses on the economic grounds that

allows for nonhumans to react against human environmental change, whereas McNeill

presents the conditions that allows for a natural element such as disease, in this case, to

encroach on humans. Further, McNeill presents the conditions that have allowed for a

disease to permeate in society, i.e. human population growth allows for diseases to pass

through from one host to the next in a community. To McNeill, disease presents a global

narrative, discussing periods in history across the world where diseases were able to

successfully interact with the human and natural world, but what remains common is that

the growth of human consumption directly relates to the growth of both micro and

macroparasitism diseases. From this, McNeill presents another aspect of reactionary

power that nonhumans have towards human environmental change, and that this work by

McNeill provides one of the first global perspectives of environmental change. However,

while McNeill discusses this global perspective, paying explicit attention to trans-

Atlantic distribution of disease during Europe’s colonization of the Americas, the 1970s

also presented the relationship between nonhuman environmental change across the

world, and that the presence of a disease in society is determined by the conditioning

humans have presented to the natural world. Towards this end, McNeill’s work may have

had a global perspective, but environmental history remained a dominant school of

thought in America.

Because of environmental history’s dominated Americanist perspective in the

1970s, Joseph Petulla was able to write American Environmental History in order to

discuss America’s role in environmental history, namely to the degree of environmental

change America has committed over the course of its historical narrative. Throughout

Petulla’s historical narrative of American environmental change, Petulla affirms that the

course of America’s environmental history was about use of resources as it related to

America’s changing policies on capital gain. Further, the changes in American capitalism

were also what Petulla considers to be necessary means to which Americans ultimately

destroyed the natural world, utilizing political policies to favor personal and private

property ownership, and industrial growth, over concerns of the natural world. However,

despite the influence of environmental historians determination of human environmental

change and economic growth, the 1980s took a different direction that slowed down the

historian’s interest in the subject, not to grinding halt, but not nearly as influential as the

1970s.

Environmental History in the 1980s

Where the 1970s have pioneered new innovations to environmental history,

providing information on the greater role of nonhumans as they relate to environmental

change, but the socio-political state of America in the 1980s, particularly during the

Reagan administration, forced a retreat from environmental awareness. However, while

American politics downplayed the role of environmental change during the 1980s,

historians during this period were able to create not only the Journal of Environmental

History but also the American Association for Environmental History. The works on

environmental history published during this period built upon Worster’s earlier theories

about the relationship between economic growth and environmental change. However,

these historians focused on expanding the ecological impact humanity has conducted

towards the natural world, but books were minimally published despite the academic

changes environmental history was undertaking as a school of thought.

To renowned environmental historian William Cronon, he used the colonization of

America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in accompaniment with the

consumption practices of Native Americans, to further advance Worster’s theories on the

ecology of human environmental change. To explain this, Cronon argues that

environmental change varied between the colonists of Europe and Native Americans, but

Cronon blames both sides for changing the environment, namely the use of each group

ecological techniques to reorganize plant and animal populations in New England. In the

end, the 1980s did not possess great deal of major accomplishments, but by the 1990s,

environmental history became a major historical topic once again.

Environmental History in the 1990s

During the 1990s, the influence of globalization allowed for countries in both the

Western and Eastern hemispheres to engage in more market trade with each other. With

environmental history, countries in Europe, Africa and Asia began to publish works that

reveal their own environmental histories, which, for the first time, drifts away from the

influence of America. With the creation of academies such as the European society for

Environmental Historians in 1999, this allowed for environmental history to globalize by

attracting more historians of environmental history. In fact, this global trend of

environmental history remains the current perspective of the profession, because the

influence of American environmental history remains in perspective to the rest of the

world. Further, to understand this global perspective of environmental history, the

historian must not become wrapped with any bias towards one particular group of

environmental historians, rather they must understand the interconnected behavior of

environmental change across regions.

Following the publishing of his influential book on the Dust Bowl, Donald

Worster brought a nonhuman perspective on environmental history that was not otherwise

introduced in the 1970s. To Worster, the environmental historian must use climate reports

and scientific data on changes in crop reports and weather patterns, because this

information can determine how environmental factors can change the course of growth

and declination to the human population. Further, Worster argues that the environmental

historian must also understand the causal factors of environmental change beyond

humanity’s economically based decisions to change the natural world. To explain these

causal factors, Worster isolates two spheres of existence that the environmental historian

can utilize: The natural and cultural sphere of existence. From this, the environmental

historian is able to isolate the roles that humanity and nature have on environmental

change, in order to determine which group had more influence on environmental change,

despite humanity’s growing industrialization.

Where Worster discussed the relationship between humanity and nature, William

Cronon revisited the concept of production as it related to environmental change. In fact,

Cronon argues that the rates and types of change committed by humans are what

constitute environmental change. Further, Cronon is also critical of previous narratives

that presented environmental history as a cyclical topic, as well as with random regard to

natural disasters such as climate change and earthquakes. In the end, the 1990s opened

more avenues for environmental history to be reassessed, especially with human based

environmental change being the centerpiece of this analysis, however the next century

built upon what the 1990s introduced and expanded it to broader perspectives.

Environmental History from 2000 to the Present Day

Where American environmental historians such as Cronon and Worster have

debated on the theory of environmental history in the 1990s, other upcoming

environmental historians are bringing global environmental history to prose in the new

millennia. The trends of theory continue from 2000 onward into the present day, but this

new century expands beyond the scope of dichotomous theories; environmental history

will no longer simply be about humanity fighting to live on Each using increased

ideologies about production, in accompaniment with changing ideas on capital gain,

while nature remains as an arcane tool of resistance to what humanity intends to

accomplish. Nature will be given more devotion to historical study, beyond the

dichotomy of its reactionary status to humanity, becoming a direct influence of

environmental change. Further, the global influence of environmental history has also

become more prominent, but while the regional emphasis by Americanists and

Europeanists is still ongoing, the environmental historian can now use these regional

histories to bridge one another.

To historian Piero Bevilacqua, global environmental history is the new phase of

environmental history to promote this interconnectedness between regions. Towards this,

Bevilacqua determines that understanding global environmental history is also able to

determine the trends in environmental topics such as depletion of the ozone layer and

destruction of forest areas around the world.

To Ranjan Chakrabarti, on the other hand, global environmental history remains a

concept that involves human environmental change, but the role of humanity on

environmental change has increased a great deal, especially since with historians

publishing works on histories of the human experience in medicine, public health and

disease. Further, Chakrabarti also elucidates that global environmental history still needs

to consider a nonhuman perspective in order for it to grow as a school of thought, which

can be determined from histories on climate and climate change.

Where some historians have asserted the importance of global environmental

history, other historians have dissented on the classification of global environmental

history. To Kobus du Pisani, global environmental history would eventually be defined by

the prevailing New Global History movement, which has determined that global

environmental history is a history focused on globalization factors of human

environmental change. John McNeill also affirms with du Pisani, but where McNeill

differs from du Pisani is that global environmental history must provide a global-scale

analysis of human environmental change, comparing human acts of environmental

change such as pollution or deforestation

Topics of Global Environmental History

While global environmental history has presented new methodologies for the

profession, it is also important to discuss what are some of the regions on global

environmental history that have been published. One of which is environmental history of

Africa, and according to historian William Beinart, Africa’s environmental history relates

to post-colonialist scholarship, emphasizing “appropriation of natural resources such as

wildlife, forests, minerals, and land by companies and settlers”. Further, what Beinart has

determined is that from this post-colonial perspective, appropriation of resources was an

attempt to suppress predation and insect-borne diseases on the continent. By the twentieth

century, scientific investigation has determined that Africa’s issues with drought and

famine have been the result of the appropriation of resources conducted during the

colonial period.

In accompaniment with this influence of colonial powers on Africa, Beinart also

argues that the environmental historian must also understand the role of nature due to

environmental change. While humanity greatly impacted Africa’s natural landscape,

Beinart concludes that changes in the environment can also be observed through changes

in local taxonomies and information on diseases such as HIV and AIDS.

On the other hand, with the environmental history of China, Bao Maohong is

hard-pressed that the influence of American history, particularly with bringing

environmental history to prose, remains the major influence of Chinese environmental

historyTo explain their environmental history, Chinese historians have taken a three fold

process, dividing environmental change with Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary

periods of Chinese history. With the Ancient period, which is from the late imperial

period of 1840 ACE, environmental change was dictated by Dao, Confucian and Buddhist

religious beliefs, resulting in overgrazing and arcane methods to tame the Yangtze River.

By the Modern Chinese historical period, which Maohong argues is from 1840-1949,

environmental change in China shifted towards northern China, particularly over

humanity’s private and public control of water in the region. Further, the modern period

was also host to attempts at environmental conservation, particularly by the Chinese

government to suppress hunting of animals, except for scientific research, and promote

planting of trees65.

Where Maohong is extremely critical, however, is the direction of Chinese

environmental history in the Contemporary period, which is from 1949 to the present day.

Maohong is also convinced that Chinese environmental history can have a contemporary

perspective, because there is enough contemporary information to assert how humanity

was changing the environment from the Cold War onward. First, the environmental

historian needs to utilize Marxism to explain China’s influence towards environmental

change, since this is the major socio-political ideology in the countrySecond, Chinese

environmental historians need to cross analyze the country’s influence on environmental

change as to relates to Western countries such as Britain and the United States. To

Maohong, this remains an important concept because China’s economy was in direct

competition, and cooperation, with countries in the West, in accompaniment with the

direct influence of rapid industrialization that China was undergoing during this period.

While environmental historians have presented new regional environmental

histories in non-Western countries, it is also important to analyze how environmental

histories have come to prose in Europe, namely in Northern Europe. To Mark Cioc,

Linner Ola-Bjorn and Matt Osborn, the majority of European environmental histories

have been concentrated in Germany, Finland and Great Britain. With all these countries,

what remains consistent is human activity on environmental change, be it through

political legislation or efforts to find new sources of energy. However, what differentiated

from each of these countries in Northern Europe is the degree of influence each country

has towards environmental change, to which while Great Britain and Finland have

discussed human based environmental change, Germany has no solid academic

grounding in environmental history.

What is most striking is the degree of influence that Great Britain has on

environmental history, because in accompaniment with analyzing human environmental

change, British environmental historian I.G. Simmons used big history to understand the

long duree of environmental history, but focuses on the means to which human activity

has influenced environmental change due to changes in agricultural and industrial

practices. Further, Simmons determines that human induced environmental change has

exponentially increased following the end of World War Two, and that while humanity is

committed to the use of fossil fuels, greener technologies such as biofuel, wind and solar

power have been introduced to act as a counterbalance to the destructive force fossil fuels

have towards the environment. In the end, the use of a global perspective has allowed for

non-American countries to write about environmental history, the question remains if

American environmental history has a place in the global trend of environmental history.

America’s Intervention with Global Environmental History

The short answer is that while American historians are to be given credit for the

genesis of environmental history, it is important to note that their integration into the

global perspective of environmental history was meticulous. It was a difficult task,

because American historians, in one form or another, have discussed environmental

history, be it with either specific historical periods of environmental history, or innovative

methods in historical theory. In essence, Americans were always discussing

environmental history since the profession’s inception. However, what has remained

constant is that American historians have creation another important impact to the global

perspective on environmental history.

Throughout the course of the twenty-first century, America’s intervention with

global environmental history has been to discuss not only the continent’s role in

environmental change, but also to elucidate how to look beyond the human influence of

environmental change. Critical of America’s role in global environmental history, Thomas

Lekan has adamantly argued that in order to globalize American environmental history,

American historians need to compare their influence on environmental change with other

countries like China and England. Further, Lekan also argues that this cross

analysis by American environmental historians will eliminate any bias present in

Americanist attitudes in the academy, which are very much existent today, promoting

“common ground among thematic lines”.

Despite the presence of bias from Americanists, particularly with the boasting of

America’s academic superiority on the subject, American historians such as Ted

Steinberg have used big history to explain environmental change in American history.

While I.G. Simmons also used big history in his book, what made Steinberg different was

that not only did Steinberg publish his work on the subject first, but that Steinberg

focuses on nature first, looking at American environmental change as a challenge of

humanity’s use of nature to remain sustainable on Earth. Further, Steinberg elucidates that

Americans, following their independence from Great Britain, have had little regard to

environmental change, despite the environmental movement in the 1960s, where

Congress passed several policies in the 1990s on the mitigating economic growth and

ecological cost. In the end, Steinberg is hard-pressed that this dichotomy of ecology and

the American economy remains going into the present day.

American Environmental History Goes South

While American historians were discussing new changes to the profession of

environmental history, twenty-first century American environmental historians were

beginning to write about environmental history in the American South. To Otis Graham,

the pioneer of environmental history in the American South, he sees the American South

no longer as a backward place due to its history of resistance to Reconstruction and the

Civil Rights Movement, revealing a natural landscape of beaches and animals,

overshadowed by human pollution and factories. Further, Graham has also elucidated that

the relationship between humanity and nature remains the focal point of environmental

change in the American South78. To Christopher Morris, the American South has a

fascinating interconnected history, bridging other histories such as agricultural and

landscape history, in accompaniment with Morris’s theory that Southern environmental

history does not focus on the dichotomy between humans and nature.

Following the introduction of Southern environmental history, Paul Sutter’s

influential work on Providence Canyon in Georgia is one of the first monographs to

analyze the concept of ecology, which is a new concept for Southern environmental

history. To Sutter, ecology of Providence Canyon reflects New Deal conservation policies

to understand the landscape’s changing ecology, namely how studying soil erosion

ultimately contributed to human environmental change80.

New Perspectives from American Environmental Historians

On the one hand, American environmental historians directed newer

methodologies by presenting the environmental history of the American South. On the

other hand, American historian Donald Hughes was able to isolate methodological shifts

in environmental history, determining what Hughes refers to as the dimensions of

environmental history. The first of these dimensions that Hughes discusses is nature and

culture, which discusses the factors that dictate environmental change, examples of which

include research on environmental topics such as geology and climate change81.

Second, research in the historical and scientific dimension forces the

environmental historian to understand environmental change, using topics such as disease

and changes to an ecosystem, to understand the overall changes to the natural world82.

With the final dimension of environmental history that Hughes reveals, which is time and

space, this is the most important dimension that environmental historians must discuss.

To Hughes, time and space not only shows the environmental historian how much

environmental change has evolved with new technologies and ideologies about the

natural world83.

The Anthropocene as Environmental History’s Next Theoretical Phase in

Historiography

While twenty-first century historians have brought larger perspectives to

environmental history, especially with the global perspective dominating discussions on

environmental history, what has begun most recently, recently being the last decade by

theorists, is reimagining the degree of influence humanity has towards environmental

change, encompassed by discussions of a concept known as the anthropocene, which has

allowed environmental historians to understand anthropogenic environmental change, and

the degree of its influence, to “ think holistically across a range of biotic, abiotic, and

anthropogenic processes such as species loss, climate change, ocean acidification,

81 Donald Hughes. “Three Dimensions of Environmental History” Environmental and History, Vol. 14, No.

3 (August 2008) 323

82 Hughes “Three Dimensions of Environmental History” 326

83 Hughes “Three Dimensions of Environmental History” 326

disruption of biogeochemical cycles, and spread of exotic species, rather than treating

these as separate issues”. Environmental change is human made, but with conceptualizing

environmental change through the anthropocene, the environmental historian is now able

to understand how much influence humanity has on environmental change.

Environmental historians can now understand the long-term effects of environmental

change caused by humanity.

Where humanity was previously driven by economic gain, and bettering the

human condition of sustainability, the anthropocene has now introduced environmental

historians to a more concise and contemporary analysis of humanity’s influence on

environmental change. One of the changes in methodology the anthropocene has

introduced is the relationship between human-managed changes to the natural world, in

tandem with how nature has been able to change and adapt due to this anthropological

influence (Holmes 99). From this, the anthropocene has also provided the historian with a

comprehension, and relationship, between the natural world and understanding the

dynamics of changes to an ecosystem.

While the environmental historian may have enough cause to justify the use of the

anthropocene, praise must be given to Dipesh Chakrabarty for helping the environmental

historian theorize its importance. In Chakrabarty’s discussion, he reveals that there is a

dualistic role of the anthropocene, involving both the scientific and moralistic/popular

lives of humanity’s impact on the natural world. With the moralism of the anthropocene,

this concept discusses humanity as a geological force, dictated by its sociological-

institutional roles over the course of geological time. With the scientific perspective,

Chakrabarty argues that this concept of the anthropocene is applicable with relationship

to geological time, while also asking how does humanity’s own history fit into the

concept of planetary evolution. In fact, with relationship to Earth’s planetary history,

humanity’s existence comes much later in the long duree of this historical narrative, but

constitutes the majority of questions about humanity’s role in environmental change.

Conclusion: Nonhuman Environmental Change: The Future of Environmental

History

With the influence of the anthropocene directing contemporary theory on

environmental history, the environmental historian must now begin to think beyond the

role of anthropological environmental change. Where the anthropocene, and the theorists

of the anthropocene like Dipesh Chakrabarty, discussed the extent and limitless ambitions

of human environmental change, what needs to happen next is for environmental

historians understand how can an infestation or a natural disaster influence environmental

change, when compared to human acts such as building a factory or deforestation. I argue

that because the anthropocene elucidated the role of human environmental change, the

historian can now shift their focus on how nonhumans have reacted against the

anthropocene.

By focusing on nonhumans, environmental history will have successfully made

another leap in its historiography, that the means of environmental change are no longer

solely in the hands of humanity. And more certainly, that human progress has long-term

effects on the natural that are beyond extermination, that nature has its own agency to

react against human progress, react against humanity’s need to change the space of the

natural world to better the human condition.

Despite this, why should environmental historians care about nonhumans when

environmental scientists make studying the natural world their cause? Because

environmental historians can reinforce scientific work, no longer treating them as rhetoric

to better advance historiography, rather to directly investigate environmental change,

complimenting environmental scientists in the process. Towards this end, environmental

historians, already knowledgeable about the anthropocene, can still historicize

environmental change while making a more interconnected relationship between the

academies of history and environmental science. Nonhuman environmental change is the

bridge between these two academies that, due to the anthropocene has forced

environmental historians to discuss, what needs to happen now is that historians needs to

start asking is this: How do nonhumans change the natural world in their own respect?

Within this work, there will be three distinct topics discussed that I have determined will

best fit this theoretical shift: Climate, Infestations, and Natural Disasters. With these

topics, attention will be drawn to the historiography, namely how historians were able to

historicize each topic. Further, following the discussion of historiography, discussion will

then transition to the roles of environmental change that each topic has influenced. From

this discussion, the historian will learn both how each nonhuman has been either a

reactionary or direct influence for environmental change, while also understanding how

the anthropocene has influenced their interaction with the natural world.

This discussion of nonhuman environmental change will be a strictly global

perspective, since each nonhuman topic discussed does not solely exist within the

boundaries of their own country. Infestations are when a non-native entity interacts with

abnormal space outside their usual sphere of existence. Natural disasters are a

meteorological occurrence where great climatic forces are released in volatile and

destructive ways that upset both human and nonhuman living conditions. However, with

both of these environmental changes, what encompasses their existence is climate. In the

discussion of climate, this is where the anthropocene will be elucidated, because climate

change remains the major concept to discuss anthropological environmental change.

However, the concept of climate remains a gradual process of environmental change,

whereas infestations and natural disasters are an immediate reaction to the anthropocene,

climate is a gradual process that sets the stage for natural disasters and infestations to

persist.

However, with globalization, climate change has become an evermore reality

around the world, and threatens the human condition of existence as the natural world

runs out of space. Human progress has forced nonhumans to increase their interactions

with both the human world and the natural world, what remains is that discussion of

nonhuman environmental change, and for the historian to prove how nonhumans are

changing the natural world. And that discussion begins with climate.

Climate as a Concept of Posthuman Environmental Change

Historians already understand the conditioning that humanity can do towards the

environment, but how can they understand if nonhumans influence environmental

change? The answer to this lies in the historian’s comprehension of climate. Climate acts

as a canvas for environmental change, reflecting the repercussions of decisions made by

humanity to suit the needs. The influences of humanity upon the planet has resulted in

continuously stark changes to the natural world, examples of which include abnormal

weather patterns such as increased humidity and temperature flux, both of which lead to

drastic changes to normal natural changes including migratory patterns, droughts or dry

spells in a given area, and also increased encroachment of sea levels upon human space.

This chapter will not only discuss the history of climate in the post-World War 2

era, both as a subject of meteorological and historical analysis, but also how each decade

into the twenty-first century has changed climate’s scholarly analysis. Further, this

chapter will also determine the relationship between climate and the anthropocene,

particularly how historians, by the twenty-first century, have committed to posthuman

analysis of environmental change. In accompaniment with the role of climate in

relationship to the anthropocene, discussion will then transition to the greater influence of

climate upon the human condition, particularly the economic and ecological cost

humanity has undertaken to allow climate to increase its influence on human and natural

space. A conclusion will then be directed at the lasting legacy of climate, and what can

the environmental historian study to understand climate’s role in environmental change.

Because climate is the main concept that assesses the changes to the natural

world, the historian is already able to analyze climate as its own concept separate from

humanity. However, the historian must also take care to make clear that while humanity

has, yes, made a great deal of environmental impact, humanity has also made it clear of

their larger influences on the natural world. The social and political debates conducted on

climate change and climate denial are certain fact that humanity has changed the

language to treat climate as an entity on its own, and historians ever since the 1970s

onward have endeavored to elucidate climate as a worthy means of scholarship

Climate’s Theoretical Influence to Environmental Historians

During the 1970s, climate’s first initial thought was to assess the changes to

climate as it related to natural occurrences, i.e. volcanic activity. However, meteorology

during this period revealed more information on weather reports from America, Europe,

including Russia, and Asia. From this, climate has become a global topic, and in order to

historicize this topic, historians need to understand the relationship that climate has with

historical periods such as the Middle Ages, in order to understand the time scale of

change. In the end, periodization allowed climate to take new directions going into the

1980s.

Scholars, namely historians and meteorologists in the 1980s, on the other hand,

used from the rhetoric of the 1970s, particularly using historical events, in order to

determine how climate interacts and determines human history. This period is where

climate becomes its own agent, and historians have acknowledged the existence of past

climates, that climate is capable of becoming its own subject of history, and that there is a

strong correlation between human social and economic activity and climate.

The growing need for humanity to increase its production, namely of agriculture,

has been in constant conflict against industrialization and urbanization ever since the

post-World War 2 period. These scholars of the 1980s have also concluded that climate

has an empirical role in history, that climate must be viewed in conjunction with cultural

change, and that the human experience has forced climate to create issues for human

adaptation. Further, because of this relationship climate shares with humanity, and

because climate can be historicized, scholars in the 1980s championed the idea that

climate is an independent concept to study. However, historians during this period

remained skeptical of historicizing climate, but found promise using climate to study past

weather patterns with the intention to understand present and future weather patterns.

Further, in accompaniment with studying weather patterns using meteorological

data, the historian can also historicize climate by analyzing business records, personal

accounts and local histories, because these works provided information on weather

changes and weather hazards that subsequently would lead to larger climatic

repercussions such as infestations. But in order to understand these works, the historian

must also gauge the legitimacy of the meteorological information, because while the

information may appear accurate for the historian’s preference, there still needs to be a

second opinion from either the historian’s interdisciplinary training, or someone else’s, in

subjects related to climate such as meteorology or paleography.

However, as historians are able to understand the human experience, as it relates

to climate, more scholars endeavored to fully understand the degree of human activity

that influenced climate change on a larger scale, a trend was spearheaded throughout the

1980s. As a result of this commentary to allow historians to collaborate with the sciences,

scholars in the 1980s have determined that there is a direct anthropogenic role in climate

change, and that by historicizing climate, the historian is now able to determine the

longterm ramifications for human changes to the environment. Humanity has, in the end,

changed the environment to suit their needs for consumption, and at the risk of forcing

dramatic changes to the natural world in the process.

From the 1980s up until the twenty-first century, this discussion of conflict

between humans against nonhumans has persisted throughout historical debates on

environmental history. By looking at nonhumans separate from human intervention on

environmental change, the concept of a posthuman perspective has gained steam, and can

possibly encourage historians to analyze past the human condition of the environment.

In the case of climate, a posthuman perspective not only can, but it is certainly

capable of occurring. Because scholars in the 1980s legitimized the role of climate, acting

as its own causal factor for environmental change, albeit as a reactionary towards

anthropological change, posthumanist thinkers have advantageously used this rhetoric to

elucidate that role of climate; that to understand climate is an entity of environmental

change, the historian must determine how to separate climate’s relationship with the

anthropocene.

One of the first initial questions that historians must consider is how do we

separate climate from the anthropocene using a posthuman perspective? Since historians

need to understand past climates, they need to find periods of human consciousness of the

role of climate’s dynamic processes, i.e. features such as topography, soil structure, etc.

Further, what is most striking is that this environmental consciousness was not new for

humans, because humanity has been aware of their impact on the environment, but there

has also been conscientious effort from humanity to understand the larger ramifications of

nature: catastrophe.

But if humanity remains aware of the power of nature, especially the destruction

that can follow, what would provide a challenge for humanity to be more environmentally

conscious? Industry. Industry, which includes the introduction of the factory and the

concept of the metropolitan area, has been a driving force for human modernity, but the

role of industry needs to be understood by the reactionary attitude of humanity; that

humanity began to focus more on their growing populations than the natural world,

especially as medicine became increasingly advanced through asserting a hygienic

lifestyle.

The question that still has remained so far throughout this chapter is how do

historians separate climate from the human nonhuman dichotomy of environmental

change, to which the answer comes from the changing theories during the nineteenth

century and twentieth century. During this period, what began was Braudel’s

conceptualization of geological evolution without any regard to human impact. Further,

the growth of economic theory and sociology disconnected climate from their

discussions, especially when theorists focused on the internal factors that changed their

discipline, i.e. economic theory became based off economic variables102. In the end, the

separation of climate, and in turn its genesis as a separate concept of study, allows the

environmental historian to justify that it can be seen as a causal factor for environmental

change

Since theorists have committed to separating climate from interdisciplinary

studies, environmental historians stand to benefit by employing a posthuman perspective

on climate. The posthuman perspective involves the methodological separation of

climate, particularly the nonhuman factor of environmental change, from the human

factor of environmental change. Further, since we already know the impact humanity has

on the environment, climate acts as a prime example of posthumanity, since climate

change perpetuates throughout history. However, to philosopher of history Z.B. Simon,

historians must cast aside the imaginary and novel attitude of historical writing, in favor

of “focusing on beings that envisioned as literally post human”. Climate is one of those

beings, but the methodology to explain climate is the next task.

From focusing on this posthuman perspective, the environmental historian can

finally give proper attention, and even agency, to climate as a nonhuman. But the

question then remains is this: Can nonhumans have the same level of historical

assessment as humans do? Yes, and this comes from the methodological treatment

historians give their subject, or subjects. The first of these is the historians central subject

of history, because it has consistently been with regard to a human subject, be it an

individual or a group, to which the historian focuses on their plights, their struggles, and

their concluding success and or failure in a society. However, with nonhumans, the

environmental historian can treat this subject with the same regard as a human, especially

since that climate has always been existent in the past and the future, and as such can be

treated with the same historicizing methodologies as the human subject.

Further, posthuman theory has also taken shape due to the changing cultural

attitudes of humanity, that humanity has forced historians to think about the world from a

futuristic perspective. First off, there is no end of history, which is why a nonhuman

component would make sense to drive historical scholarship, but the proliferation of

popular culture that looks to the future such as television shows like Westworld and

Orphan Black, or even movies like Blade Runner and Terminator, because of the premise

to which the technology of the future rests.

In an extreme case, posthuman theory can also force the environmental historian

to think about the conditions of the natural world when humanity has become extinct,

because what remains when the human proponent of environmental change is gone? All

that remains are the nonhumans, the only subject that is left, and it still has a history,

because it has changed over time, suited now not to the needs of humanity, or as a

reactionary because of humanity, but because there is a future for climate, something that

humanity has proven.

But what kind of change would climate go through in this scenario? Historians

have shrugged away from humanity, elucidated that climate can influence environmental

change, what remains? To answer both of these questions, the future of climate rests on

its own historical narrative, always existing in the face of human cultivation, in order to

provide a series of changes that Z.B. Simon elucidates “unprecedentedness as being the

preceding state of affairs from time to time”.

In fact, by invoking climate as a subject of environmental history, another

question arises as to what happens to the anthropocene. In this case, the anthropocene, I

affirm, is left in the middle of this debate pioneered by Dipesh Chakrabary’s assessment

of the history of time: millions of years of humanity’s existence on Earth versus the

exponential growth of capitalism within the last five hundred. Further, the role of the

anthropocene must also be seen as a conscious effort. Everything humanity does is a

conscious effort, acting upon the world they see it, and understanding what must be done

to change it to suit humanity’s needs. However, where climate acts against this idea of

consciousness, it is the idea that climate is an instinctive entity, not reacting, but rather

interacting with the changing forces around it. This conceptualization of climate I provide

comes from the growth of world history’s conceptualization of the anthropocene as part

of planetary evolution, that humans are part of the Earth’s history, and the functions of the

Earth, should be the focus of environmental historians, not just focus so much attention

on humanity, because despite their influence on change, they have only been around for a

small portion of Earth history.

What now remains then is the role of climate as a posthuman entity of

environmental change. Climate acts as the other of environmental history, poised to allow

the environmental historian to see beyond what humanity is capable of doing. This is

where the environmental historian can use scientific information to assess the

unprecedented changes that happens in the natural world. But in order to elucidate the

role of climate, the environmental historian must see it as being above the role of human

environmental change. That is not to say that humanity has not made a great deal of

environmental change towards the world, but rather to make clear the power of other

forces that can alter the environment. Climate provides both the reactionary towards

humanity, but also its own instinctive role that determines when to react against

humanity. In the case of the reactionary, climate forces natural changes to occur when

humanity creates long-term changes to the natural world. Climate can force a natural

disaster to change sea level, increase or decrease air pollution, and also change migration

patterns, a topic that is later covered in this thesis with infestations. This reactionary is

based on the grandeur scale of influence humanity has made to improve their condition in

the world, i.e. the building of the metropolitan areas, increased technological

advancements, etc.

Climate’s instinct, on the other hand, is what I see directing climate’s posthuman

role for environmental history. Because climate must be understood as the subject of an

environmental historian’s narrative, and since humanity is no longer the key player to

focus on environmental change, climate observes what happens in the natural world,

paying explicit attention to any abnormal changes in the environment. Then, climate

introduces a natural weather pattern such as a thunderstorm because of those changes.

However, sometimes those weather patterns will either grow or shrink in an area leading

to a catastrophic effect such as lack of precipitation in areas whose flora and fauna

depend on it, as well as lack of glacial ice forcing changes survival habits for fauna in

arctic and polar regions.

But climate can go beyond short-term changes, especially when assessing natural

disasters, which will be discussed in another chapter of this work. Aside from natural

disasters, large-term environmental changes, which I would argue are prolonged

shortterm changes, are what makes climate role that more applicable to posthuman

theory. To understand this, the environmental historian needs to understand the trends of

occurrences such as rainfall, as it relates to flooding of an area, or even the lack of rainfall

in an area that relies on it. However, it is important for historians to also understand the

role of climate as it relates to human-created climate change. In this scenario, climate

must remain the center focus of the historian, but as it relates to humanity, humans are

now the reactionary factor of environmental change, but it’s the decisions of humanity,

namely their decision to act upon the environment in their quest towards modernity, is

where the historian needs to assess humanity’s economic implications to act upon the

environment. In the end, the historian is able to assess a direct correlation between the

natural world and capitalism.

From this perspective, I focus specifically on capitalism, because it’s the main

economic model that can be attributed to the most environmental change in the world,

namely due to capitalism’s ability to increase greenhouse gases due to the rise of more

industrial development in countries in the Western Hemisphere and in the East with China

and India. Further, because of rapid capitalist growth across the world, historians must be

able to determine how climate’s central role of environmental change is to showcase the

role of humans, and that increasing economic gain asserts humanity’s reactionary towards

an already existent natural world.

I deliberately flip the narrative, because not only was nature here before humanity,

but also since posthuman theory requires the historian to focus beyond humanity, it would

only make sense that we begin to see humanity in a lesser perspective. I do not think

humanity is special or unique in this regard, because since humanity possesses free will,

to which free will has allowed them to do what they will at their own leisure, historians

are able to easily make narratives out of this shared ideology. However, to move

environmental history forward, we must care as much about the power that humanity has

anymore. Humanity, from my analysis, becomes the reactionary to the natural forces that

exist on Earth, because all that remains when humanity is gone is nature.

Further, because of humanity’s dependency on the Earth to sustain life, the

concept of climate change brings to question how can the historian separate capitalism

and economic history from environmental history. I am resolved that this need to focus on

capitalism and economic history has got to be the wedge that environmental historians

need to separate from their work to bring climate to greater potential within the idea of a

posthuman environmental history. In this situation, environmental historians must

disregard the economic gain, the capitalist wealth, and ultimately the financial plight of

humanity to improve their condition as it relates to environmental change. They instead

must focus on the role of nature, the science that supports climate change, the science that

analyzes how climate’s hand is forced to react against this change, and also the science

that suggest that the influence of humanity is miniscule when researching climate change.

I do not deny that humanity has not made a great impact on the climate, because

the current status of the natural world is drastically due to anthropological change, but

when we assess the history of the Earth, the roles of humans is a microcosm. Climate is

larger than the role of one planet that has one group of beings that are changing that one

planet’s environment. This focus is part of the short-sightedness that environmental

historians currently face, because they need to see past this monolithic narrative of

looking at humanity’s role, look to relationships that climate has with other planets to

understand if humanity’s changes are any significant on Earth than on other planets,

especially planets where sentient beings are nonexistent.

However, because of the historiography of environmental history, it will take time

for environmental historians to free themselves from including humanity, especially since

that humanity continues to make such as large impact on Earth’s natural world. But I say

that this monolithic narrative of humans acting upon the environment is short-sighted by

environmental historians, because it eliminates the power of nature, it downplays the

larger power that nature possesses, especially since that humanity is coming into the

spheres of existence after nature had already been existent. However, environmental

historians have every reason to be locked in to discussing humanity, because of

humanity’s multifaceted abilities to advance their societies, and especially with its

relationship to climate, because the natural world has been a canvas for humanity to act.

But climate still has a larger role to play than humans do. Is it immoral, or even

completely wrong, to say that humanity has a dwindling role to play on climate change?

No, but rather we must not be so quick to conclude to solely place blame, or credit, on

what humanity has done. Environmental historians must think about the climate in which

humanity is acting upon, i.e. if there is an effort to create a metropolitan center (city or

town) in a state like New York, the environmental historian must first determine the

location of that city’s natural landscape was before its creation. Then, they must assess

how has climate has permitted humanity’s ability to thrive, but also understand how

climate has reacted against human change.

Climate’s Practical Influence on Human and Natural Space

From this historical discussion of climate, leading into the determination of the

Anthropocene by historians like Chakrabarty and Simon, the environmental historian can

now officially conclude that humanity will always improve their condition of

sustainability, at the expense of nature. However, studying humanity’s role in

environmental change is something that must no longer be emphasized, because as long

as humanity as the idea of improving their condition, to live better tomorrow than

yesterday, it will always be at the expense of nature, in some form. While the

environmental historian can definitely take the time to understand how multi-faceted

humanity’s improvements to their condition will go, it will still evidently lead to

humanity’s improvement. From this, a posthuman analysis can be emphasized, which

directly elucidates the role of climate as its own proponent of environmental change.

This emphasis for what can be considered to be a posthuman analysis is definitely

a major methodological transition for the environmental historian, especially since

humanity’s limitless ambitions will always lead to the same outcome: The decimation of

natural space. To fully understand climate’s independent role of environmental change,

the posthuman analysis of climate is directed at the literature of scholars from the 1990s

onward, examples of which include the Department of Energy (DOE) Multi-Laboratory

Climate Change Committee. The Committee contends that climate is a proverbial hydra,

possessing many different factors which dictate its change, what they concluded is testing

the amount of carbon dioxide that is creating greenhouse gas emissions, but with attention

to the causes and effects that dictate its influence. Further, the role of climate remains a

global concept of analysis, especially regarding to the changes in agriculture that occur

between nations like England, Russia and the United States. In fact, using case studies

provided by scholars like Lamb and Glantz, the committee projected the degree of change

that will affect natural space across the world, examples included were rising sea levels in

coastal states in America, losses of boreal forests in Canada, and increased reliance on

fodder reserves during projected increased colder summers in Iceland.

To scholars like John M. Reilly and Margot Anderson, climate is a natural concept

that will also have practical economic impact across the globe. While the DOE

emphasized the theoretical framework to study climate, Anderson and Reilly emphasize

the reality of climate’s role towards the human condition. Climate is a multi-faceted

machine that has multiple biological factors that allow for direct attacks towards natural

and human space: Micro-scale changes from carbon dioxide levels, which lead to middle

scale changes of natural occurrences such as temperature, rainfall and warmer winters,

which then conclude with macro-scale changes of forest migration and drier climates.

While this breakdown of climate change reflects the behavior of climate, the practical

reality of climate’s influence reflects changes in the human condition like agriculture.

While agriculture is an important aspect of human sustainability, climate can ultimately

dictate the abilities for humanity to use natural space for agriculture. Agriculture’s

dependency on water can be directed by climate, because if the natural space is dry, and

in a warmer climate, the amount of water needed would need to gradually increase to

accommodate that natural space . In very humid and arid countries like Australia, their

agriculture is susceptible to enhanced greenhouse effects, which acts as a detriment

because of the extreme climate of the region. Further, the greenhouse effects can also

disrupt Australia’s economic model on agriculture, effecting prices of goods but also how

quantities of goods exported in the global market.

In his anthology on global climate change, Richard Wyman presents different

perspectives from scholars on climate’s larger impact on the natural world. To scholars

like Paul Ehrlich, climate’s agency, as derived from human environmental change, the

scope of its influence comes from the global analysis of humanity’s interaction with

natural space. To Ehrlich, the transfer and distribution of energy, across both human and

natural space, is the crux of the human condition, that both established countries like the

United States, and impoverished countries like India, impact the amount of carbon

dioxide that travels throughout the world, constituted by the amount of energy from

decisions such as industry, population, etc.. Further, the issue with climate change is that,

ultimately, climate’s influence can not only force migration of species, and change the

natural space of the world, but also change the natural space to prevent evolution of plant

and animal species. In accompaniment with the larger amount of changes to natural

space, human activity such as deforestation rapidly increases the amount of carbon

dioxide to enter the atmosphere, in accompaniment with rapid industrialization of natural

space, which forces climate change to interact with natural and human space. While

deforestation is a major catalyst to force climate’s hand, the changes to animal behavior

are another example of climate’s role that must be elucidated. Climate change ultimately

forces animals to adjust their migration and habitation, namely through the conditions of

natural space climate change destroys.

Ian Whyte’s work, on the other hand, spearheads the realities of climate as its own

form of environmental change. Where scholars before Whyte showcase the multifaceted

degree that climate change interacts with natural and human space, Whyte argues that the

sensationalist mass media of the globalization period brings issues for humanity to fully

understand the power of climate change. Climate’s actions against human and natural

space are still debatable, but Whyte presents the conditions that can argue for climate

independent role in environmental change. While discussing changes in sea level and

deforestation, Whyte also discusses the issues, and discourse of studying future climates.

To Whyte, scholars can learn about the conditions of climate change from past climates,

particularly the changes in the Holocene, as well as the differing attitudes to the

improvement of the human condition in earlier climates. However, while studying past

climates is of benefit to determine future climates, especially with regard to humanity’s

contemporary responses to climate change in the globalization period.

Where works in the 1990s brought a lot of questions about the conditions that

allow climate to operate as its own, namely as the decisions of humanity to improve their

condition evolve at the expense of nature, these scholars emphasize the dichotomy of

humanity fighting against nature. To counteract this dichotomy, scholars in the twentyfirst

century onward follow the influence by Ian Whyte, emphasizing climate’s greater power

as a form of environmental change. Following Whyte’s work, what the scholars of this

generation conclude is that climate change is directing its own influences on human and

natural space. To explain this, Ernesto Zedillo’s anthology on climate change presents

humanity’s abilities to understand its threat to the human condition from the

Kyoto conference onward. Discussing the realities of anthropogenic climate change,

Stefan Rhamstorf’s article in the anthology argues that the amount of carbon dioxide

released into the air reflects human decisions. To Stephen Schneider, on the other hand,

climate change is also a dangerous and volatile agent of environmental change.

Schneider is critical of the decisions by humanity to combat climate change, that the

2008 38

Kyoto conference gave humanity a greater sense of consciousness about their impact, but

the issues with climate are the changes in biodiversity greatly elucidate changes to natural

space.

Mike Hulme, however, argues that scholars should focus their attention on the

direct power of climate, that the determinist perspective scholars have presented about

climate undercuts the greater power of climate as a form of environmental change. By

studying climate as its own form of environmental change, Hulme seeks to eliminate

humanity’s role with climate change, because determinism suggests that climate is a

strictly human component, that changes to natural space will make humanity “hostage to

the fortunes of climate, too passive and powerless to respond proactively, or even

reactively, to changes in environmental fortune” To move studying climate forward,

scholars need to focus on what Hulme refers to as climate reductionism, focusing on

climate as the “interactions of their parts or else to simpler or more fundamental entities

or relationships”. To Hulme, scholars must study climate’s interactions with human

society, that climate’s global influence is reflected by the changes in climate in countries

like Great Britain, Germany and the United States.

However, following Chakrabarty’s influential works on the anthropocene, Merrill

Singer’s work demonstrates how climate affect the human condition on different

socioeconomic grounds. To Singer, climate’s interaction with humanity reflects the

decisions of the human condition: Where humanity’s poor decisions, to improve the

conditions of some and not others, exposes the less fortunate of humanity to climate’s

power against natural space and the human condition. Further, because globalization has

exposed humanity to more destructive conditions of sustainability, Singer determines the

extent of climate’s interaction with human space, namely climate’s juxtaposition of

natural occurrences like hurricanes, is at the expense of human space in impoverished

areas of El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Bangkok. Further, climate also provides its own

conditions to displace populations, which Singer argues reflects not only human policies,

particularly the “profitmaking, activities without fear of punishment and others endure the

adverse aspects of their enforcement”, but that climate is given the agency to act in

certain areas of the world.

Climate’s Final Legacy in a Globalized World

In the end, climate is a concept of environmental change that, from the

anthropocene, has begun to act as its own form of environmental change. From focusing

on climate, as its own agent of environmental change, this ultimately eliminates the

traditional narrative of humans against nonhumans, of one subject being decidedly good

against another who is emotionless and fearless in the face of environmental change.

From analyzing at climate as a form of environmental change, this dichotomy that has

dominated historical narratives has shifted to looking at how climate has existed for

years, and now humanity is the one fighting for survival, and in the process, are forcing

climates hand to react in violent manners that upset the natural world.

Climate’s role as a form of posthuman environmental change reflects the human

condition, but its ability to act on its own reflects years of humanity’s inability to

understand the greater power of nature. Ultimately, the ability for climate to act on its

own has been dictated by the anthropocene, but climate is a concept that also sets the

stage for greater forces of nature that impacts the human condition. The two best

examples for this would be through infestations and natural disasters.

Posthuman Environmental Change and the Role of Infestations

Within the last twenty years, infestations have increased in their frequency, as

globalization and anthropological change have changed the behavioral patterns of these

infestations. Environmental scientists have heavily researched infestations behavioral

change, but where environmental historians interject is through determining the historical

context of infestations. Further, due to the influence of the anthropocene, the

environmental historian is now able to fully comprehend the power of these infestations.

What is the next phase of infestations role as a subject of environmental history is their

own posthuman analysis, focusing on how infestations act as a primary factor of

environmental change. From the previous chapter, climate creates the conditions for

nonhumans to interact with the natural world, despite humanity’s directed approach to

interact with the natural world, but infestations affect the natural world as a passing agent,

interacting with the natural world for a short period of time. Due to humanity’s changes to

the natural world, most especially due to globalization, infestations are now more active

and aggressive towards on the natural world, increasing their time and interactions on the

natural world. Where climate created the conditions of environmental change, infestations

are a reactionary subject of environmental change that affects both the human condition

and the natural world at large.

This chapter will discuss the role of infestations as an element of posthuman

environmental change, three distinct subsection that analyze works by both historians and

scientists, transitioning from this analysis into a final discussion of analysis of

infestations would encompass. Within the perspective of posthuman environmental

change, infestations can be categorized into three subgroups: Insects, Disease, and Plants.

From each of these groups, it is important to note that these groups will have their own

scientific and historical discourse, but each With insects, this concept is commonplace for

both scholars of the natural world and historians, because of common knowledge of

locusts from the biblical period. However, works on infestations published from the

1990s onward has provided a plethora of information for scholars, from analyzing sea lice

in Australia, Mexican boll weevils, mosquitoes from Africa, and beetles of many shapes

and sizes across North America. Studying infestations has come at a fortuitous point to

allow posthuman environmental history to fruition. Plants on the other hand, have a direct

influence from the anthropocene, because they are introduced by humans, be it through

their own travel or indirectly planted to promote agriculture in a region. However, these

plants have either become a nuisance in the minds of humanity, a nuisance that humanity

wants to eliminate, or a destructive force that changes the natural landscape of the region

in question.

With disease however, historians of life science and medicine have spent a great

deal of time to discuss the role of disease in changing the human condition, but for the

environmental historian, the discussion they present can be different from historians of

life sciences and medicine. When analyzing histories of life science and medicine, they

present disease with relationship to the discourse of the disease itself, namely how it has

affected the human condition over the course of time. Where environmental historians

can discuss disease is in relationship to the causal properties, namely how the

anthropocene has conditioned diseases to proliferate in a space. Further, since diseases

persist in both humans and nonhumans, environmental historians can also discuss how

animals are being affected by disease, particularly the resulting issues diseases present for

wildlife populations. In this example, environmental historians can discuss the issues

presented to longer trends of health to the natural world, as well as any trends to human

health when discussing anthropogenic spheres of existence. In the end, disease acts as a

reactionary to the anthropocene, but is what could be argued to be the most devastating

because of its immediate, and in some cases prolonged, damage to the human condition.

The Historiography of Infestations

Infestations began as a separate topic of environmental history in the 1970s.

While historians at this time were publishing works to discuss the influence of human

based environmental change, Roderick Nash’s work on American ideas of nature had

allowed the theory of nature’s role in environmental change to proliferate. In fact,

because of Nash, the historian is now able to understand how nature acts as a reactionary

to human progress, that it upsets the human condition due to prolonged human

environmental change. In the case of infestations, this aspect of human based

environmental change is a gradual process, but humanity needs to provide the proper

conditions to allow them to interact in certain environments. The first written work on

this concept was William McNeill’s monograph Plagues and Peoples, which analyzed the

impact of diseases around the globe. While this work discussed global topics of disease,

which included popular topics such as the Black Death, McNeill also vehemently argues

that disease fits into the larger role of human history, but also that diseases act as a natural

imbalance.

From the examples McNeill provides, they each detail the causal factor which

allow for a disease to exist, which McNeill derives is from either exposure to bacterial

parasites, which take numerous forms, be it through vectors such as insects or rodents.

However, while diseases have evidently different modes of delivery, but what McNeill

argues is that improvements to the human condition, namely the creation of more space at

the expense of plants and animals, allowing for diseases to invade and interact with

humanity. Where diseases are most prominent are in cities, but McNeill’s own research

focuses particularly on the ancient period, especially in the early second and third

centuries A.D. where outbreaks of plague were new for Mediterranean populations in

cities in both Greece and Rome.

During the exploration years however, McNeill discusses the capabilities for

diseases to travel, with humanity being the primary vector. The introduction of smallpox

and various other diseases were the primary cause for devastating Amerindian

populations, but the Europeans who introduced these diseases did so in an unfamiliar

natural world in the Americas that did not have the resistance to such diseases as in

Europe. In the end, McNeill began the discussions on disease, elucidating the means to

which that human based interaction with the natural world.

While environmental historians in America were disinterested in environmental

history in the 1980s, environmental history in the 1990s revitalized scholarship on

infestations. Further, within the historiography of environmental history in the 1990s,

works written during this period also came at the beginning of globalization, which

allowed the historian to understand a wider range of scholarship outside of America. For

this generation of environmental historians, America’s influence in environmental change

was brought in retrospect to environmental change in countries in Europe and Africa.

However, the works during this period were still concerned with the relationship

between humanity and nature, but they focused on the long duree of human

environmental change, following the influence of Steinberg and Cronon who argue the

great power of nature as well as the scope of influence humanity has made to allow

infestations to exist across the world. In fact, for this generation of historians, they used

McNeill’s influence of infestations as a global reactionary to human progress, in order to

to elucidate the broader scope of power anthropological environmental change has

allowed infestations to proliferate. Towards this end, these historians provide a

contemporary comprehension of nature’s power to react against humanity.

To Jared Diamond, humanity has always persisted in their need to improve their

condition, but the debate surrounding the human condition becomes entangled by two

thoughts: On the one hand, certain groups used guns and steel, bringing disease in the

process, to secure political economic power, but on the other hand, historians are still

trying to determine the intellectual implications for human mobility and technological

advancements. However, for Diamond, historians can look beyond this theoretical

concern for the human condition, focusing their attention on specific kinds of examples

that improve the human condition, but also allow for disease to spread across the world.

Encompassed in the concept of diet, humanity’s improvement of their condition has also

been with its consequences, because successful domestication of plants and animals has

allowed humanity to improve their health through trading, but diseases were able to

spread to different regions in the process. Trade of these plants and animals throughout

different regions exposed them to new climates across the world, and because they were

exposed to foreign lands, the genes of the food traded had little resistance to diseases,

especially since “low-latitude plants poorly adapted to high-latitude conditions, and vice

versa”.

From this trade in food, the course of human improvement had changed the

Eurasian natural world, but when exploration to the Americas began, the conquistadors

and explorers form Eurasia had brought diseases that the Amerindians were not resistant

to. In accompaniment with the spread of diseases that devastated Amerindian populations,

Eurasian communities in the Americas were also able to implement the same agricultural

practices and food production as used in Eurasia, because the Americas had the same

temperate climate as across the Atlantic, allowing the Eurasian ideas of improving the

human condition to exist. Towards this end, Diamond was able to explain to extent to

which disease had spread across the world, using a global perspective to understand the

long duree of human influence to understand the conditions to which diseases have

existed in the natural world.

Following the influence of Jared Diamond, Noble David Cook focused on the

historical narrative of New World colonization. When compared to Diamond, Diamond

focused on the global perspective to which diseases spread, namely how Eurasians have

created the conditions to allow diseases to spread. However, he elucidates in the

reactionary power of the human conditioning of the natural world. With Cook, on the

other hand, he focuses on the historical narrative of colonization up until the middle of

the seventeenth century. Cook does not shy from the brutality of the Portuguese and

Spanish against the Amerindians, but he emphasizes the destruction of Amerindians by

disease.

Cook’s focus is on the natural world in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, but what

he argues to be a factor to consider is that diseases such as influenza and malaria has

existed prior to contact by the Old World. However, when discussing the discourse of

human contact the Old World had with the New, be it the voyages of Columbus or of Las

Casas, Cook argues that these explorers did not have the medical knowledge to quell the

diseases they brought with them to the New World. Further, the colonizers also were not

aware of how diseases were carried, especially in the case of malaria, when sailors

unknowingly infected with the Plasmodium vivax (quartan malaria) bacteria would travel

to the New World. By the sixteenth century however, when Eurasia increased their

settlement of the New World, the spreading of disease became more devastatingly varied.

However, in accompaniment with introducing the diseases to the New World, what had

allowed them to spread was, following Diamond’s introduced notion, because of the lack

of exposure the Amerindians had to diseases such as measles and smallpox.

In fact, the discourse of exposures to diseases Amerindians experienced are

important to Cook, because where Diamond intended to understand how did disease

make it to the New World, namely by the conditions Eurasians intended to implement on

the world to improve their condition of sustainability, Cook used statistical and

geographical information to elucidate the scope of the destruction. Further, from the

destruction of Amerindian populations, Cook revealed the reactionary power of diseases,

how even though humanity seeks to improve their condition, colonization of the New

World left a devastating affect on the region as a result. Cook also revealed how disease

infested the New World in waves, but namely that any forms of human contact the

Amerindians had with the Eurasians allowed the vectors and micro-bacteria existent in

both bodies to pass and interact, that there was no form of protection from mumps,

measles or smallpox.

Where the 1990s pioneered the concept of infestations, particularly the power of

infestations, the historiography of environmental history transitioned into the next century

focusing on differing regional changes to the natural world. For these scholars, they

intended to understand the presence of nature’s reactionary power, as introduced in the

1990s, through the use of regional histories, in order to determine the different methods

of anthropological environmental change that were present across the world. In these

regional histories of environmental change, the scope of human environmental change

was given a much larger influence, and the reactionary power of infestations was given

more emphasis due to new information about human consciousness to improve their

condition. To this generation, they intended to understand how the human consciousness

about their impact on the natural world, but also how did the presence of infestations

make human consciousness aware of the power of infestations.

When compared to historians of the 1990s like Diamond and Cooke, this

generation greatly explained the role of human consciousness, as it related to

environmental change, but their works were in the example of global relations. For these

historians, on the other hand, infestations are given the same degree of analysis, still

emphasizing a global component to environmental change, but these historians ask

different questions about the discourse of environmental change. How would infestations

in urban cities upset the human condition? Are all infestations man made, and if so, where

does nature fit into the narrative? But most importantly, how can nonhumans like

infestations provide a greater influence on environmental change, that humanity has

conditioned their influence? In fact, it is because of globalization that these questions

were answered, and with regional history, historicizing infestations became greatly

increased during this historiographical period.

One of the first works to follow this direction was Adrienne Mayor’s work on the

use of chemicals such as poison gas in times of war during the ancient period. What is

striking about this work is Mayor’s assertion of humanity’s ability to weaponize nature.

Where this discussion parallels with environmental change is that while humanity acts

upon the natural world to improve their condition, the deliberate use of nature to upset the

human condition runs against the traditional narrative of infestations discussed so far. Up

until this work, infestations were part of a reactionary force originated from humanity’s

interaction towards natural space. With Mayor, humanity is now being revealed as to

making a conscious effort to impose the power of nature against humanity.

What this allows the historian to understand is how nature will be an agent of

power for humanity. Further, humanity’s relationship with nature will be interdependent

with one another, particularly as a means for groups of humanity to use power against

other groups of humanity. It is important to also note that these infestations were also

forced by humanity, that humanity’s knowledge of the effects of places like fetid swamps

could be used to force changes to the human condition, resulting in either loss of lives or

populations falling gravely sick to diseases like malaria. In other cases, human

populations during periods of war would devise ways to actively impose infestations on

humanity, not through deciding areas of battle, but using nature itself as weapons to upset

the human condition.

In times of war during the ancient period, one example Mayor discusses was how

armies would manipulate water supplies against their enemies. The techniques that

humanity would use, in accompaniment with damming rivers and flooding out enemy

cities, included poisoning water supplies with animal carcasses. Further, from presenting

works by Thucydides, Mayors also elucidates how armies like the Sicilians forced the

Athenians into unhealthy environments such as swamps and marches in order to both

deny favorable battlefields, but also impose diseases that would exist in those areas onto

humanity.

In another example Mayor provides, armies in the ancient period would also

directly use animals to impose infestations on enemies. In one example, armies would use

mice infected with bubonic plague during war, but Mayor argues that armies justified

their use by comparing their influence to the Old Testament narrative with the Philistines,

that their acquisition of the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites lead to their stricken

with disease from the mice. In another example, what became a more widely used form

of infestations in war was the use of insects. A common practice of armies to utilize

insects in war was catapulting hives of hornets or wasps at enemies, which Mayor argues

to be a tactic that transcends throughout antiquity up until the Vietnam War. Further,

armies would also fill jars with poisonous insects such as scorpions and wasps, to then

throw them at enemies and the toxins would decimate soldiers. From Mayor’s work,

infestations were given a practical example of use to humanity, benefitting the human

condition in the process. Towards this end, the idea of infestations, in their relationship to

environmental change, has transitioned to a practical example of human influenced

environmental change, and that humanity has the power to use nature to improve their

condition.

Another example of infestations being used by humanity was Daniel Barenblatt’s

work on Japan’s biological warfare during the Second World War. While used in war,

when compared to Mayor’s work, Barenblatt emphasized the power of disease, that the

Empire of Japan deliberately created diseases during war to “turn life against life in such

a way that may be easily blamed by its perpetrators on a “natural outbreak”, or merely an

“emerging”, previously unknown disease.

To Barenblatt, like Mayor, the use of disease by Imperial Japan was a narrative of

power imposed on countries they controlled like China and Korea, namely through going

beyond morality to achieve dominion over others. From this narrative, the Japanese first

experimented on prisoners to determine the best tactics to debilitate populations, most

notably through exposures anthrax, to then subsequently document the course of the

exposures: Internal bleeding, abdominal pain, etcetera. Further, the Japanese then

determined the methods of delivery for the diseases. For Barenblatt, the methods of

exposure the Japanese used were multifaceted, using air raids to drop crops like wheat

and cotton that were infected with bacteria and bubonic plagued fleas. In the end,

Barenblatt and Mayor’s examples of war showed the degree of human consciousness

using infestations to upset the human condition of others.

In accompaniment with war, human consciousness towards infestations became

the common theme for historians during this phase of historiography. Where humanity

used war to understand the benefits and power of nature, humanity also observed their

condition of sustainability, namely their living conditions, to that of encroachment by

infestations. Focusing on first world countries in Europe, as well as the United States,

historians analyzed how humanity understood their relationship to infestations, but also

how humanity intended to combat infestations to improve their condition.

In the United States, Peter Coates fixated on periods of human immigration to

America as they related to infestations of nonnative flora and fauna. To Coates, he

elucidates that periods of great immigration to America, namely in the 1900s and 1960s,

allows the environmental historian to bring nonhumans into the historical narrative of

immigration, that plants and animals introduced into America’s natural world in the

twentieth century, warrant a historical analysis of “how animate forms of nature can

become embroiled in the cultural politics of nationalism”. These ideas of immigration

would then transition with globalization in the 1990s, where Americans intended to halt

immigration to prevent the growth of America’s ecological footprint.

For Coates, this discussion of nonhuman immigration originated from Sagoff’s

research on ideas of immigration between America and Europe. To Americans, the natural

world should remain pristine, while Europeans saw the natural world as a blend between

nature itself and the presence of humanity. However, during globalization, this ideology

of comparing nonhuman and human immigration to America became debunked,

American scientists determined that there were mass scale invasions by insects like Asian

tiger mosquitoes, to which Coates elucidates that in America “Biotic takeover rather than

coexistence has been the overall long-term outcome of species migration”. In the end,

Coates is hard-pressed that while countries have transitioned from systematic racism

against other humans, Americans are still concerned about nonnative infestations, but also

that nonnative infestations can act as challenge to national identity171. While

environmental historians like Coates discussed the role of infestations into the psyche of

nation-states, namely the identity of nation-states, David Barnes analyzes France’s efforts

to eliminate diseases in the late nineteenth century. Further, from increased human

knowledge of improved living and sustainability during this period, the discourse of

diseases originates from filth. Focusing on the conditions to allow the

spread of diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox and cholera, in accompaniment with

discussing the discourse of germ theory in France, Barnes focuses on the intellectual

history of France to improve the human condition.

The origins of France’s effort to understand germs began in the 1840s, when

hygienists analyzed the degree of sanitary conditions in the country, examples of which

included waste disposal in public spaces, washing clothes in dirty water, but waste being

disposed became overwhelming for street cleaners. From this, French health officials

began to investigate the negative effects of improving the human conditions, studying

disease to understand both the conditions of its existence, as well as the geographical

implications, which France distinguished between four different causal factors:

Academic, individual, folk, and local. From this classification, Barnes determines the

diverse conditions for diseases but also that each classification has their own intellectual

stigma of medical knowledge and its application in their everyday life.

In accompaniment with theoretical concepts of disease, what became the legacy of

this period were the practical applications of prevention from the nineteenth century

onward. Following these investigations, France in the twentieth century became more

conscious about the kinds of conditions to allow germs to exist, but can be prevented with

good personal hygiene. In the end, from Barnes’s work, infestations like disease are now

viewed in relationship by the long-term conditions humanity created on the natural world,

and that humanity’s efforts at urbanization allow for diseases to exist if humanity chooses

to maintain poor living conditions.

From the works on infestations starting in the twenty-first century, historians

writing about infestations from 2008 onward have further investigated the role of human

conditioning the natural world, particularly at periods of great urbanization and

technological advancement. For these historians, humanity was still questioning their

approaches to modernization, but particularly in relationship to how infestations will

force humanity to rethink their methods of sustainability. When compared to historical

work pre-2008, they did discuss discontents towards improving the human condition, but

this group of historians provided examples of infestations that were introduced by means

of economic development on a global scale.

In his research on DDT, David Kinkela is adamant that America’s use of the

chemical was to advance agriculture, but at the cost of public health issues for the

country. Further, the use of DDT came at a period where Americans wanted to move

beyond the issues of Third World economies, with Americans scientists and politicians

using DDT to put the country in an international perspective, using the chemical as a tool

to improve conditions where both American agriculture and economy were prevalent,

examples of which include Africa and India.

The use of DDT was in defense against outbreaks of diseases like malaria and

typhus, but for Americans, namely the Rockefeller foundation, the use of the chemical

became increased because it had little detriment to human health. However, despite the

influence of the chemical, Kinkela discusses how scientists like Rachel Carson, as well as

the generations involved with the Green Revolution, argued that DDT possessed

devastating effects for both humans and nonhumans. In fact, Kinkela is particularly

focused on Carson’s work, because chemicals can effectively be used to condition the

natural world to suit human sustainability. In the end, eliminating the use of DDT on

agriculture provided little to no success, to which Kinkela elucidates that generations of

insects after DDT’s discontinuation became resistant to the chemical, and had also

created deaths from both insect-borne diseases and the chemical itself. To Kinkela,

humanity’s efforts to condition the natural world, for the sake of modern agricultural

practices in the twentieth century, continued to make humanity susceptible to disease

while also destroying the natural world in the process.

While Kinkela focused on how DDT created conditions for an infestation like

disease and insects to exist, in its own failure to prevent the spread of these infestations,

historian James Giesen presents an economic perspective on the role of the Mexican boll

weevil into the American South during the Post-Reconstruction period, which lasted from

the end of the nineteenth century and up until the Great Depression. Aptly referred to as a

pest, Giesen analyzes the role of the pest in the destruction of cotton production, but also

that humanity also influenced its destruction in the process. For the boll weevil, its

migration into the country during the early twentieth century “destroyed tens of billions of

pounds of pounds of cotton since its arrival in the United States, the value of which

approached one trillion dollars”. However, the discourse of its migration was a gradual

process, and both southern and non-southern farmers were aware of crop destruction by

the boll weevil, to which Giesen focused on the socio-political transformations of the

American South, namely how farmers faced falling land prices, and politicians signed

bills to quell the weevil’s invasion, which ultimately fell to the responsibility of farmers

to educate themselves about how to handle the pest. While Giesen’s focus was on the

historical narrative of the boll weevil’s agricultural force, “it was the idea of the boll

weevil, more than the physical destruction it wrought, that most profoundly changed the

region”.

The destructive power the weevil brought to the South created a collective social

anxiety in the country among Americans, in both the North and South, that even though it

will either die or migrate out of the country, people still revered in its power. That power

of the boll weevil that Giesen elucidated, the fear, showcased its abilities as an

infestation. In fact, the legacy of the boll weevil in the twentieth century onward was its

being immortalized on statues, in schools, and in music. However, the historian could

argue that the boll weevil was successful as an infestation, that since it changed human

psyche on agricultural practices, it’s existence came as established agricultural practices

in the South were in a state of transition. The historian can use Giesen’s work to conclude

the kind of power an infestation had on the human condition, and the arrival of the boll

weevil came when agriculture was already in a state of transition.

Due to Dipesh Chakrabarty’s influential work on the anthropocene, the study of

infestations is another aspect of environmental change that fall into a posthuman

category. The historians that have written on infestations have prepared the posthuman

analysis, but it was Chakrabarty’s work that elucidated this is the direction of

environmental history. Why should environmental historians consider infestations as a

sole proponent of environmental change, when humanity is the major figure for creating

the natural world to suit their need to sustain the populations? First, environmental

historians need to accept that humanity’s ability to choose, decide, and create, to dictate

the conditions of their existence, and also to understand what are the proper conditions of

sustainability as a species, has been the only narrative throughout the historiography of

environmental history. Even in the works on infestations, diseases and insects, which

have been what these historians discussed, have been left as useful as a footnote, when

compared to the amazing strives made to improve the human condition, be it at the

expense of both natural space and human life in the process.

To explain this, the environmental historian must be able to bridge the gap

between history and environmental sciences. To bring the posthuman analysis of

infestations to prose, the historian needs to read about the degree of ecological change

humanity brings to the natural world. From understanding ecology, the historian can fully

understand the presence of infestations in their relationship to environmental change. The

environmental historian must also study the changes to the life cycles of insects, their

changes in behavior, as well as what has humanity contributed to their existence. Further,

using works written about insects will also allow the historian to get out of the archives,

to focus their tired attention to build on former scholarship, that they can use scientific

works to understand the nonhuman condition: their spaces of living, their attempts to

improve their own sustainability as a species, when faced against the power of humanity,

and especially how humanity has forced changes to the insect psyche, that in their drastic

changes to the natural world, humanity has in turn forced insects to seek new ground,

new places to interact, some of which are almost unnatural. Finally, environmental

historians must also elucidate how diseases have taken different forms through human

condition of the natural world. Through the use of works on diseases, historians are able

to understand the ecological implications for the existence of a disease. Further, the

historian can also determine how humanity not only introduces diseases to a natural

space, but also how does humanity react to areas where a disease is prevalent in a natural

space.

While this is easier said than done, the historian can understand the global

ecological implications of the anthropocene. In fact, is it fair to say that the historian must

in turn, betray humanity to achieve this? Yes, on the one hand, because the historian must

conclude that humanity will, forever, choose to take action to improve and to build from

previous conditions to make better ones for themselves. No, on the other hand, because

historians need humanity to tell the narrative of infestations, that without humanity’s

desire to improve conditions, humanity’s knowledge of the Self, infestations would not be

in such an important transitional period. Where historians must separate humanity from

infestations is placing infestations, and their power on the human condition, first, but this

is only after the historian had read about the natural world as told from the perspectives of

ecologists, epidemiologists, and entomologists.

However, do infestations then, by making humanity the secondary reactionary

force, cause the issue of posthuman environmental change to lose traction? No, because

again, since humanity is needed to understand posthuman environmental change, what

the historian must determine the power of these infestations. Humanity provides

infestations with the power, the impetus, to act in the natural world, upsetting both human

space and natural space, but the historian’s need to cling onto humanity has outlived its

usefulness.

Bridging the Gap: Applying Scientific Works on Infestations

While historians have written extensively about infestations, to bring a posthuman

perspective to this aspect of environmental history, discussion must also be directed at

scientific works on infestations. One of the first discussed topics in the post-World War

Two period was the roles of disease, to which Sir Macfarlane Burnet and David White

stress the relationship between humanity and the natural world, that humanity’s crowded

streets and city dwellers are vectors for disease, because of humanity’ set idea for

controlling their condition of sustainability. However, both of these scholars argue that

the course of diseases act as reactionary to the balance of the natural world, and that

humanity had created a series of imbalances to existing plant and wildlife populations

which had forcing diseases to exist. James Busvine, on the other hand, argues that the

presence of infestations like insects remain reactionary towards the human condition, but

know how to interact in different conditions and temperatures. Following the influence of

Busvine, J.L. Cloudsley-Thompson affirms in the power of insects, that they, as an

infestation, have directed course of human history, and that historians should focus on

insects the same way they elucidate the importance of “wars and famous battles, or

internal strife and corruption”. In the end, the 1970s had followed the path of historians to

elucidate the power of nature, and certainly how it can challenge the human condition.

While scientists in the 1970s had argued for the greater emphasis of the role of

infestations, in their relationship to humanity, scholarship in the 1990s onward have

discussed the great influence of the human condition, namely how has humanity created

the conditions to allow infestations to exist. What separates these works from

historiography is that while the scientific data is updated, the same as historians use

previous works to explain the historical direction of events, to the eyes of a scientist, they

place the role of humanity first then analyze the reactions from infestations. Some of the

first works that were written discussed direct human conditioning of the natural world,

particularly during the early twentieth century onward. Early works on this focus

emphasized humanity’s use of chemicals, which in turn created infestations in the

process. In Jeanne Guillemin’s work on anthrax, she emphasized the use of the chemical

has devastating effects on human health. However, the use of anthrax during the Cold

War raised issues for Guillemin, namely Russia’s outbreak at Compound 19, which

Guillemin argues was deliberate to understand the health detriments associated with

anthrax. In the end however, while focused on Russia, Guillemin is also concerned about

the direction of American politics, that the country may fall victim to economic ruin,

being rendered unable in the future to combat disease. Edmund Russell, on the other

hand, focuses on the discourse of America’s efforts to improve their conditions of

sustainability, that politics dictated the speed of knowledge to control nature. Where

Russell is focused the most is America during the Post World War Two period, because

the use of chemicals like DDT with the idea that typhus and malaria were more serious

than exposure to DDT However, the resulting issues that the initial use of chemicals like

DDT led to issues for agricultural production, especially since crop dusting was in

vicinity to suburban landscapes. In the end, the use of chemicals did nothing to combat

infestations invading the country.

While scientists actively researched about diseases and insects, invasive plants

became a new center of focus of infestations for scientists. Within the works on this

subject, there is an emphasis on how humanity reacted against plant encroachment, but

also what were some of the conditions that had allowed plants to infiltrate human space in

the process. Charles Elton contends that infestations have exploded because of humanity,

that acting upon natural space has forced plants to break through barriers that would have

otherwise prevented their spread. Further, Elton argues that the ecological breakouts by

plants must be understood particularly how does humanity balance their population

growths with either eradication or quarantine. However, while species of plants and

animals can, at times, share the same natural space, but plants like weeds would encroach

in human space in the wake of creating crop fields, waste disposal sites, etcetera. Time

Engelkes and Nicholas J. Mills, however, argue that invasive plants are taking such a hold

on the natural world that they may invite new species of herbivores. Explicit that these

plant invasions are accidental, Engelkes and Mills focused on the conditions that allow an

invasive plant to exist, namely that human introduction or migration of exotic plants to

prey on native species, as well as the chemicals in natural space can dictate the infestation

of an exotic species. Further, both Engelkes and Mills are hard-pressed that the natural

space that is promoting these infestations is a major cause for plants to invade natural

space, especially when compared to the rate of insect growth.

When compared to the influence of chemical status of natural space, Don Grant,

Andrew Jones and Mary Trautner’s study on pollution, namely the influence of plant

infestations and the degree of toxins in a human space. In their study, the group concludes

that plant behavior in their own host communities become forced to migrate out of human

space. Further, because of the degree of human consciousness about pollution, which

exists on multiple levels of different socio-economic statuses, plants are changing their

emission output due to the chemicals introduced207. In another study conducted by a team

led by Don Driscoll, plants have also become an infestation due to the introduction of

pasture plants by humanity. Further, plants that are being introduced as pasture plants are,

in fact, altering the natural space to allow invasive plants to exist, examples of which

plant growth, reproduction, disease resistance, and seed production.

Repeating the Life Cycle: Examples Where Posthuman Analysis Applies

From these examples provided by both historians and scientists, discussion must

be direction at examples where posthuman analysis can be applied. A contemporary

infestation that the environmental historian can analyze would be the patterns of

grasshoppers and locusts in China. Their presence itself has been of concern for areas of

human space, particularly towards crops and grasslands across China. However, the

historian should point out the geographic diversity of locusts and grasshoppers, infesting

China in the extreme northwest, the center, and near the southern border of the Tibetan

plateau. Further, their migration into China from these areas is originating from

neighboring countries like Mongolia and Kazakhstan, which the environmental historian

should then cross reference the migratory patterns with areas that have large flooding

issues from dammed rivers.

Another example that can be discussed within this posthuman context is revisiting

the spreading of disease, namely dengue fever from mosquitoes in Brazil. There is a

distinct relationship between the spread of dengue, temperature and humidity, that the

temperature of the country affects the amount of mosquito migration, and that dengue

outbreaks reached a high during the summer periods in 2013. Where environmental

history can take precedence is in relationship to the use of climate reports, determining

the course of climate change in regions of Brazil where dengue outbreaks were reported,

thereby concluding how anthropogenic changes have conditioned the existence of this

disease.

With some insects however, especially in America, the changing behavior of pine

beetles is noteworthy for a posthuman context. In fact, in one study on the mountain pine

beetle in British Columbia, from 1999 to 2006, the infestations by these insects have

grown rapidly within this timespan. In another study of pine beetles in 2011, particularly

pine beetles of the American southeast, there is a present consensus that this is an

infestation, especially since the region has minimal human population, minimum winter

temperatures, but also heavily managed forests214. From the conclusions drawn in the

study however, temperature flux determine the degree of infestation, but also with the

exception of drought, extreme weather conditions can also deny the beetle from infesting

the region. In this case, the environmental historian should determine how humanity has

contributed throughout the course of the beetle’s infestation periods, concluding then if

this beetle remains an infestation, as well as the conditions of its ability to infest.

However, we must also ask about the scope of this beetle as an infestation; how many

southeastern states have reported infestations of the insect? Historians must also ask if the

behavior of this pine beetle in America is different than those from the previous study in

British Columbia? If so, how, if not, why?

With plants however, this form of infestation has the potential to bring in other

infestations, examples of which include insects and even animals. They can sometimes

attract insects that would regularly feed on the plant, as observed in a study of invasive

light brown apple moths in California, but comparisons were made to invasive plants and

native plants, to determine which form of food was their preference. Where

environmental history can be used is with respect to the natural home of the moth itself,

as well as other examples of plants used to coax infestations across the globe. What is

most striking is that the influence of globalization has increased invasions of plants,

which benefit environmental historians to understand their roles on their natural space of

introduction216.

Conclusion

There is a direct correlation between infestations and environmental change,

namely the conditions of humanity have allowed for them to proliferate. There is enough

substantial academic sources are at the disposal of the historian to understand this

concept, and that can understand the reactionary factors of the anthropocene. What must

happen then was already mentioned, that the historian must historicize the course of these

infestations, understand the factors that allow them to persist, but also how much of a

hand humanity has made to force infestations to increase their interactions with the

natural world. The use of climate is of extreme benefit, because it helps environmental

historians understand the following: Why would infestations come to certain natural

spaces? Were these infestations instinctively coming to other areas of space on volition,

or were giving the opportunity to by humanity? From this discussion on infestations, their

destructive force does act as a reactionary to environmental change, but my final subject

keeps getting stronger every day: Natural Disasters.

Natural Disasters as a Form of Posthuman Environmental Change

In 2008, Hurricane Katrina became one of the most destructive hurricanes in

modern history. Scholars across multiple disciplines have analyzed Katrina’s causal

effects, the social displacement and political response, as well as the degree of capital

ruin as a result. Another aspect of posthuman environmental change, natural disasters act

as a reactionary force against humanity, however, it is important to note that the influence

of humanity has impacted their frequency and destructive force. While humanity has

monitored the changes to the Earth’s atmosphere, namely the conditions to allow the

presence of a disaster, but that their existence in natural space has been directed by the

economic decisions of humanity. Natural disasters act as a perfect reactionary towards the

anthropocene, however natural disasters also provide a degree of analysis that warrants

concerns for the historian, namely the conditions that have allowed disasters to increase

in size and frequency. Because while humanity has still conditioned the natural world to

act upon its own instinct for change, natural disasters remain part of human society, and

certainly human consciousness, that have been as susceptible to the anthropocene as any

other aspect of nature.

This chapter will analyze how natural disasters have acted as their own form of

environmental change, that humanity’s condition of sustainability has created natural

disasters that have been taking new forms, mostly more destructive and violent, but that

these natural disasters are adapting without humanity, creating devastating effect to the

natural world, more so within the last twenty years due to globalization. Further, through

the use of historiography, as well as works on climatology and meteorology, the adaptation

of natural disasters will be elucidated, namely the scale of nature’s influence. This

discussion of both kinds of works on natural disasters, scientific and historical, will also

determine the relationship between the human condition and natural disasters, particularly

the depth of human influence that has allowed natural disasters to evolve. Transitioning

from this discussion, analysis will then focus on the larger context of how natural disasters

act as their own agent of environmental change, providing examples of disasters such as

blizzards and hurricanes that show this independent nature of disasters. In fact, this

posthuman analysis of natural disasters will be the most important aspect of this chapter,

particularly if disasters are, in fact, getting more destructive by relying on human acts of

pollution and deforestation. In the end, natural disasters either evolve, or transform through

humanity’s conditioning of natural space.

However, there are two parts the historian must use to to analyze natural disasters:

The discourse of the disaster itself and the fallout. Within the discourse, this historian

would begin by discussing the events leading up to the disaster, transitioning into

discussion about humanity’s abilities to combat the destruction wrought by the disaster.

Since humanity has allowed for disasters to upset their condition of sustainability, the

historian must be able to draw the connections between the human condition and the

conditions that allowed the disasters to cause great destruction to the human condition.

Discussing the fallout of the disaster, the historian can understand not only how much

natural, financial, and economic ruin the natural disaster created to natural and human

space. This fallout of the natural disaster is the most important aspect for the historian,

because while the conditions and discourse explain the power the disaster has over

humanity and the human condition, the fallout presents humanity’s ability to recover, to

improve their condition, but also emphasize the cost humanity has suffered due to these

disasters. Ultimately, the fallout of a natural disaster shows the financial ruin, to socio-

economic instability, and the political chaos of the anthropocene. The organization of

this chapter will begin with the historiography of natural disasters, in the larger

historiographical narrative of environmental history, transitioning into subtopics divided

by the different forms of disasters, analyzing examples provided by both historians and

scientists. Conclusion will be directed at the direction of disasters, determining the greater

influence humanity has made on their influence on the natural world. That, with natural

disasters, this nonhuman element of environmental change, greatly effects both natural

and human space.

The Historiography of Natural Disasters

Historical works on natural disasters began in the 1970s, to which historians that

emphasized the role of nature in environmental change. With their works on natural

disasters, the early historical works emphasize natural disasters is strictly a reactionary

force to the human condition. These historians do not dismiss the power of natural

disasters, but rather emphasize how intertwined humanity’s role is with the power of

natural disasters.

To David Worster, the Dust Bowl was a testament of human conditioning on the

natural world, reflecting capitalist gain as the main motive for the Dust Bowl’s

destruction. However, capitalist gain may have allowed the Dust Bowl’s force against the

human condition, but the initial reaction to allow the Dust Bowl to proliferate was a

numerous amount of dust and dust storms that occurred leading up to the event, created

by human-induced agricultural practices. Further, the Dust Bowl not only created

agricultural issues, but also medical issues which some doctors argued it to be some form

of pneumonia from the dust, which forced the creation of several emergency hospitals in

Kansas, Colorado and Texas.

To Worster, America during this period was not knowledgeable about the natural

world during this period. Due to this, the Dust Bowl became a natural disaster that was

fighting against both human conditioning of the natural world, as well as humanity’s need

for survival. However, while Nature, to Worster, had created methods of ecological

change, he ultimately blames European colonization of the Americas, because since

Europeans held little regard to the natural world, they could not prepare for events of

great ecological disaster like natural disasters221. Further, the Great Plains region was

subject to the ideas of an agricultural society, in accompaniment with the occupations of

the cowboy and the rancher, all of which did not allow for a consciousness about the

natural world to exist222.

In the wake of the Dust Bowl, and even throughout the course of the disaster’s

presence in the Great Plains, Americans created a series of recommendations for farmers

and agriculturalists going forward. Americans emphasized better education on the natural

condition of grasslands, while also elucidating the degree of grazing in natural space,

especially if it leads to infestations of insects and disease, lack of soil nutrients, and wind

erosion.

In the 1990s however, as environmental historians revisited the power of nature,

John Barry’s work on the Mississippi Flood of 1927 emphasizes how the flood changed

America’s perspectives on the natural world. Focusing on the memory of members of the

American Army Corps of Engineers like LeRoy Percy, the Mississippi Flood emerged at

a period where American progress was at its peak in the twentieth century. Further, the

ideas that the Corps of Engineers had to combat the Mississippi River, but the Engineers

had to increase the amount of levees and floodplains because the River’s water levels

were able to rise with each update the Engineers gave to the man-made channels and

levees.

Despite America’s attempts to move the country towards a progressive future,

Barry transitions into the discourse of events that happened as the Mississippi River

flooded. Initially, following heavy rainstorms, the energy produced by the Mississippi

River submerged nearly 1 million square miles, and also effected the Ohio and Missouri

rivers. While the Flood was running south to the Gulf of Mexico, Barry discusses how

levee engineers tried to move civilians from affected cities like Greenville, as well as

move water from the Mississippi River onto land, “hoping that the additional weight of

water would stabilize and buttress the levee, preventing sand boils and sloughing”.

When the Mississippi Flood eventually receded, the fallout left American

populations displaced, but lawyers of displaced cities like New Orleans could not appeal

to everyone who suffered. Further, the Hoover administration frantically had to change

the agricultural practices of the Deep South like Arkansas and Mississippi, which suffered

the most during the flooding. Despite Hoover’s efforts to alleviate the flood, particularly

with raising money for flood relief, Congress, nor any part of the federal government,

would not provide direct aid231. In the end, Barry elucidates the pitfalls of humanity’s

ability to control this river were met with disaster, and the despite being able to recover,

the Mississippi Flood still changed humanity’s ideas of improving their condition.

During the twenty-first century, as environmental history became a global topic of

discussion, historians during this period analyzed natural disasters using Barry’s

perspective, focusing on the discourse of the disaster and its fallout. However, twentyfirst

century historians focused on the reality of the power of these disasters, which must not

be denied. Adamant about this perspective, Ted Steinberg, while focusing on the political

ideologies of natural disasters, he argues how America has been changed by natural

disasters, and that humanity “needs a passionate, critical engagement with the past to

counter the denial and apathy that informs so many of the response to natural disasters in

contemporary America. Starting with natural disasters in the nineteenth century onward,

Steinberg argues that Americans have had no idea how to react to natural disasters, that

Americans insist on presenting the natural world as a chaotic place that attacks only poor

people and people of color.

To Steinberg, the human condition has been greatly upset by natural disasters

within this time period. However, American ideas of natural disasters have viewed

hurricanes and earthquakes as an imaginary concept, with policymakers using economic

gain and denial of disasters power, to ultimately change American psyche to believe that

there was still prosperity in the nation. Further, in the wake of other disasters like the

Labor Day Hurricane in 1935, what remained was a progrowth consensus for the country,

despite Floridians placing blame on the American government for poorly reacting to the

hurricane’s fallout.

Natural disasters in the post World War II period, on the other hand, are of

importance to Steinberg, because of how Americans attempted to maintain economic

growth through better knowledge of changing weather patterns. Steinberg elucidates that,

despite the growth and modernization of the National Weather Service (NWS) from the

1980s onward, Americans insisted that the technology from the NWS does not need to be

reliant on humanity to monitor the data. In the end, Steinberg concludes that nature can

be useful for corporate America’s war against the poor, particularly with regard to

personal financial gain, that the needs of the individual are outweighing the present issues

of disaster’s power against the human condition, against the clear and imminent danger

presented by specific groups of people that can not be fortunate enough to improve their

condition as others.

Following the influence of Ted Steinberg, historians during the twenty-first

century like Thomas Neil Knowles investigated the discourse of the 1935 Labor Day

Hurricane, the first recorded Category 5 hurricane in America. Where Steinberg

emphasized America’s need for economic gain instead of the reality of nature’s power to

the human condition, Knowles analyzes the reality of Steinberg’s argumentative

perspective. What made the hurricane prominent was that it touched down at a time

where technologies on weather that Americans use today were nonexistent, rendered

virtually invisible until it landed in the Florida Keys. In the 1930s, Knowles recognizes

that Florida did create weather-watching technologies, as well as trained officials to bring

an overall modernizing effort to meteorology for the country.

Despite the efforts to understand the changes in weather patterns, the discourse of

events with the hurricane, as well as the manpower used for hurricane evacuation, the

officials in the weather control centers in Florida did not realize that the hurricane

changed trajectory before any form of defense could be drummed up. To Knowles, when

the hurricane made landfall, the evacuation was frenetic, made so by the destructive

power that the hurricane created against naturally formed sediment, coral reefs and

channels of water in the Keys. While Knowles discusses the destructive force of the

hurricane, along with defending and evacuating the Keys, he also emphasizes the

discourse of humanity’s ability to survive the hurricane. Families like the Russells who

saw their home be decimated by the storm, were also trying to navigate through what

Knowles describes conditions as “pitch-black, the noise of the wind is deafening, and the

driven rain hits it feels like a sandblaster”.

While the discourse of the hurricane was drastic, Knowles attentively focuses on

the fallout of the hurricane. Where Steinberg focuses on the fallout as a result of

fundamental political ineptitude, Knowles focuses on the human experience. The

population of the Keys was effectively displaced, examples of which include removing

debris, rounding up survivors, but also being able to survive off minimally salvaged food,

clothes and water. Further, what subsequently followed was a barrage of outcry for

Washington to blame people, mostly the Weather Bureau’s inadequate information on the

hurricane. In the end, while the human condition was pushed beyond a limit for the times,

the environmental historian has ultimately presented natural disasters within the confines

of the dichotomy of the human condition against nature, but what makes these disasters

powerful is how disasters have been viewed by humanity as “normal” processes of

nature. However, while twenty-first century historians like Steinberg and Knowles

discuss the greater power that the human condition has created, what comes next for

environmental history are the factors that drive nature to unfold more destruction.

Applying Posthumanity to Natural Disasters

To bring a posthuman discussion of disasters into the purview of the

environmental historian, we must study disasters that have affected the human condition

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of the last twenty years. It is important to analyze within the time period of globalization,

which I isolate from the 1990s into the present day. Globalization has made the largest

influence to allow natural disasters their increased frequency and destruction, and

historians need to understand disasters through resource management, both

environmental and natural, as well as how past and contemporary knowledge of the

natural world has produced the actions of past and contemporary institutions towards the

natural world.

Within the last twenty years, what the historian can study is the discourse of

natural disasters such as earthquakes. In the Bay of Bengal, in order to understand the

effect of these earthquakes, attention must be given to the management of earthquakes by

humanity has to use geological and hazard data from past earthquakes. Further, what is

most striking about the earthquakes of this region must be discussion of the correlation

between increased industrial involvement in South and Southeast Asia, and the changes

in seismic destruction, which have increased in the globalization period. Other countries

like Guatemala, on the other hand, are uniquely geographically positioned to have a high

amount of tropical depressions and hurricanes. In Guatemala, the rainfall events in the

country provide extreme runoff that lead to severe flooding issues in the process.

However, because of globalization, the historian can argue that the soil

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sediment had begun to waste due to earthquakes, created by mining and other forms of

industry in the country.

For countries like China, earthquakes remain an important concept, where the

anthropocene has made a large amount of impact in an already fragile region of the

natural world. In East China, human settlement on the Yishu Fault Zone has rendered

populations in the region susceptible to ruptures. Since earthquakes act as a natural

occurrence, the fault lines are where human settlement is at its most vulnerable when

fault lines and offset landforms are at its highest. From observing earthquakes, the

historian is able to justify a posthuman analysis when analyzing the events of the

Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, where huge amounts of radiation were

released into the atmosphere. In fact, what made it so striking of an issue was because of

the amount of emissions the earthquake created for the region254. The monitoring of

radiation remains the legacy of this earthquake, and its power to the human condition is

one aspect of natural disasters that can be analyzed.

While studying the conditions that allow for one disaster to take is one method of

analysis, the historian can also study the geographical variants that allow for earthquakes

take hold. To Joanna Dyl, coastal cities are one area under great effect by natural

disasters. Studying the effects of natural disasters in places like San Francisco show how

lack of ecological knowledge is dangerous for coastal cities, especially when San

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Francisco is situated between two tectonic plates that are in a constant state of change.

Further, due to the Earthquake and Fire of 1906, knowledge increased of the San Andreas

Fault where the city was built, especially with regard to the power that both aspects of the

disaster: 514 city blocks and over 28,000 buildings. In 1989, the Loma Prieta Earthquake,

Dyl argues that it reflected the same level of destruction in 1906, but that scientists were

unmoved by where the earthquake hit the hardest, because these group knew where the

earthquake would strike, yet did not adequately prepare for it. In accompaniment

with studying earthquakes, water based natural disasters like hurricanes and floods can

also be researched as a posthuman concept of environmental change. In fact, these two

aspects are of importance the historian must connect between globalization and the

natural world. In the Caribbean, this region suffers the most from hurricanes, but

historians need to track the climate conditions in order to understand the greater risk that

hurricanes present for humanity, assessing wind strengths and storms that follow

hurricanes to understand which regions will be affected the worst. Further, the historian

must also assess which Caribbean regions have the heaviest amount of human activity.

With Hurricane Katrina, focusing on urban history allows the historian to understand the

power of the disaster, particularly how urbanization has changed the human condition,

namely the idea of how a hurricane can displace populations. The

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issue with Katrina was that the levees were destroyed by the hurricane, following a trend

of an earlier hurricane in 1927.

With floods, on the other hand, the historian must recognize the conditions

humanity has created to promote their frequency. Floods reflect a changing climate, not

necessarily strictly within the discourse of hurricanes, but their presence is the result of

humanity’s efforts to dam or buttress them. Further, their influence on the human

condition also reflects the amount of education humanity receives on the subject: hazard

assessment, risk management, mitigation and preparedness. In the end, the historian can

better understand the greater influence of disasters as a meteorological occurrence, but

that humanity must understand their destructive influence on the human condition.

Contemporary Examples of Natural Disasters

While the destructive habits of natural disasters is self-evidently by humanity’s

hand, the assessment of disasters within the last six years should be of particular

importance for the environmental historian. The last six years, between 2013 and now,

have been host to some of, in humanity’s lifetime, the most destructive natural disasters

ever experienced. The degree of their destruction is reflected in works, work of which

emphasize the discourse of the disasters and the losses of life, but also what humanity has

done to rebuild, to improve their condition, as well as memories of the destruction in the

minds of humanity.

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Take, for instance, Hurricane Sandy. Being from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the

day it touched down on the Eastern Seaboard, what I remembered from it was a large

pink cloud travelling over New Jersey, but nothing in Philadelphia. The next day, the

news highlighted the destructive force, how far the coast got pushed and the political

discourse by the states of New Jersey and New York to address the issue. What made

Sandy such a devastating reflection of globalization is how the hurricane was able to

grow to the force it eventually became known for. What the historian must do is focus on

the scientific works that showcase the greater influence of these contemporary natural

disasters on the human condition.

In their work, Charles H. Greene, Jennifer A. Francis and Bruce C. Monger

emphasized how Sandy was able to grow due to warm ocean temperatures and a

“southward dip in the jet stream over the Mississippi Valley that ushered in an invasion of

cold Artic air”. The conclusive evidence made in the study was that the loss of seaice

contributed to the strength of the hurricane, as well as stacked greenhouse gases. In sum,

this led to a three-step process of “(1) larger amplitude meanders in the jet stream, (2)

more frequent invasions of Artic air masses into the middle latitudes, and (3) more

frequent blocking of the kind that steered Sandy to the West”.

Douglas Reed, Roger Stephenson and Steven Hyland, on the other hand, focused

on the responses, and their shortcomings of those responses, that water treatment plants

in New York and New Jersey took to address the issues with Hurricane Sandy. In their

work, which centered in on the Rockaway Water Treatment Plant in New York, what the

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scientists determined is that there needs to be more interstate communication, but also

that “ greater connectivity is necessary with partners in local and state EOCs to make the

linkage for water sector requests that may exceed WARN/Intrastate capabilities”. Further,

there also needs to be more attention on water infrastructure, particularly presented issues

of assessing damage loss by flooding. Loss of power, however, was the single greatest

threat during the flooding by Sandy. In the study, the prioritization of generators and

other utilities for power caused massive displacement for New York communities, but

there also needs to both prepare better local, state, and federal damage assessment, as

well as situational awareness.

To Adam Parris, the reality of Hurricane Sandy was the disaster’s ability to

influence humanity to improve their condition. Because the disaster affected the Eastern

Coast of the United States to such a degree, Parris argues that improving the human

condition needs to be established by taking time to “reflect on how best to rebuild

developed areas before the next crisis occurs, instead of committing to a disaster-

bydisaster approach to rebuilding”. Further, Parris also emphasizes the limitations that

disaster relief presents for the human condition, specifically that relief groups like FEMA

only protect present lost assets, not future lost assets. In the process, American

postdisaster development programs needs to take into account the issues of coast flooding

and rising sea level, which follow with hurricanes. In accompaniment with federal

programs, Parris also argues that humanity’s efforts at urbanization need to consider the

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idea of an impending flood with their building plans, which was ultimately addressed by

the creation of sea-level rise tools and better management of urban infrastructure.

What Parris concludes is that addressing the issues of hurricanes must be a

conscious effort. Changes to infrastructure are not enough, especially when efforts must

be made to eliminate the long-term effects of hurricanes, namely through the

establishment of flood procedures to protect urban areas, as well as institute policies that

reflect the “practical realities we face in an increasingly populated and stressed

environment”. Parris also proposes that research into hurricanes needs to be directed at

direct responsiveness to the hurricane, that when it touches down, there is already an

initial plan of attack, and relief funds in reserve .

Following the discourse of humanity’s improvement presented by Parris, and the

scope of destruction launched by Hurricane Sandy, Miriam Greenberg discusses how

humanity was unable to improve their condition in the wake of Hurricane Sandy,

following what she argues to be the same level of response as with other major events

such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. For Greenberg, addressing Hurricane Sandy’s fallout

not only had failed early engagement when the storm touched down, as well as lack of

resources to address the long-term effects of the disaster. However, what is most striking

is how much consideration New York City elites on Wall Street gave little concern for

disaster relief, particularly through the defunding of disaster aid programs like FEMA,

CDBG, and PAB. In the process, there was also a distinct parallel between

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Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina’s uneven redevelopment: “Increased wealth,

population, and infrastructure for affluent neighborhoods like New York’s Financial

District and New Orleans’ Lakeview, alongside decline, gentrification, and/or

displacement in low-income neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, Chinatown, and the

Lower 9th Ward”.

In fact, the relationship that is drawn between Katrina and Sandy is mostly due to

the economic displacement that existed in both New York and New Orleans, but Sandy

was exceptional because humanity still improved their condition after 9/11. Apartment

complexes and high-rise buildings were still erected in New York’s major financial

districts, but the issues that made profound were because FEMA was unable to aid the

areas affected by mold contamination and structural damage, which lasted for weeks into

months. In the end, the issues created by Sandy reflected humanity’s inability to

effectively prepare for its arrival.

While Hurricane Sandy reflected the realities of human economic displacement,

another contemporary example can be the role of tornadoes, whose influence on the

human condition can be traced as early as 1990. In Peter Felknor’s case study on

Wisconsin tornadoes, citizens were familiar with the presence of tornadoes, but Felknor is

concerned with the discourse, namely how tornadoes are able to form when “The

constant ebb and flow of tropical and polar air masses across the temperate latitudes

keeps the atmosphere in a state of continual equilibrium”.

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Felknor focuses on two cases of tornadoes influence on the human condition. The

first took place in the 1930s, by focusing on the human experience of events leading up to

the touchdown of the tornado, Felknor emphasizes the changes in weather pattern to

allow the tornado to rip through Wisconsin, examples of which include hail, dark clouds,

as well as changes in wind shear that exceeded 100 miles per hour. The second example

Felknor discusses was on April 11th 1965, focusing on the experiences of members of the

Monroe Police Department, Felknor focuses on the increased weather reports that were

concentrated in the area. Further, the discourse of the human experience Felknor

discusses in this example also shows how destructive the tornado affected the region, but

for Felknor, in accompaniment with destroyed cars and numerous amount of debris, the

destructive force of the tornado was humanity’s perception of the reality that the disaster

brought to the region285.

In a study lead by B.E. Aguirre, the committee argues that there is a present

human element to the power of tornadoes. The study analyzed the multifaceted

dimensions of the human condition, highlighting the most prominent areas of

environmental change where any idea of human influence was apparent, both urban and

rural. From this, the members of the committee argued that both urban and rural human

spaces affect the conditions that permit tornadoes to interact on natural and human space.

Studying data taken of tornadoes across the United States between the 1950s and

the present day, what the committee argued is that there are three different categories

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which can allow tornadoes to interact: “1) Metropolitan counties with central cities; 2)

Other urban counties, that is, metropolitan counties without central cities and

nonmetropolitan counties in which more than 50% of their residents live in urban areas

(places having 2,500 or more inhabitants); and 3) rural counties, or nonmetropolitan

counties in which fewer than 50% of the residents live in urban areas”. From this

geographical classification, the study was also able to determine what can be argued as

the causal factors for a tornado, presenting the probability factors for a tornado, as well as

the direct correlations and human behavior. In the process, the committee also argues that

humanity needs to have more consciousness about the realities of human environmental

change, that the destructive force of tornadoes are affected by humanity empirical

decisions of self improvement .

While tornadoes tend to have a geographic distribution, as created by the human

condition, to understand their impact, discussion must also be directed at the urban

environments, environments of which allow tornadoes to greatly interact. In their study,

Joshua Wurman, Curtis Alexander, Paul Robinson and Yvette Richardson analyze how

tornadoes are able to exact larger impacts on urban space, especially since that this space

allows for long-track tornadoes to interact. Further, the extent of a tornado’s destruction

in an urban region comes from the deaths and structural damage to cities, which, in the

case of urban centers like Chicago, would take an excess of over 20 billion dollars to

repair and created a projected 13,000-45,000 people. However, the larger issue present

with tornadoes in urban space is the concept of permanent structural damage, which for

other urban cities like New York City, which is an older city, making it more vulnerable

to permanent structural damage. Ultimately, the greatest impact of tornadoes will be

concentrated in urban centers, but humanity needs to take better consideration to the

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destructive force of these tornadoes, particularly with management and realize that “the

eventuality of intense tornadoes crossing into urban areas cannot be avoided”293.

While tornadoes provide drastic impact to the human condition, a study conducted

by Robert Lynch, Margaret Phillips, and Paige Jones, elucidated how tornadoes can affect

natural space like ponds. Because tornadoes provide extremely fast winds, they bring up

with them all sorts of debris that can expose ponds to contamination, examples of which

include children’s toys, car parts, etc. In the study, the group identified the changes in

oxygen from five different pond sites, namely through the amount of thermal

stratification that existed in each of the ponds. What was concluded was that the debris

thrown into the ponds by the tornadoes forced oxygen to be released from the ponds, that

ultimately “any oxygen diffusing into the water from the atmosphere or being produced

by photosynthesis was rapidly being consumed by oxygen-demanding substances”. In the

end, the conditions of the ponds became dictated by human debris, but the power of a

tornado is what the environmental historian should be concerned with the conditions that

have allowed the disaster to demonstrate this degree of its destruction.

While tornadoes themselves present self-evident danger to the human condition,

the environmental historian must also determine if newer natural space has been

conditioned by humanity to allow tornadoes to interact. In a study conducted by P. Grady

Dixon, Andrew E. Mercer, Jinmu Choi and Jared S. Allen, analysis was directed at the

potential for an extension of America’s Tornado Alley, which is the classification of

tornado activity from the Rocky to the Appalachian Mountains. To this committee, there

is new regional distribution for tornadoes, existent in an area of the American southeast as

Dixie Alley, which has been reported to contain increased tornado activity in recent years.

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To determine if this distribution of tornadoes in Dixie Alley is valid, the

committee focused on spatial data collected on tornado activity between 1950 and 2007,

as well as density maps to determine the geographic distribution of the tornadoes over the

years. What was concluded was that the heaviest concentration of tornadoes, within the

last twenty years, has been fixated in Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida. What is most

striking about the data is that the committee also proposed a hypothetical scenario that

Dixie Alley is actually becoming its own zone of tornado activity, because of the growth

in tornado density in the region. In fact, the committee agreed in the validity of Dixie

Alley’s legitimate independence from being an extension of Tornado

Alley, because of the degree of tornado seasons that are prevalent in the Dixie Alley

region, as well as the notion that tornado risk has also legitimized Dixie Alley’s

independence.

However, while the environmental historian can understand the gravity of

tornado’s impact on the human condition in America, discussion must also be addressed

at the power of tornadoes in Europe. In Jurgen Greiser and Francesca Terenzi’s study,

tornadoes are prevalent in Europe, but the frequency of their existence is not as

commonplace as in America. However, Greiser and Terenzi are both adamant that the

growth of urbanization in Europe can lead to a risk of tornadoes on the continent. In their

work, Greiser and Terenzi emphasize the losses created by tornadoes in Europe, as well

as how tornadoes are able to interact with European urban areas. Like in America,

European urban areas are susceptible to tornadoes, but the losses varied across the

continent, to which Greiser and Terenzi emphasize that countries like the Netherlands is

more prone to tornadoes which originally start as waterspouts. However, Greiser and

Terenzi also elucidate that calculating the data for tornadoes is also challenging because

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the continent is more prone to rare tornadoes that are the most destructive, rather than

frequent and weak tornadoes.

Humanity’s Responses to Natural Disasters

While this was discussed early on in the chapter, the issue remains that while

humanity will always improve their condition of sustainability, what should be of interest

for the environmental historian is the minutia of humanity’s improvements against natural

disasters. From studying this, the historian is able to understand how natural disasters

have not only forced humanity to adapt, but also how their improvements are changing

the ideas humanity has about the natural world. In the end, these adaptations by humanity,

when faced with disasters, has revealed striking habits humanity has taken to improve

their conditions of sustainability.

When faced with natural disasters, David Etkin and Ingrid Stefanovic’s focus on

eco-ethics reveals the vulnerability of both humans and nature. For Etkin and Stefanovic,

humanity can choose the degrees of mitigation between human development and human

vulnerability, particularly since contemporary disaster plans have opened up more risk-

prone behavior when faced with disasters like floods. Further, to understand the strengths

and weakness of disaster plans, humanity needs to have a more comprehensive

understanding of infrastructure, human communication, and nature, in order to better

address natural disasters. In the end, Etkin and Stefanovic are hardpressed that humanity’s

relationship with the natural world is strained, because of how humanity chooses to “deal

with natural hazards by either ignoring them (for example, by building in floodplains) or

by transferring risk to future generations by designing vulnerable systems or communities

that will eventually suffer a disaster”.

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In a study conducted by William R. Freudenburg, Robert Gramling, Shirley

Laska, and Kai T. Erikson, these scholars emphasize that humanity has also used nature to

create conditions to the economic benefit of few, while to the detriment of many. While

this group of scholars determines the sociological transformations that have dictated

environmental change, what they also elucidate is that humanity’s exposures to disasters

have been on racial and economic grounds, but that previous studies have dismissed

humanity’s exposures to disasters as a mostly random occurrence. However, this is not

the case, because disaster plans, in the case of the United States, reflect economic

decisions such as creating levees to protect floods, but “spreading the costs, concentrating

the benefits and hiding the risks”314.

While Freudenburg and his colleagues discussed the sociological and political

implications for natural disasters, Myron Gutmann and Vincenzo Field’s work on

humanity’s migration when Hurricane Katrina touched down on the United States. To

both Gutmann and Field, the demographic shifts that occurred during Hurricane Katrina’s

period of occupation in the country, as well as its departure, bear a major effect on the

migration patterns of human populations in the regions where Katrina was most

prominent. While both scholars discuss other disasters that have occurred in America

between the early and late twentieth centuries, examples of which included the Dust

Bowl, Hurricane Andrew and the San Francisco Earthquake, their discussion of Katrina

reflected the same trend of managed environments that existed with other major disasters

during this period. However, what separated Katrina from the other disasters was that the

hurricane interacted with natural and human space created by an excessive amount of

energy, and that managed environments by humanity further speeds their migration from

areas more susceptible to disasters.

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Conclusion: The Reality of Unfolded Destruction

From analyzing both historical and scientific works, natural disasters are a vital

posthuman subject for historians to consider. As humanity conditions the natural world in

their image, this causes change to the climate, which subsequently allows for the

destructive influence of natural disasters to take hold. Their frequency in the last twenty

years reflects the conscious decisions of humanity. Humanity builds skyscrapers and

suburban developments, proclaiming safety and a brave new world, but these structures

are subject to earthquakes and floods, and yet humanity still chooses to dismiss the power

of nature, and that natural disasters are still a commonplace element of environmental

change that still reflects the decisions of humanity. In fact, the historian must now take

the scientific information aforementioned to elucidate the greater conditions that natural

disasters bring, reflect their power over humanity, and accept that society must accept

their greater influence. Otherwise, natural disasters will continue to be a force of nature

that will be treated as a footnote to economic gain, leaving out the greater human

displacement that occurs as a result.

Conclusion: Dreams and Nightmares

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Humanity takes. Humanity burns. Destroys. Changes. The conditions of

humanity’s ability to act on their impulsive ideas, reflecting a world that humanity

proclaims as ideal, and that other human populations should follow suit and work to

create a better world that has no future for nature. Yet, in the midst of all this, humanity

prepares elaborate and wonderful designs of what are ideal worlds, examples of which

include sweeping green landscapes where humanity survives and scenes of wonderful

homes and shining suns beam down on a progressive paradise.

The reality is that it is not this. This is a fictitious imaginative idea of what the

world could be, but has not been able to come to pass. Our natural world, in 2019, has

been so drastically changed that any discussion of environmental change has resulted in

any one of the following topics: the extinction of animal and insect species, the tons of

waste that are found in oceans, areas of natural space that have been decimated to cater to

humanity’s survival. What is also surprising is the regard for it in political atmospheres,

that while there are many people who call for environmental protection, humanity still

increases its interactions on natural space. Humanity insists on putting the profits of their

own wealth, over the natural spaces that are decimated by the human ideas of survival. I

can conclude that humanity still decides to put themselves over the needs of the natural

world, even in some cases, over other human populations, content that nature can just

adapt around humanity’s interactions with natural space. The issue with this is that

because humanity still interacts with natural space, to improve its ever-growing global

population, humanity continues its perpetual cycle of improving its condition of

sustainability, with little to no regard for the natural world.

Because of this self-centered approach by humanity, to improve their condition at

the expense of nature, nature’s role in environmental change is thereby granted its own

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agency. Nature’s instinctive approach to environmental change, acting upon the

conditions of the natural world to interact, own agency towards environmental change.

Whenever this posthuman agenda of environmental change comes to mind, the average

human, and certainly specific scientific communities can instantly say this is study

without human influence, no anthropogenic influence. However, the historian can also

say that this posthuman agenda of environmental change can instantly proclaim this

concept as convoluted, that we need the human element to understand the course of

historical events and narratives, that the role of humanity must be center stage to move

our understanding of environmental change.

I am critical of this commentary, especially by historians. Because if humanity

will always build buildings, always will create a new sport stadium, will always invent a

new form of technology to help our condition of sustainability, why then is nature this

passive evolutionary subject? Why does the environmental historian leave the work of

changes to the natural world at the discretion of scientists, when environmental history

studies the discourse of environmental change? The environmental historian is fully

capable of studying environmental change within the context of nature’s discourse, with

the intent to integrate works of our colleagues in the scientific community, including how

humanity has provided nature with its own agency.

Ultimately, this is what my work is about: Agency. In fact, agency is still a

perplexing, and debatable topic, by environmental historians, especially when certain

environmental historians focus on the direct agents that interact with natural space, I.E.

the building of golf courses, and the shaping of natural parks, while other historians that

focus on colonization emphasize how natural space has been shook up by colonizing

impositions of human improvement and the drastic forces of nature that responded to

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these human ideas. But, I would say that the discussion of agency will always go in a

circle, unless historians choose to accept self-evident truths of environmental change,

particularly that humanity’s dreams of a bright future can become reality, but these are

dreams that are made at nature’s detriment.

However, because of the dreams of humanity, while nature is destroyed, nature is

also granted its own agency towards environmental change. I discussed how nature

responds to the conditions humanity has created, in both natural and human spaces, and

that nature is able to impose its own direct changes, but this is because I also propose a

methodological change for historians. In order for environmental history to move

forward, the environmental historian needs to take humanity down off the pedestal. This

perspective does still call for humanity, but it is with relationship to what humanity has

done. How does humanity create the conditions for nature to respond?

To be frank, we do not need humanity’s fate to be the sole responsibility of the

historian. But, in order to move beyond humanity, to emphasize nature, the historian must

already understand that humanity’s changes to natural space, to suit its improvement, will

continue to perpetuate. Humanity will always improve, but nature will always respond

against the human condition, in some form or another. Historians need to concern

themselves with the fate of nature, what will make this perspective from our colleagues in

the scientific community will be that historians will study the discourse of nature, the

same way they study the discourse of the human condition, historians will use the works

of climatologists and ecologists to understand how nature has evolved as humanity

evolves. However, in their discussions of nature, historians will also emphasize nature

first, but with the intent to also discuss how humanity’s conditioning has put a damper on

nature’s ability to evolve, that the human condition has forced nature to speed up its

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evolution exponentially, subsequently forcing to react in such destructive force, that

climatologists and meteorologists grow increasing concerned with issues of global

warming and deforestation.

Climate

With each of the examples I have provided, I have showcased the multifaceted

perspectives of our natural world, and the degree of influence that humanity has exacted

over natural space. I also emphasize that some areas that some of the natural world are

theoretical, while other concepts that I discuss are practical. Of course, the theoretical

example, which in this case the concept of climate, does not mean that it is not practical,

but rather it’s influence is based on the gradual changes to the natural world. However,

the theoretical component of climate comes from its gradual process of influence, that

because climate sets the stage for any eventual natural disasters or infestations that occur.

The practical component of climate comes from the idea of climate itself. It is a

manifestation of change in the natural world, as represented through polar cap melting,

abnormalities in global, regional, and local temperature changes. Climate also showcases

the changes natural space through the migratory changes of animals, the decay and

deprivation of natural space that have been rendered inhospitable for marine, mammalian

and arthropod life. Further, climate reveals the extinction of plant and animal species,

how after being forced from native spaces of interaction, what was the eventual final

legacy of the natural space, be it left to the use of humanity through self-improvement, or

used to remove objects to humanity’s detriment: Human waste.

However, what I hope from this work is that the historian can use climate to study

it within the perspective of a geographical distribution. Because climate change is a

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selfevident concept across the world, especially in 2019, a future discussion that could be

brought to light are the parts that have made climate change so prominent. I would

propose that the historian discuss how climate change has greatly increased with

globalization, studying how and why critical regions of the world like South and

Southeast Asia not only are epicenters for global markets, but also possess natural space

there that is the most critical for a stable global climate. Along with critical regions like

South and Southeast Asia, I also propose that the historian can also study climate

change’s effects on urban environments, because while critical regions that constitute the

most natural space that is left on the planet are important, the historian also should

determine the impact of climate change in urban cities like London, Philadelphia,

Moscow, etc. From this, discussion can be driven at how regionally climate change has

varied across the planet, because while all improvements to the human condition

contribute to climate change, the historian can now be able to understand which cities

across the world are the most exposed to climate change. From this discussion, the

historian can understand the greater impacts of climate change and the image of nations.

Take the United States of America for example, particularly the state of Mississippi. It is

known as the Magnolia State, but because of climate change, magnolias can be at risk.

Further, the sense of national pride also goes into the realm of sports, because what

happens to hockey in northern American states and Canada, areas where hockey is a

staple of communities? The idea of a unique exceptional natural space across the globe is

snuffed out due to climate change.

One of the shortcomings from this work I would say comes from my discussion of

climate itself. From my research, I focused specifically on how climate can provide the

conditions to force nature’s direct impact on environmental change, what I never was able

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to find was direct studies of climate in different regions over time. I have provided the

multi-faceted conditions that allow climate to interact with natural and human space,

namely how climate forces economic change for human space and drastic ecological

changes to natural space, but what I would like to see from either another work, or if I

were to do an expansion of this work, I want to see climate change’s posthuman influence

as a regional discussion. If historians choose to emphasize Nature in their environmental

works, focusing on climate change’s distribution throughout the world, understand how

climate is affecting more than just the extreme corners of the world. Climate is interacting

with all parts of natural and human space.

I do reiterate, the historian does not need humanity to be their primary subject of

discussion to understand climate’s role. This determination by historians to emphasize

that humanity will always interact with natural space is self-evident. Instead, because

nature acts upon instinct, assesses and interacts with the conditions of natural space, why

is this impossible to historicize? Why does the historian leave the role of climate change,

and the impact of climate change, to the responsibility of scientists like climatologists and

meteorologists?

Infestations

Probably the greatest example of this posthuman analysis comes from

infestations. Changes to natural space while may affect climate, but infestations reflect

the visible hand of the human condition. Human imposed changes to natural space such

as acts of deforestation and pollution are what force infestations to interact with natural

and human space. What also forces infestations to interact, particularly with diseases, are

the conscious efforts of humanity, that even though disease exists in both natural and

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human space, humanity still insists on not taking proper protocol to eliminate these

diseases, namely withholding vaccinations. From this, the power of diseases perpetuated

a never-ending cycle of interaction with deadly diseases, long eradicated, to interact with

human space. However, with the studies provided on the distribution of a disease,

provided by an insect, the historian must ask what conditions would a disease like Zika be

able to thrive? Would the disease begin to favor urban space or retreat to rural space?

Does the disease, or even more broadly, any disease, favor a space by the amount of

human and animal populations that are prevalent?

Plants and insects, however, provide the historian with the realities of

contemporary improvement to the human condition. In the studies provided that focused

on migration, the historian must ask how those insects forced off their natural habitat, by

humanity, have been able to adapt to newer natural space. The historian should also

emphasize how insects change the human psyche, because while humanity interacts with

natural space, insects migrate into these human spaces for the basis of their survival, be it

through adaptation by loss of habitat, or adaptation by forage for food or breeding.

However, to understand the posthuman analysis of insects, the historian must also

emphasize how as insects adapt, they disrupt the human condition. Since humanity

continues to improve its condition of sustainability, insects are able to disrupt human

space by finding habitats in residential areas, in office buildings, as well as interact with

native species of plants. What is most striking is that, in the case of Berks County,

Pennsylvania, the infestation of Spotted Lanternflies, a species of insect native to India,

Vietnam and China, have interacted with the native tree populations in the region. But the

conditions of their origin are yet determined.

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In the case of plants, however, this was a concept of infestations that, in my own

research, yielded a self-evident process. Humanity imposes plants upon natural and

human space, but their abilities to spread and multiply, in the case of weeds, are

dependent upon the conditions of natural and human space itself. When compared to

diseases and insects, plants are only able to act as an infestation if humanity allows them

to interact. What constitutes a plant as an infestation is ultimately decided by humanity,

that plant’s ability to interact with human and natural space is decided by humanity.

This discussion of plants, and their passive role as an infestation, can draw into question

the concept of agency, which the historian could bring back humanity’s role of

environmental change back into a primary role. Where I would push back against this is

that because humanity directly allows plants to infest, not just providing the conditions of

natural and human space, but that humanity directly oversees plants, without regard for

what could happen as a result of these plants, then does plants role as an infestation

become more prevalent. In fact, humanity is ultimately providing the conditions for plants

to interact, but while humanity initiates the interaction, the agency then shifts to plants,

who are the subjects interacting with both human and natural space, not humanity. The

same can also be said for insects and disease, because their agency towards

environmental change is, like plants, initiated by humanity, but infestations become their

own agent when they act on their own. In the end, humanity provides, or imposes, the

conditions of infestations, infestations then subsequently interact as according to the

biological responses that are prevalent in these subjects, thereby creating the foregone

conclusion that infestations are able to become their own agent of environmental change.

A shortcoming, however, from this concept, came from the lack of regard to the

conditions that can allow an infestation to interact. To better understand the role of

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infestations as their own agent of environmental change, the historian should emphasize

the discourse of the human condition. How could an infestation be able to interact, when

years of human induced industrialization, consumption, production, and other forms of

interaction, provides the conditions? What makes an infestation want to interact with a

non-native area? And more importantly, to reiterate from my previous question, how does

the control of production, not just the discourse of production itself, but rather how much

human production, allows infestations to interact? I would say that the means of

production should be of great concern for the historian, when discussing infestations, and

the legacy of Marxism has allowed the environmental historian to understand the

relationship between nature’s response and human industry.

Environmental historians can study works such as John Bellamy Foster’s analysis

of Marxism and ecology to understand the larger role of capitalism. To Foster, by

studying various materialist perspectives, Marx reveal the degrees of freedom that

humanity will take, particularly with regard to self-freedom, to understand “how a

materialist view of the nature of things provided the essential basis for a conception of

human freedom”. In the case of nature, however, Marx focuses on the coevolution

between humanity and nature, but that humanity’s dictated interactions with nature

resulted in the exclusion of both humanity and nature. To Marx, humanity’s

improvements have been to the detriment of natural space, but also that nature has shaped

the “”True natural history” of humanity”. However, despite the advancement made by

humanity, Marx also revealed the empirical nature of humanity’s improvements, that

nature is fragile to human production, and cannot reproduce the same as humanity. To

Marx, humanity has chosen to be alienated from nature, and that capitalism has polarized

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limitless from limited wealth, while also exploiting natural resources to create an

exploited force of social labor.

In fact, I would go one step further by saying that needing to research the means

of production is what allows infestations role in environmental change to gain ground.

Since humanity imposes its own idea of production, served as a means to improve its

condition, how does institutions like a factory, or restaurant, or school, provide both the

conditions, and the impetus, for an infestation to interact? How then can the experience of

these urban areas matter, both similarly and differently, from the rural areas such as

farms? What then separates the role of infestations between the amounts of production in

rural space when compared to urban space? Both areas are high susceptible to infestations

in their own respect, but what makes the experience of infestations different is the effect

on humanity. Humanity can experience the impact of measles, but the experience out in

the English countryside will be different than on the college campus, which has a high

probability of infection. Rural areas and urban areas both can see an influx of non-native

species of insects, however the experience in rural areas will be different, because those

invasive insects can consume crops grown in this area, which will damper improvements

to the human condition.

To understand how production has dictated the human condition, Kohei Saito’s

work on Marx’s critiques on production. In Saito’s analysis, Marx determines that

production loses a sense of human self, because the objects being produced do not hold

connections to the worker, losing their subjectivity in the process. Following the same

trend with Foster’s work, Saito discusses how Marx argues humanity’s alienation has

been replaced with complete commitment to wage labor and capital growth. Further,

humanity’s continued production aggravates the metabolism of nature, that nature’s

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inability to regrow plants or repopulate animal species, is because of increasing capitalist

ideas of technological advancementTo drive the posthuman analysis I propose for

environmental history forward, studying infestations from a Marxist perspective would

aid the environmental historian immensely.

Natural Disasters

With natural disasters, this concept of environmental change reflects a theoretical

and practical, but more practical than theoretical, reflection of the human condition. I

would say that, in a hypothetical situation, if humanity were to eliminate all natural space,

and still survive, humanity would still have a hurricane or an earthquake imposing any

disruption to the human condition. While that example is an extreme one, that can be

given a great deal of discussion about, the reality is that natural disasters will always

exist. They are, and remain as, natural responses that, in today’s society, are more

destructive and more frequent, then before. Because climate’s natural changes, and its

normal functions of change, have been thrown into a state of disarray by humanity,

natural disasters reflect the drastic changes that have occurred to climate. What is, in fact,

most striking about natural disasters, are the degree of destruction that these disasters

have delivered towards the human condition, because humanity’s success at globalization,

at global markets, at a more connected society, has also reflected its shortcomings. While

humanity praises the idea for a better tomorrow, for the local and the world populations to

grow with more technology and better conditions of sustainability, humanity has also

been poorly equipped to deal with natural disasters.

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Within the globalization period of the 1990s, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy have

shown how America’s ability to technologically progress forward, were still unable to

address the reality of the world it lives in. Ultimately, America has chosen to ignore the

harsh reality of nature’s power, in favor of capitalist gain, and that parts of America have

been abandoned in favor of this economic gain. However, America is not the only region

where natural disasters have had an effect on humanity, because the events of Typhoon

Soulik in 2013 not only reflect economic gain of South and Southeast Asia, but also

emphasize the fragility of the natural space in this region.

While capitalism has impacted global economies, an even greater issue is not just

capitalism’s global perspective, but that this economic model has been to the benefit of

Western countries. Further, the global markets, that are existent in today’s society, use the

natural space in the region to further those market interests, but it is the same cycle of

disregard for the power of natural disasters. The need for economic prosperity under a

capitalist model, I argue, has provided the most conditions to allow natural disasters their

own agency towards environmental change. The issue at hand is that humanity’s concerns

with their survival, when faced with disasters, have little to no idea about the power

disasters hold towards the human condition. Natural disasters displace populations, yet

humanity’s choice to focus on how to live better, instead of replacing previously held

ideas about disasters, is the perpetual cycle that exists with the human condition.

A shortcoming that came with discussing natural disasters was the lack of

information from non-American works. The heaviest concentration of sources came from

America, which averages a grand majority of the natural disasters around the world.

However, the historian needs to understand how susceptible major cities like London and

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Sierra Leone are still just as exposed to natural disasters the same as Louisiana or

Newark. In fact, I argue that discussing natural disasters across the world must be a new

focus for environmental historians, not just theorizing about the conditions that could

allow natural disasters to interact with non-American regions, but judging scientific data

to determine the trends that have allowed natural disasters to interact. How could the

melting of the Caucasus Mountain region produce a natural disaster such as a haboob in

the Middle East? How does the retreat of the Aral Sea provide the conditions for an

earthquake in Uzbekistan?

Posthuman or Nonhuman Environmental Change

While I have spent this work discussing the concept of posthuman environmental

change, I specifically chose to focus on this because of the conditions that exist within

natural and human space. While all the examples provided showcase a nonhuman agent,

in this case nature, of environmental change, and direct agent at that, I focus on the

posthuman because the decisions of humanity to abandon nature, to favor the ideas of

their improvement over the natural world that humanity lives in, are directing this

posthuman perspective. Further, the direction of nonhuman environmental change may be

a new step in the right direction for environmental history, but the posthuman perspective

takes the nonhuman perspective one step further, both placing nature as its own agent, but

also emphasizes how nature, given its current condition of interaction with human space

and natural space, can be studied without having to concern themselves with the direct

role. This lets the historian theorize, and reassess, the agency of humanity towards

environmental change.

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However, while I first writing this work, at first analysis, the sources I found were

directing me towards nonhuman environmental change, especially with contemporary

works, when I was discussing the historiography of environmental history. However,

while historians like Ted Steinberg and Paul Sutter discussed the power of nature, with

regard to environmental change, but I was critical that this still included humanity. While

Chakrabarty discussed the anthropocene, I felt that this was the crux that earlier historians

were missing, because of how the anthropocene is, essentially, the analysis of the limitless

interactions humans have made with the world. In fact, the direction of historiography has

been to emphasize the role of the anthropocene, but the historian will always put the events

of humanity first.

What makes studying this posthuman perspective a lucrative approach is that the

historian does not need to theorize humanity’s agency if they already know the role of

humanity towards environmental change. Since humanity will always improve their

condition, the historian can now focus on nature, remove nature’s status as the other of

environmental history, thereby giving nature the agency it deserves. In the process, the

historian is able to focus on how environmental change has been dictated by nature.

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