African Environments and Resources (Routledge Library Editions: Development)

Environmental history, the study of how human societies and the natural world shape each other over time, developed fairly recently as a distinct field of historical inquiry.

Environmental History - African Studies - Oxford Bibliographies

It emerged in the s at about the same time as the modern academic study of African history, and the two fields influenced each other from the beginning. African historical studies though brought a slightly different approach to the field of environmental history. African environmental history has tended to counter narratives brought forward from the colonial era.

Throughout Africa, colonial powers both claimed that African societies harmed their environments because of lack of knowledge and skill and threatened precious landscapes and their animal occupants. In contrast, works on African environmental history draw on a variety of techniques to uncover how environment and society shaped each other.

Rather than presenting Africa as an untouched Eden, such studies stretch back to the origins of agriculture and animal husbandry to demonstrate that the landscapes of Africa were both anthropogenic and resilient. Environmental history in Africa exhibits several central themes.

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First, it tends to focus on rural areas and agrarian change. While many African societies underwent rapid urbanization by the beginning of the 21st century, throughout the 20th century much of Africa remained sparsely populated and most Africans lived in rural agricultural or pastoral societies. African environmental history studies the lived-in environment, not natural history. A major theme of African environmental history has been the conflict over wildlife and forest conservation.

Numerous studies have shown that colonial and post-colonial conservation efforts have deprived African communities of access to resources and land they had long controlled. Likewise, many studies have focused on the issues of soil conservation and agricultural intensification. For all its maturity now as a field, there remain important issues that have not been adequately addressed in the literature.

A New Scramble for Africa? The Rush for Energy Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa

First, the environmental history of urbanization in Africa has only just begun to receive attention. Second, as Africa industrializes, the issue of pollution has hardly been addressed. Finally, the effects of anthropogenic climate change need to be put into the context of the long-term ways that human societies have shaped African environments.

Several prominent environmental historians have produced overviews of the field as it matured. Beinart provides a historiographic essay while McCann uses cases studies to highlight important issues in the field. Maddox attempts a synthesis stretching back to the emergence of modern humans in Africa.

Beinart and McGregor presents a representative set of case studies. The comparative history Beinart and Coates highlights the similarities between the United States and South Africa. Tilley examines the production of scientific knowledge about Africa during the colonial era. A review of the field by one of its leading scholars; Beinart finds that African environmental history has emphasized the capacity of human action to shape the environment and the ways in which Africans have developed unique explanations for their lives in the biological world.

Beinart, William, and Peter Coates. This comparative study focuses on the similarities in the establishment of settler societies and their emergence as industrial ones by the 20th century. While immigrants did not demographically overwhelm indigenous populations in South Africa as they did in the United States, many similarities exist in views of nature and eventually conservation between the two societies.

BOOK SERIES

Social History and African Environments. This collection serves as a primer for environmental history in Africa.

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Essays by some of the most important historians in the field reveal the range and depth of the subject. As such, it makes innovative linkages to debates regarding environmental sustainability, the resource curse, geopolitics and development cooperation. This volume compares the strategies of the key players in the struggle for Sub-Saharan energy resources: Brazil, Britain, China and the United States.

It sheds light on the domestic impacts of resource booms in Mozambique and South Africa, and critically evaluates the potential for regional cooperation on energy. It is a very valuable contribution to an otherwise fragmented debate. The book captures in great detail the varied experiences across the continent while retaining an overall intellectual coherency.

I strongly recommend it. Skip to content Books. This book is the first to bring together comparative perspectives on: The strategies of state and non-state actors involved in the exploitation of sub-Saharan energy resources. The potential and pitfalls of new forms of cooperation on energy southwards of the Sahara. The domestic opportunities and challenges of the present energy resource boom.