ASEH 2008
Congratulations to the 2007 winner of the ASEH George Perkins Marsh Prize, Diana K. Davis and her book, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa. Ohio University Press is proud to share this honor.
To read an excerpt from Davis’s book, you can download the first chapter, “Imperial Stories and Empirical Evidence,” from our website.
Davis’s book is available for sale on our website, as are other books in our Series in Ecology and History. Titles not in the series that relate to environmental history are also be available, including the recently published The World beyond the Windshield: Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe, edited by Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller.
Resurrecting the Granary of Rome
Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa
By Diana K. DavisTales of deforestation and desertification in North Africa have been told from the Roman period to the present. Such stories of environmental decline in the Maghreb are still recounted by experts and are widely accepted without question today.…
“In carefully cataloging the troubling and troubled colonial past of North African ecology and ideas about that ecology, Diana Davis takes seriously the problem that history shapes both physical landscapes and the power-laden narratives through which we come to know them.”
A tremendous contribution!"Paul Robbins — author of Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction
The World beyond the Windshield
Roads and Landscapes in the United States and Europe
Edited by Christof Mauch and Thomas ZellerFor better or worse, the view through a car's windshield has redefined how we see the world around us. In some cases, such as the American parkway, the view from the road was the be-all and end-all of the highway; in others, such as the Italian autostrada, the view of a fast, efficient transportation machine celebrating either Fascism or its absence was the goal.…
“We accept that the coming of the automobile was a technological revolution, but we have not fully appreciated how it was a perceptual revolution as well. The essays in this wonderful volume not only provide a clear and graceful journey through various North American and European landscapes of automobility. They also reveal a fascinating and formative set of relations between designers and consumers. The World Beyond the Windshield is comparative history at its best.”
Paul S. Sutter — author of Driven Wild: How the Fight Against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement
Other Titles of Interest to ASEH Members
Between the Sea and the Lagoon
An Eco-social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana c. 1850 to Recent Times
By Emmanuel Kwaku AkyeampongThis study offers a “social interpretation of environmental process” for the coastal lowlands of southeastern Ghana. The Anlo-Ewe, sometimes hailed as the quintessential sea fishermen of the West African coast, are a previously non-maritime people who developed a maritime tradition.…
Eroding the Commons
The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890s-1963
By David M. AndersonColonial Baringo was largely unnoticed until drought and localized famine in the mid-1920s led to claims that its crisis was brought on by overcrowding and livestock mismanagement. In response to the alarm over erosion, the state embarked on a program for rehabilitation, conservation, and development.…
For the Prevention of Cruelty
The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States
By Diane L. BeersAnimal rights. Those two words conjure diverse but powerful images and reactions. Some nod in agreement, while others roll their eyes in contempt. Most people fall somewhat uncomfortably in the middle, between endorsement and rejection, as they struggle with the profound moral, philosophical, and legal questions provoked by the debate.…
Social History and African Environments
Edited by William Beinart and JoAnn McGregorThe explosion of interest in African environmental history has stimulated research and writing on a wide range of issues facing many African nations. This collection represents some of the finest studies to date.…
How Green Were the Nazis?
Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich
Edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas ZellerThe Nazis created nature preserves, championed sustainable forestry, curbed air pollution, and designed the autobahn highway network as a way of bringing Germans closer to nature. How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich is the first book to examine the Third Reich's environmental policies and to offer an in-depth exploration of the intersections between brown ideologies and green practices.…
Extracting Appalachia
Images of the Consolidation Coal Company 1910–1945
By Geoffrey L. BuckleyAs a function of its corporate duties, the Consolidation Coal Company, one of the largest coal-mining operations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, had photographers take hundreds of pictures of nearly every facet of its operations.…
Cultivating Success in Uganda
Kigezi Farmers and Colonial Policies
By Grace CarswellKigezi, a district in southwestern Uganda, is exceptional in many ways. In contrast to many other parts of the colonial world, this district did not adopt cash crops. Soil conservation practices were successfully adopted, and the region maintained a remarkably developed and individualized land market from the early colonial period.…
Highland Sanctuary
Environmental History in Tanzania's Usambara Mountains
By Christopher A. ConteFor more than a century, the world has recognized the extraordinary biological diversity of the forests of Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains. As international attention has focused on forest conservation, farmers, foresters, biologists, and the Tanzanian state have realized that only complex negotiations will save these treasured, but rapidly disappearing, landscapes.…
DeVoto’s West
History, Conservation, and the Public Good
Edited by Edward K. MullerBy Bernard DeVoto
Social commentator and preeminent western historian Bernard DeVoto vigorously defended public lands in the West against commercial interests. By the time of his death in 1955, DeVoto had published criticism, history, and fiction.…
South Africa’s Environmental History
Cases and Comparisons
Edited by Stephen Dovers, Ruth Edgecombe and Bill GuestEnvironmental history in southern Africa has only recently come into its own as a distinct field of historical inquiry. While natural resources lie at the heart of all environmental history, the field opens the door to a wide range of inquiries, several of which are pioneered in this collection.…
Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro
Population & Environment in Western Uganda 1860–1955
By Shane DoyleThe Kingdom of Bunyoro's story demonstrates convincingly that environmental change there was not a uniform, statewide process. In one of the first studies of the political ecology of a major African kingdom, Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro addresses state capacity, ideology, and government legitimacy as crucial issues.…
The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature
By Elizabeth S. D. EngelhardtContemporaries were shocked when author Mary Noailles Murfree revealed she was a woman, but modern readers may be more surprised by her cogent discussion of community responses to unwanted development.…
Triumph of the Expert
Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism
By Joseph Morgan HodgeThe most striking feature of British colonialism in the twentieth century was the confidence it expressed in the use of science and expertise, especially when joined with the new bureaucratic capacities of the state, to develop natural and human resources of the empire.…
The African AIDS Epidemic
A History
By John IliffeThis history of the African AIDS epidemic is a much-needed, accessibly written historical account of the most serious epidemiological catastrophe of modern times. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History answers President Thabo Mbeki’s provocative question as to why Africa has suffered this terrible epidemic.…
Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History
The Case of Tanganyika, 1850–1950
By Helge KjekshusThis pioneering book was one of the first to place the history of East Africa within the context of the environment. It has been used continuously for student teaching. It is now reissued with an introduction placing it within the debate that has developed on the subject; there is also an updated bibliography.…
Inventing Global Ecology
Tracking the Biodiversity Ideal in India, 1947–1997
By Michael L. LewisBlue jeans, MTV, Coca-Cola, and… ecology? We don't often think of conservation sciences as a U.S. export, but in the second half of the twentieth century an astounding array of scientists and ideas flowed out from the United States into the world, preaching the gospel of conservation-oriented ecology.…
Custodians of the Land
Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania
Edited by Gregory H. Maddox, James L. Giblin and Isaria N. KimamboFarming and pastoral societies inhabit ever-changing environments. This relationship between environment and rural culture, politics and economy in Tanzania is the subject of this volume which will be valuable in reopening debates on Tanzanian history.…
Organic Coffee
Sustainable Development by Mayan Farmers
By Maria Elena Martinez-TorresDespite deepening poverty and environmental degradation throughout rural Latin America, Mayan peasant farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, are finding environmental and economic success by growing organic coffee.…
Environmental Justice in South Africa
Edited by David A. McDonaldEnvironmental Justice in South Africa provides a systematic overview of the first ten years of postapartheid environmental politics. Written by leading activists and academics in the field, this edited collection offers the first critical perspective of environmental justice theory and practice in South Africa.…
Encountering the Past in Nature
Essays in Environmental History
Edited by Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko SaikkuA deeper understanding of contemporary environmental problems requires us to know where we come from, and the study of environmental history will help us in that quest. Environmental history, in short, may be described as an attempt to study the interaction between humans and nature in the past.…
African Sacred Groves
Ecological Dynamics and Social Change
Edited by Michael J. Sheridan and Celia NyamweruIn Western scholarship, Africa’s so-called sacred forests are often treated as the remains of primeval forests, ethnographic curiosities, or cultural relics from a static precolonial past. Their continuing importance in African societies, however, shows that this “relic theory” is inadequate for understanding current social and ecological dynamics.…
Imperial Gullies
Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho
By Kate B. ShowersOnce the grain basket for South Africa, much of Lesotho has become a scarred and degraded landscape. The nation’s spectacular erosion and gullying have concerned environmentalists and conservationists for more than half a century.…
Black Poachers, White Hunters
A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya
By Edward I. SteinhartFor centuries, Kenya’s game-laden plains and forests were the rewarding hunting grounds of her native African population. Black Poachers, White Hunters traces the history of hunting there in the colonial era, describing the British attempt to impose the practices and values of nineteenth-century European aristocratic hunts.…
Inventing Pollution
Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800
By Peter ThorsheimBritain's supremacy in the nineteenth century depended in large part on its vast deposits of coal. This coal not only powered steam engines in factories, ships, and railway locomotives but also warmed homes and cooked food.…
The Green Archipelago
Forestry in Preindustrial Japan
By Conrad TotmanThis inaugural volume in the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History is the paperback edition of Conrad Totman’s widely acclaimed study of Japan’s environmental policies over the centuries.…
Natures of Colonial Change
Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei
By Jacob A. TroppIn this groundbreaking study, Jacob A. Tropp explores the interconnections between negotiations over the environment and an emerging colonial relationship in a particular South African context—the Transkei—subsequently the largest of the notorious “homelands” under apartheid.…
Tropical Pioneers
Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800–1900
By James L. A. Webb Jr.In 1800, the highlands of Sri Lanka had some of the most biologically diverse primary tropical rainforest ecosystems in the world. By 1900, only a few craggy corners and mountain caps had been spared the fire stick.…
Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa
Edited by Mats Widgren and John E.G. SuttonIslands of intensive agriculture are areas of local cultivation surrounded by low-density livestock herders or extensive cultivators. Along the line of the East Africa Rift Valley, and in the highlands on either side, communities of considerable historical depth have developed highly specialized agricultural regimes, employing such labor-intensive devices as furrow irrigation, hillside terracing, and stall-feeding of cattle.…
