History serves a purpose. By extension, environmental or natural history, some would they are natural history is history, has a purpose. I believe that Paul Sutter articulated it best when he said environmental history should “lend value to the world in which they are entangled, both to narrate the past and to inform action in the present.” How one can accomplish this is a difficult question; William Cronan gives a good mechanism, when he says “environmental history is at least as important for the way it asks and answers questions - by analogy, metaphor, and parable and the search to discover their meanings - than for any specific problems it may actually solve.” In this way, Diana Davis’ Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa and David Blackbourn’s The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany best serve to educate about the past and to inform the present. Diana Davis shows her readers that the misappropriation and misuse of knowledge relating to the natural world were used to justify colonization and to declensionist policies, Diana Davis plainly says her purpose: to stop the use of the destructive declensionist narrative, “that postcolonial states have embraced” David Blackbourn on the other hand creates a timeline from the unification of Germany to the Nazis to his present day Germany and he connects multiple narratives to connect conquest of people to The Conquest of Nature,
1. Karl Jacoby book brings the remarkable accounting of the negative aspects of conservation movement to the sunlight. Jacoby uses the early years of Adirondack Park, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon Forest Preserve to demonstrate his theme of the locals’ reactions to the creation of the park and the actions from the conservationists. And the fantasies the early conservationists’ promulgated of the locals of being satanic rapists of the environment are dispelled (193).
Civilization: The West and the Rest, presented by Niall Ferguson, is a documentary in which Ferguson reveals what he calls the six killer applications which has helped Western civilization dominate over everyone else. These six applications are competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism, and work. Ferguson asks many questions over the course of the series as well as provides examples as to how Western civilization has surpassed other nations and empires. Ferguson’s main question in each episode is, “If we lose our monopoly over apps like these, could Western civilization be consigned to history.” This paper will analyze Ferguson’s questions and the examples he provides for the killer applications of competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism, and work, as well as his conclusions as to why the West has risen to the top, how the rest are passing up the West, as well as his conclusions to if the West can remain above the rest.
All the way from the start of civilization through to the Early Christianity there has been a pantheon of; destruction, recognition, wars, cultural diffusion, religious breakthroughs, laws that have been established, kings and queens crowned and dethroned. The Mesopotamian Civilization it was the land between two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers that civilization first began.
From the mightiest of Redwoods to the tiniest bacterium, nature encapsulates mankind. Nature surrounds humanity as a sovereign witness to man’s most astounding triumphs, and the disgusting atrocities perpetrated by man against his fellow man. Regardless of the circumstances, nature remains unbiased in the face of all conflicts and struggles. Nature cannot deceive or mislead like humanity can. It is for this reason why nature has an ideal perspective to view history. As shown through Mark Fiege’s book The Republic of Nature: an Environmental History of the United States, the lense of nature is extremely important to both readers and historians alike due to the fact that unlike almost all other sources, nature is unbiased and honest. This is exemplified through Fiege’s exploration of the history of the the construction of the Lincoln Memorial, the Salem witch trials, and natural law.
Geography had a tremendous impact on early civilizations, the topography of the different regions played a key role in their development and formation. This statement by Fernand Braudel “ Geography is the stage in which humanity’s endless dramas are played out” (Getz et al., Exchanges, 26) is a very moving and telling description. The terrain, whether it is natural or man made is not the end all, be all. It does however affect the stage a great deal. Mountainous areas act as blockades, which keep the societies independent, plains open up the area, and rivers enable everything to move around freely. 2
In "Tarmageddon: Dirty oil is turning Canada into a corrupt petro-state"(which appears in The Active Reader: Strategies for Academic Reading and Writing by Eric Henderson), Andrew Nikiforuk claims that Alberta tar sand project impacts on Canada's environmental reputation, public policy, and economic character(211). In the title and introduction, although Nikiforuk sounds very convincing when he uses very emotional appeal to convince his readers showing his concern and position, he lacks fairness, background information , and credibility to defend his claim successfully. In the title, Nikiforuk uses very emotional words such as "dirty oil" and "corrupt" to show his attitude , but those words lack an objective voice to convey the fairness
As you can clearly see the early Native Americans culture regarding the surrounding ecosystem would probably horrify many ecologists upon first look, but perhaps if we look deeper we can learn a truer meaning to the idea of environmentalism. If we plan to sustain the resources of the earth for our children we must find a balance and end the selfish taking of resources. We can learn much from this
The relationship between people and their environment in A Land Remembered is one where the profit from land exploitation is naturally corrupting and exponentially increases the exploiters lust for larger profit, leading to the exploiter planning larger scale endeavors in the future. The author, Patrick D. Smith (1984), suggests the idea that communities naturally grow in a hedonic cycle to crave more resources to fuel loftier endeavors that require even more resources from the environment, an idea that is also discussed by Aldo Leopold in the Land Ethic as wholly negative, and that is also part of my world view that is rather more optimistic.
1. Conquistador: It is the Spanish word corresponding to explorer or conqueror. It refers to the Spanish explorers who conquered new territories, especially the Americas, in the name of Spain. Examples of conquistadores were Hernando Cortes, who defeated the Aztec Empire and conquered Mexico in the early 16th century, and Francisco Pizarro, who triumphed over the Inca Empire.
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, Andres Dorantes, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, and Estevan were the sole survivors of a four hundred men expedition. The group of them went about the friendly Indian tribes preforming miracles of healing, with the power of Christianity. At one time five sick persons were brought into the camp, and the Indians insisted that Castillo should cure them. At sunset he pronounced a blessing over the sick, and all the Christians united in a prayer to God, asking him to restore the sick to health, and on the following morning there was not a sick person among them. De Vaca and his companions reached the Pacific coast where the Indians, showed signs of civilization, living in houses covered with straw, wearing cotton clothes and dressed skins, with belts and ornaments of stone, and cultivating their fields, but had been driven therefrom by the brutal Spanish soldiery and had taken refuge in the mountains, de Vaca and his comrades, being regarded as emissaries from the Almighty, exercised such power over these untutored savages that, at their bidding, the Indians returned to their deserted habitations, and began again to cultivate their fields, the assurance being given them by de Vaca and his companions that henceforth they would
Arnold Pacey published Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand Year History in the year 1991. Arnold Pacey was an associate lecturer at The Open University in Britain as well as an author to three additional books: Meaning in Technology, The Maze of Ingenuity, The Culture of Technology. He published all four of his books within a ten-year span. Arnold Pacey was trained as an engineer but is well known as a historian of technology because of the conclusions he drew of society and technology and their relationship. Society is defined as the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. Technology is defined as the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. Technology influences every aspect of our lives today, but we often forget that it profoundly affected the lives of past generations dating back to the beginning of civilization. Perhaps not to today’s extent, but the impact was still dramatic. New inventions or innovations produced more food, created new processes and tools, made life easier and made war more devastating. This course traces the evolution of technology and its impact on civilization from the creation of elementary tools up to today’s latest devices and even looks into future technologies.
When one thinks of natural history it can be understood how it plays a very important role in conservation. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines natural history as the study of plants, animals, and ancient human civilizations. Although wildlife conservation deals with mainly the plant and animal side of this definition, this film tells of a human civilization: the Aborigines. Quigley Down Under demonstrates Frontier ethic and the detrimental effects it has on not only animals but also people.
On the other side he discovered a vast body of water that he named "South
In the year 330 Constantine founded a new imperial city in the east, which became known as Constantinople. Accompanying Diocletian's system of tetrarchy, the creation of this new city affirmed the separation of the Roman Empire into the east and the west. The Eastern Roman Empire held a series of advantages over the west both socially and economically. The Western Roman Empire was the weaker empire and a bad leadership and government along with attacks from barbarians led to the demise of the Western Roman Empire.
In this essay, I will be discussing the origins and relevancy of Rome’s conquest of Italy during the Middle Republic. Included will be Rome’s governing structure of it’s allied states, and the treaties, both of which aided in the long term success of Rome.