Encountering the Past in Nature doc

An excellent introduction to the kind of history most needed in the twenty-first century.” —Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History, University of Kansas “In a f

_Encountering_ the_PAst

=Essays_in=Environmental=History=

=edited_by_Timo=Myllyntaus_and_Mikko_Saikku=

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

“This short book from a small country [Finland] is rich in imaginative,

inno-vative contexts Ranging expertly over several continents, including North

America, it argues that nature is everywhere an active presence, a formative

influence, in the making of human history An excellent introduction to the

kind of history most needed in the twenty-first century.”

—Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History,

University of Kansas

“In a field traditionally dominated by works on the United States, the [book

offers] a fresh international perspective, finding fertile ground for the study of

people and nature in diverse lands.”

—Economic History Review

A deeper understanding of contemporary environmental problems requires

us to understand the interaction between humans and nature in the past

How have human societies affected their environment and vice versa? What

does history tell us about ecological change?

The essays in Encountering the Past in Nature provide various approaches to

the new discipline Experts with diverse educational backgrounds tackle

important issues ranging from the intellectual formation of environmental

concepts to case studies of forest history and animal extinction Most essays

focus on the issue of wilderness and the various uses of forest resources

Introductory essays elaborate on the historiography and methodology of the

new field of historical study

Encountering the Past in Nature is a welcome addition to the introductory

texts currently available in the United States

Timo Myllyntaus is senior lecturer of economic and social history at the

University of Helsinki Mikko Saikku is assistant director of the North

American Studies Program at the Renvall Institute for Area and Cultural

Studies, University of Helsinki

SERIES IN ECOLOGY AND HISTORY

designed by Bonnie Campbell

Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History

James L A Webb, Jr , Series Editor

Conrad Totman ,

The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan

Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku, eds ,

Encountering the Past in Nature: Essays in

Environmental History

Foreword by Alfred W Crosby

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

Athens

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

Series Editor’s Foreword © 2001 by James L A Webb, Jr Copyright © 1999 Timo Myllyntaus, Mikko Saikku, the other

contributors, and Helsinki University Press

First published in Finland by Helsinki University Press, 1999

Second, revised edition, 2001 Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper

10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 5 4 3 2 1 Cover art adapted from Mark Catesby’s eighteenth-century illustration of the “Largest White Bill’d Woodpecker and the Willow Oak,” from

The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands

(London, 1731–43) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Encountering the past in nature : essays in environmental history / edited

by Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku ; foreword by Alfred W Crosby.

GF13 E5 2000

304.2'09—dc21

00-057994

TM

Series Editor’s Foreword

Modernization and the Concept of Nature: On the

Reproduction of Environmental Stereotypes

Life in the Borderland Forests: The Takeover of Nature

and Its Social Organization in North Karelia

The Vanishing and Reappearing Tropical Forest: Forest

Management and Land Use in Thailand

vi v Contents

“Home in the Big Forest”: Decline of the Ivory-Billed

Woodpecker and Its Habitat in the United States

Figures and Table

Figures

4 Major subdivisions of the Eastern Deciduous Forest

in the United States as it existed at the time of

5 The original and late-nineteenth-century distribution

of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States 105

6 The pyramid of orientations in environmental history 154

Table

Key factors affecting the state of the environment in the

Series Editor’s Foreword

he Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History is

pleased to publish Encountering the Past in Nature, a collection

of essays in environmental history by a group of Finnish scholarsthat was ¤rst released by the Helsinki University Press in 1999 Thisnew edition provides a provocative and eclectic set of six readingsthat is suitable for adoption in both world history and global envi-ronmental history courses

Three essays deal with change over time in forested zones, indifferent parts of the Northern Hemisphere and in different histori-cal periods—the northernmost forests of the European taiga, fromthe Stone Age to the present; the subtropical lowlands of NorthAmerica in the period c 1600–c 1940; and the wet tropics of main-land Southeast Asia, c 1950 to the present The other essays addresstopics in historiography and intellectual history—the evolution ofhistorical writing about the environment in Finland and the UnitedStates; the contradictory concepts about the natural world that in-form Western thinking about “nature”; and the role that the idea ofthe environment can play as an explanatory factor in human his-tory There are essays in “big history” here, as well as challengingcase studies

Encountering the Past in Nature also provides instructive

exam-ples of how environmental historians are working with a wide ety of interdisciplinary approaches to shed light on the complexT

vari-x v James L A Webb, Jr.

ecological processes of the past Environmental historians are ing new perspectives by integrating data and insights from both thenatural and social sciences in order to write environmentally in-formed history that speaks to our present-day concerns

forg-It may well be that no one of us can grasp the full complexity ofthe historical and present-day transformations in global ecology.However, contemporary environmental history scholarship, pushed

by the ecological imperatives of the early twenty-¤rst century, isleading us to seek in that direction

James L A Webb, Jr

January 2000

Our attention shifted not because environmental degradation isnew That is not the case: Iraq’s southern reaches changed fromfarmland to salty desert a very long time ago, and the Mediterraneanlittoral lost its forest cover at least as long ago Our attention shiftedbecause environmental problems, once local or, at worst, regional,now loom as global Worldwide warming of temperatures, expand-ing ozone holes over the poles, the denuding of tropical forests—we,historians and all the rest of us, fought hard to stay blind to suchphenomena, but the problems have won and have muscled theirway onto the front pages of our newspapers and into historians’studies.

Proper consideration of the environmental threat requires lectual retooling Scientists have to modify their predilection for thetightly de¤ned problem with high walls around it to keep out “extra-neous” information Environmental problems, ¤guratively and lit-erally, spill over the edges of laboratory benches and of reductionistH

intel-xii v Alfred W Crosby

de¤nition Environmental matters do not submit gracefully to enti¤c rigor The heart as well as the head is often involved becauseour convenience and even our lives are affected; and often the quality

sci-of the data we use to de¤ne environmental matters is miserably poor

by the standards of physicists, chemists, and even ¤eld naturalists.The scientists need the help of scholars, that is, people devoted

to exactitude and truth but accustomed to bias (their own cluded) and to wringing truth out of dubious data Scientists needhistorians because historians can place environmental problems intheir chronological and cultural context The scientists sometimesseem to think that solving such problems is no more than a matter

in-of putting things right, and they have little idea in-of how subjective aconcept such as “right” can be It certainly varies from society to so-ciety and from time to time For the environmental activist it oftenmeans “natural,” that is to say, the way things would be but for theintervention of humanity But, as Ismo Björn shows us in his chap-ter, humanity has shaped Finland, for instance, for a very long time,and untouched nature has not existed there since as far back as thelast retreat of the glaciers

For a politician and economist, “right” may mean desalinatingthe west Texas farmland so that it can produce a pro¤t and supportinhabitants again To the dedicated environmentalist, ornitholo-gist, and shotgun manufacturer it may mean letting the river re¶oodthe ¤elds to reestablish fen country, providing endangered specieswith a home again, giving ornithologists something to investigate,and ensuring lots of ducks, and therefore duck hunters, thereby cre-ating a market for shotguns It is society, not science, that de¤nes

“right,” and it is historians who can supply a list of alternativede¤nitions that society can usefully evaluate because it has livedwith them before

On the other hand, environmental historians have a lot to learnfrom the scientists A liberal arts education, which is all that mosthistorians have, has prepared them to assess public appreciation ofenvironmental affairs and the intricacies of environmental politics,but not to understand and evaluate what scientists have and have

chemis-is what one wants to know about It seems likely that science chemis-is manity’s greatest intellectual achievement, and historians have tomake their peace with it—or retreat to the questions inspired byyesterday’s problems.

hu-Finnish society has a special need for environmentalists, of boththe scienti¤c and historical variety Its home is in the far north,where the penalties for not paying attention to one’s environment—for instance, whether the temperature has or has not been coldenough for long enough to make it safe to drive the snowmobileacross the lake—are often immediate and irreversible There is not,

I think, a technologically advanced society in the world whose ends and literature are so full of forests, waters, and wild animals

leg-From The Kalevala to Aleksis Kivi’s Seitsemän veljestä to the stories

and poems of the current generation of Finnish writers, naturelooms large

It looms as large economically as emotionally For all the cesses of Finnish technology—mobile phones, icebreakers, andall—the nation’s most important export remains forest products

suc-As the old slogan goes, “Finland stands on wooden legs.” Her ests seem to stretch on forever and, therefore, her economic future,but so centuries ago did France’s, so a few generations ago didsouthern Brazil’s Environmental historians can supply the Finnswith dozens of object lessons of forests clear-cut to the ground byvillains, and, as well, with true tales of bugs and beetles, rusts andfungi that have spread through forests thinned by the ecologicallyunsophisticated Finns need their forests for their peace of mind,their export trade—for their futures—and therefore must learn tothink of them ecologically as well as economically

for-Finns need to harvest their forests in accordance with the intent

of “sustainable yields,” but these are ambiguous words The scientists

xiv v Alfred W Crosby

may be able to tell what they mean, if all that they mean is that everyyear there will be some kind of ground cover in the spring But whatplants should be sustained? Factory forests with trees lined up likepotato plants? The wild, variegated sort of woodlands as they existedbefore before what? Before industrial lumbering? Before agricul-ture? Historians like Lehtinen and Björn can tell us about what Finnsmean and have meant Otherwise, forest policies will be driven bymythic memories alternating with prophesies of wealth

Demography and migration and, therefore, environmentalchange in Finland has, for a century and more, been largely a mat-ter of industrialization and urbanization As recently as a genera-tion or so ago the real Finn was supposed to be tending cattlesomewhere scores or perhaps hundreds of kilometers north of Hel-sinki That Finn remains the classic Finn, but increasingly mostFinns, or at least a plurality of such, live on or near the southerncoast and travel to the countryside, as Ari Lehtinen puts it, on vaca-tions, in ¶ight “from the repressions of modern life in the cities.”The forest is reoccupying some of the land it lost to the farmers andloggers; starlings, which depend on meadows for access to theirfood, are decreasing in number Minor native ¶ora, kept in cornersand under fences by grazing cattle, advance again Exotic plants es-tablish themselves in reopening ecological niches Historians canenhance general understanding of such trends by putting them inchronological sequence for us

The old industrialization of William Blake’s “satanic mills” gaverise to row on row of worker housing and to air and streams pollutedwith soot, sawdust, and sewerage The historians can tell us aboutthat and about how Finns perceived the threat and how they reacted

to it The new industrialization of shiny white factories and vastparking lots pollutes air and streams in new ways The scientists cantell us about that The historians can help their fellow citizens to de-cide not just what should be done about that (which may be obvious

in the abstract: stop it), but what measures are most likely to actuallywork, given Finnish experience and general attitudes

Foreword v xv

If experience were recorded as if by a tape machine in the brain,

so it could be played back in total for reanalysis in the light of freshevents, then Finland, small though it is, would have spawned agoodly number of the better environmental historians on earth I saythat because experience has proved that the Finnish ecosystems—land, lake, and sea—are delicate, easily disrupted, and slow to heal.Historians can chronicle that at length and con¤rm that the rigors of

a far northern climate have always kept the margin for survival forplant, animal, and human narrow Clear-cut a Savo forest and youwill surely be in your grave before anything resembling the eco-system you destroyed returns Clear-cut a forest in Lapland, and itwill be centuries, even millennia—if ever

v

Finns must take care of their country, must move as carefullythrough their forests and fens as though through a house of cards

A northern ecosystem may take longer in actual time than a house

of cards to collapse, but not in the foreshortened view of mentally impoverished grandchildren

environ-Finland’s historians have lessons for all peoples, for instance,those of the United States, with its relatively forgiving midtemperate-zone ecosystems Even those systems cannot survive rapid and mas-sive change unscathed, as Mikko Saikku’s story of the extinction ofthe ivory-billed woodpecker illustrates The lessons of Finnish en-vironmental history are even more pertinent for peoples who live

in the midst of similarly delicate ecosystems, Siberians and ans, for instance And it is not only northern lands that recoverslowly from ecological insult Amazonia, Congo, Malaysia—theseand similarly hot, wet lands are as vulnerable to irreparable envi-ronmental damage as Finland Olavi Luukkanen tells us a tale offorest management in Thailand that may differ in its details fromtales of forest management in Finland, but the lesson is the same.Forests are increasingly hostages to general cultural attitudes and topolitical trends

Canadi-xvi v Alfred W Crosby

There seems to be only one group devoted to informing usabout our environments, our environmental attitudes, and our en-vironmental politics This is the new profession of the environmen-tal historians, of which Finland has already produced several,whose work you may read in the following pages

Alfred W Crosby

Preface

he globe has huge temporal dimensions For ages barren natureexisted without living things Life began on earth some 3.5 bil-

lion years ago, but modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared

per-haps less than half a million years ago Although latecomers amongthe living things, humans as a species have transformed the earth themost Many of these transformations have not been bene¤cial to theother species—nor to humans Today ecological damage is notmerely a set of local phenomena Environmental degradation is aglobal problem

Successive civilizations have faced environmental problems andhave sometimes been aware of causal factors underlying these un-fortunate changes Considering the gravity of degradation in manycases, it is paradoxical that historical research dedicated to the study

of these topics did not begin until quite recently This book aims tocontribute to the ongoing discussion in environmental history.The foundation for this collection of essays was laid during theseminars and series of lectures that we organized during the 1990s

at the University of Helsinki On various occasions, we have had theopportunity to share the enthusiasm of students of environmentalissues We are indebted to the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of So-cial Sciences for providing us with funding for these events Wehave also had the privilege of becoming acquainted with dozens ofcolleagues in the ¤eld and drawing on their wealth of knowledge.T

xviii v Preface

We owe warm thanks to Dr Alfred W Crosby, Dr Yrjö Haila,and Dr Yrjö Vasari, who have encouraged us to devise academiccoursework in environmental history and compile this anthology

We also wish to express our gratitude to several referees who vided us with constructive suggestions and valuable criticism dur-ing different stages of the writing and editorial process

pro-In editing the text, we received substantial assistance from Dr.Frances Karttunen, Ms Debra Rae Cohen, and Dr Harvey Green,whom we gratefully acknowledge In addition, cordial thanks areextended to Ms Milla Laaksonen, our copy editor, who designedthe layout of the ¤rst edition

In compiling this book, we have had the pleasure of workingwith a group of dedicated and patient historians who have activelyparticipated in the editing process of their manuscripts The chap-

ters in this book are more products of enthusiasm, aus Liebe zur

Kunst, than bread-and-butter jobs Of course, without our academic

occupations as researchers and teachers, this book would never havebeen completed We have had pleasant facilities at the Department

of Social Science History and the Renvall Institute for Area and tural Studies to do editing in addition to our daily work We alsogratefully acknowledge the fellowships and grants awarded by theAcademy of Finland and the Ministry of Trade and Industry for ourprimary occupations

Cul-Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

Contributors

Ismo Björn, Ph.D., Researcher at the Karelian Institute,

Univer-sity of Joensuu

Alfred W Crosby, Ph.D., Academician at the Academy of

Fin-land, Professor Emeritus of Geography, History, and AmericanStudies at the University of Texas at Austin

Ari Aukusti Lehtinen, Ph.D., Professor of Geography at the

University of Joensuu

Olavi Luukkanen, Ph.D., Professor and Leader of the Tropical

Silviculture Unit at the Department of Forest Ecology, University ofHelsinki

Timo Myllyntaus, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow at the

Acad-emy of Finland and Senior Lecturer of Economic and Social tory at the University of Helsinki

His-Mikko Saikku, Lic Phil., Assistant Director of the North can Studies Program at the Renvall Institute for Area and CulturalStudies, University of Helsinki

nvironmental history has established itself in American deme since the 1970s A similar development has taken place inEurope, where human-induced changes have a much longerand more far-reaching history Although interaction between hu-mans and nature has always been part of European historiography,environmental history in the present sense of the term, with explicitecological consciousness, has been written for less than three decades.This introduction concentrates on the rise of environmentalhistory as an academic discipline in Finland, and with reference tothe United States From the viewpoint of environmental history,these two countries have several things in common, and one reasonfor the similarities is that in Finland and the United States the actualtakeover of nature by human populations was accomplished onlyduring the last three centuries.

aca-What is environmental history, and what have the central

E

2 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

themes in the environmental historiography of the past centurybeen? Are there themes common to both American and Finnishenvironmental history? Furthermore, how is environmental his-tory viewed today by academe, and what will the future of the ¤eldbe? This brief prologue and the present set of essays aim to shedlight on these questions by trying to de¤ne environmental historyand by surveying the research and making comparisons betweendiffering approaches to the ¤eld

Environmental history, in short, may be described as an tempt to elucidate the interaction between humans and nature inthe past How have human societies affected their environmentand vice versa? In comparison with traditional historiography, en-vironmental history emphasizes the role of humans as an integralpart of their natural surroundings Modern environmental his-tory strives for a fuller understanding of today’s environmentalissues and may even provide data for contemporary problem solv-ing What ecological models does history offer us? Which havebeen the adaptive and maladaptive human societies through his-tory, and how did they function in their relations with the naturalenvironment?

at-Donald Worster and other American historians have offereduseful de¤nitions and have suggested approaches to the core of en-vironmental history.1Important questions seem to center on thevarious productive strategies of human societies, their ideologicalbackgrounds, and their consequences and comparisons across cul-ture and place What kind of society and environment emerge fromthe interaction between these forces?

In his well-known essay, “Doing Environmental History,” ster observes that there are three levels on which environmental his-tory proceeds.2 There is nature itself and the human socioeconomicand intellectual realms as they interact with the natural environ-ment The most prominent approach in contemporary research isprobably the study of the interaction between human modes of pro-duction and the environment This ¤eld of study is concerned withconnections between the economy and environmental change in the

Wor-Environmental History v 3

past.3Histories of environmental policy focus on environmentalchange in relation to public control, especially legislation, while eco-logical history attempts to reconstruct natural environments andtheir changes in the past, relying heavily on the natural sciences andtheir methodologies.4The intellectual realm is prominent in the his-toriography of human ideas about the environment, or the study ofhow humans have viewed the natural world in their science, reli-gion, art, and ethics.5

In environmental historiography, there has often been a erate effort to create an interdisciplinary synthesis, often by combin-ing existing information from diverse disciplines in a new way Notsurprisingly, the research topic tends to dictate the approach, sourcematerials, and research methods used Thus the source materialsutilized in environmental history may vary enormously, from oralhistories and traditional written documents to data provided bymodern science, such as dendrochronology, and pollen and sedi-ment studies

delib-The Rise of Environmental History

Although environmental history as a distinctive academic ¤eldemerged only during the 1970s, its roots go back over a century.Some scholars of the frontier and western schools of American his-toriography, such as Frederick Jackson Turner, Walter PrescottWebb, and James C Malin, stressed the role played by the naturalenvironment in the formation of American society.6 A similar ap-proach can be identi¤ed in the work of their Finnish contemporar-ies, the historian Väinö Voionmaa and the anthropologist HelmerSmeds, who claimed that natural conditions had profoundlyshaped Finnish society.7

Current Finnish research in the ¤eld has partly evolved fromthis earlier, “instinctive” environmental history In the agricultur-ally unforgiving natural conditions of the Nordic countries, it hasbeen a common conviction that nature has always had a distinctive

4 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

impact on human activities; for centuries Nordic peoples have lived

“at the mercy of nature.” In the agricultural Finland of the past,survival depended on the efforts of poorly connected communities.With small local stocks of foodstuffs and weak communication fa-cilities, there was no room for large errors of judgment Tradition-ally, Finns have been primarily interested in four environmentalthemes: climate, forest, water resources, and landscape This out-look of the former farmer society has been re¶ected by academicresearch Like other scholars, historians have dealt with these piv-otal elements of nature in their works

In Finland, the tradition of research into climatic history has itsbeginnings in the eighteenth century The French school of econo-mists, Physiocrats, and the Enlightenment in general inspiredscholars such as the ¤rst Finnish professor of chemistry, Pehr AdrianGadd, to register natural phenomena and climatic changes.8Hepublished widely on climatic impact on agriculture Swidden culti-vation and the dredging of rivers are other examples of the areasexplored in his multidisciplinary works related to environmentalissues.9

The main emphasis in the early meteorological observationswas on weather conditions during the growing and harvesting sea-sons, as well as annual temperature pro¤les In the nineteenth cen-tury, special attention was paid to deviations from the expectedseasonal temperatures, such as early night frosts or exceptionallycold periods In Finland, the growing season is short and unstable.During the latter half of the twentieth century, the average monthlytemperature has annually been above freezing in the southern part

of the country for seven months and in Lapland for only ¤vemonths Snow and frost limit the pasturing season to only a fewmonths For these climatic reasons, conditions for agriculture havebeen critical for a long time

From the late seventeenth century to the third quarter of thenineteenth century, marked harvest failures took place in Finlandroughly once in a decade, and three widespread famines per centurywere not rare In western Europe, the last massive harvest failure and

Environmental History v 5

consequent famine induced by poor weather was experienced inFinland in the 1860s, when over one hundred thousand people, ornearly 6 percent of the population, died within three years because

of hunger and diseases related to malnutrition or worsened livingconditions Early Finnish studies on harvest failures and famines of-ten came very close to the form of scholarship now called environ-mental history.10

The environmental viewpoint was even more pronounced inthe geographical work of Ilmari Hustich who, during the 1940s and1950s, explored the historical relationship between agriculture andclimate in northern Finland.11 Weather conditions, temperaturechanges, the amount of rainfall, and their in¶uence on agriculturehave also been research topics in the United States For example, theDust Bowl phenomenon of the 1930s has attracted considerable aca-demic interest.12

Finland is often regarded as a small country However, thatviewpoint is based on population, which is now 5.1 million Interms of territory, Finland is one of the largest countries inEurope—just behind Russia, the Ukraine, France, Spain, Sweden,and Germany Its geographical features differ from the rest of thecontinent: there are more relatively untouched natural areas andfewer built environments than in central Europe For example,lakes and rivers constitute a greater percentage of Finland’s surfacearea than cultivated land, which makes up only 8 percent of the to-tal territory of 130,524 square miles (338,145 sq km) In addition, thecountry’s forest resources are the third largest in Europe Two-thirds of Finland is covered by forest, which forms the country’sprincipal natural assets.13

In western Europe, Finland is the country that most recently cutits huge old-growth forests In the late eighteenth century, nearlyone-third of the forests in the southern part of the country weregenuine old growth (more than 200 years old) In northern Finland,which covers the area from the region around the River Oulu and

Lake Oulu in the boreal zone to the treeless fjells in northern

Lap-land, the proportion was almost half of the forested area At present,

6 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

the percentage of old-growth forests in the southern part of thecountry is just 0.1, and in the northern part it is still more than 10.14Traditionally, Finns have highly valued their woodlands becauseforests have supplied them nutrition such as game, berries, andmushrooms, as well as ¤rewood, charcoal, building materials, in-dustrial raw materials, and possibilities for cash earnings beyond

Figure 1 Finland and the Baltic Sea Rim

Environmental History v 7

subsistence exploitation or harvesting From the Middle Ages to the1990s, the main export items—¤rst furs, then tar and pitch, woodenships, and later sawn timber, pulp, and paper—were obtained fromforests Over three centuries, Finns have debated the most rationalways to utilize their forests The fate of central and southern Europe,well-known regions that destroyed their forests and timber re-sources, has been a continuous menace for Finns Generally, it hasnot been enough for them that most of the landed area is covered bygrowing trees Only old-growth forests have been regarded as realforests by environmentally conscious Finns Still, the need for ¤re-wood and building materials, the practice of slash-and-burn culti-vation, the production of tar and potash, sawn timber, and laterpaper led to the cutting of old-growth forests That kind of develop-ment created pressures; traditional values were confronted witheconomic needs Finnish historians in the last quarter of the twenti-eth century deepened their investigation of the commercialization

of forest use and values of modern forest management

Although old-growth forests have been diminished to a tinyfraction of the total forested area, compared to the signi¤cant pro-

portion that still existed some three hundred years ago, erämaa, the

customary Finnish concept of wilderness, has remained a pivotal ment in Finnish people’s attitudes toward their national landscape.The most worshiped icon of national scenery is that of clean bluelakes in the embrace of the thick green forest, viewed from a highgranite cliff.15 However, it is worth mentioning that the concept of

ele-erämaa does not imply completely intact or virgin nature berührten Natur”), although old-growth forests are a central element

(“un-of the erämaa.16 In Finnish, erämaa (literally hunting ground) means

a remote, very sparsely inhabited forested region endowed with gamebut not totally undisturbed, because Finns have traditionally be-lieved that at least somebody should have the right and opportunity

to hunt and ¤sh there This concept stems from prehistoric times

when erätalous (hunting economy), a subsistence system based on

the mixture of hunting, ¤shing, and agriculture, was common inFinland Since the small, scattered population of the traditional

8 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

erämaa, both Sami and Finnish, was subjected to taxation, this derness” was certainly a cross-cultural construct, de¤ned by thedominant culture of the southwestern coast.17

“wil-Nearly seven hundred years of Swedish rule before 1809 dated a centralized taxation system in Finland and classi¤ed peopleaccording their economic position in the system Already in theMiddle Ages, taxation and other economic interests in¶uenced howdifferent areas and environments, including remote forests, werevalued

consoli-Although erämaa is considered wild, untamed, and dangerous,

it does not include a connotation of “untouched by humans,” asdoes the Anglo-American concept of wilderness The Swedish con-

cept vildmark sounds equivalent to wilderness Vildmark is a wide

area—not necessarily forest—that is neither used for agricultural

purposes nor inhabited Forested vildmark has a connotation of

vir-gin forest, which is desolate, gloomy, and gruesome Its counterparts

in Finnish are korpi, salo, and sydänmaa (heart of the land); they all

mean the deepest backwoods distant from villages and traf¤c routes

However, these terms denote a smaller area than erämaa, which

can-not be passed through by foot in a day or two It is important that

neither vildmark nor its Finnish counterparts exclude hunting and

other occasional utilization; thus those areas are remote and dif¤cult

to reach but not totally outside of human in¶uence

In Swedish, another word, ödemark (desolate land), is more commonly used than vildmark to describe remote areas of the bo- real zone and is often considered equivalent to the Finnish erämaa Although both ödemark and erämaa may represent quite similar forested areas, they still have different connotations; ödemark is

presumably more an administrative term meaning an uncultivatedand economically inactive forested district However, this conceptdescribes the present situation and does not imply that the region

in question has always been untouched Former villages within

öde-mark may have become desolate for some reason From the

govern-ment’s viewpoint, ödemark means a forested area that is not

inhabited by taxpayers.18

Environmental History v 9

In the American discourse, wilderness is de¤ned as pure andoriginal nature outside of human in¶uence.19 Although there aredozens of expressions in Finnish to describe wooded areas, intraditional Finnish thinking, there was no equivalent to the term

“wilderness.” The probable reason for this is that until the twentieth century Finland lacked the clear opposite to wilderness,the built environment of big cities

mid-If we really must ¤nd the closest Finnish counterpart to the

American idea of wilderness, it might be aarniometsä, primeval

for-est, but that is a fairly poetic expression of literary style and sizes the old age and density of the standing stock

empha-In the Finnish context, entirely undisturbed, pathless ness is an abstract concept Because all of the environment around

wilder-us is at least in theory exploitable by humans, it is the degree of ploitation that, in fact, varies For centuries, Finns have lived in for-ests and extended their hunting trips into uninhabited regions Theentire territory was used in some ways already in the prehistoric era.For a long time, it has been acknowledged that any exploitative use

ex-of forest, except for reasonable hunting, ¤shing, and collecting the

bounty of nature, endangers the existence of erämaa The utilization

of erämaa by humans easily degrades wilderness to talousmetsä

(“economy forest”), a forest serving primarily commercial interests.The landscape of forests and watercourses is anchored to theFinnish identity At the same time, the use of these natural re-sources has been considered acceptable and necessary From time

to time, the cult of the national landscape and the use of natural dowments have been thought to con¶ict For a long time, debateshave raged about the limits of conservation and the most desirableforms of the economic utilization of natural resources Different in-terest groups have had contrasting approaches to this issue, andtheir views have been re¶ected in the writings of historians

en-In early-nineteenth-century Finland, a population of mately 1 million lived in a traditional agricultural economy, withonly a minimally ef¤cient technological apparatus If such a sparselypopulated country with rather modest economic needs found it

approxi-10 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

impossible to preserve its old-growth forests, the task to recreatethem on a signi¤cant scale seems utopian for modern society, whichhas industrialized nearly all of its resources, both human and natu-ral, for the service of the national economy.20 Alongside demands toconserve the remaining old-growth forests, which make up 1 to 2percent of the total forested area in Finland, there has been discus-sion of returning parts of the managed economic forests to their an-cient state

Although achieving a high standard of living has caused no jor environmental catastrophes in Finland, the economic growth,which has been spectacular in European terms during the past 150years, has demanded measures that have resulted in a signi¤cantenvironmental degradation Awareness of that degradation hasgradually increased in Finnish national consciousness and politicaldiscourse

ma-What we can now label as environmental history was writtendecades ago by certain inventive economic, political, and intellec-tual historians and cultural geographers in both Finland and theUnited States A vital difference between these “instinctive” envi-ronmental historians of the past and the environmental historians

of the past three decades is their degree of environmental sciousness Traditional historians, tangled up in the anthropocen-tric problems of their time, often lacked a clear understanding ofnatural processes, and they maintained a close connection to politi-cal and economic questions, even as they addressed explicitly envi-ronmental issues

con-Despite their education in the traditional anthropocentric school,there were Finnish researchers at the turn of the century who had al-ready approached historical problems from an environmentally con-scious viewpoint For example, the historian Ernst G Palméncritically investigated the government policy of arti¤cially loweringwater levels in Finnish lakes, carried out in order to obtain more ara-ble land He argued that such a policy would be harmful to naturalprocesses and often proved useless to farmers.21 Similarly, Adolf E.Nordenskiöld and Ragnar Hult, along with the Finnish learned

Environmental History v 11

societies, campaigned for natural parks and conservation in nineteenth-century Finland At the time, their ideas were new andpathbreaking—not only in their home country but also in the rest ofthe Nordic countries These efforts showed at least a certain degree ofenvironmental awareness, akin to that of Gifford Pinchot andTheodore Roosevelt in the United States.22

late-In the interwar years, the conservation movement gained mentum In Finland as in many other Western countries, it was areaction to rising industrialization and modernization The trail-blazer of the Finnish conservation movement, Rolf Palmgren, criti-cized the “blind materialism” of his time The movement gainedpolitical support, and the parliament passed the ¤rst conservationlaw in 1923 In the following year, Palmgren was nominated to thenew post of superintendent of conservation.23

mo-In the spring of 1938, four academic associations decided to set

up the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (Suomen nonsuojeluliitto) This was a relatively late development; its Swedishcounterpart, Svenska Naturskyddsförening, had been founded in

Luon-1909, and in the same year the Swedish parliament passed its ¤rst lawdirected at the conservation of natural resources.24 In both Swedenand Finland, the national societies for conservation were elitist or-ganizations; most of their members came from among the univer-sity faculty The ¤rst board of governors of the Finnish Associationfor Nature Conservation was composed of doctors with one exception

—Palmgren had only a master’s degree.25

The dominance of males is another characteristic of the earlyyears of the Finnish conservation movement In contrast, Britain’sactual conservation movement was headed by women, who op-posed the feather trade and defended the protection of wild birds.Before that movement began, concern for animal welfare had led toorganized conservation activity as early as the 1820s, eventually re-sulting in the Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1869.26

The outbreak of World War II hampered the activities of theFinnish Association for Nature Conservation Nevertheless, it be-

gan to publish a yearbook, Suomen luonto (Finnish Nature), in 1941.

12 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

After the war, the yearbook gained popularity, and from 1956 on itwas issued as a quarterly journal The association emphasized itseducational and ethical goals of stimulating public debate and mo-bilizing citizens to protect nature as a patriotic duty To recruityoung people to the ranks of the conservation movement, the asso-ciation founded a youth subsidiary, Luonto-Liitto (Finnish NatureLeague), during the war in 1943.27

In the 1960s, a movement with a broader outlook on currentenvironmental issues emerged in various countries In addition tothe traditional conservation of nature, the new movement con-cerned itself with the larger social and structural issues behind en-vironmental changes in highly industrialized society The newenvironmental movement provided the impetus for the rise ofmodern environmental history and for a new way of looking at thepast This is evident in the work of contemporary American histo-rians, such as Alfred Crosby, Donald Worster, Richard White, andWilliam Cronon.28On the eastern side of the Atlantic, interest inthe new discipline has increased steadily since the 1970s At thetime, the geographer Ilmari Hustich and the economic and socialhistorian Sven-Erik Åström at the University of Helsinki werein¶uential in introducing modern environmental history to Fin-land.29Although they were open to new ways of valuing the envi-ronment and aware of the arguments of both old and newenvironmentalists, Hustich and Åström did their research strictlywithin their traditional academic disciplines.30

In intellectual history, criticism of Western rationality and

re-source utilization was boosted by the book Science and Reason by

philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright.31 The book argues that thebelief in reason, a basis of natural sciences, has not at all been par-ticularly prudent Science and technology are at war against nature,and that antagonism has been sharpened because science and tech-nology have been allied with industrialization Humans are in dan-ger of losing their control of the development, since their mindshave been captured by the rational outlook of the Enlightenment.The book by Wright aroused a lot of interest not only in Finland but

Environmental History v 13

also in Sweden The criticism of reason stimulated the tion of the development of the entire Western culture from another,more environmental viewpoint

considera-In Finland, a politically signi¤cant environmental movementemerged in the spring of 1979, when a group of young activists dem-onstrated and organized passive resistance in order to prevent thelowering of the water level in Lake Koijärvi, famous for its abundantbird life Political activism ensued, and in 1983, the same year as didDie Grünen in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Finnish Greenswon their ¤rst seat in parliament.32 Alongside its Belgian, Swiss,Austrian, and German counterparts, the Finnish Vihreä Liitto hasbecome one of the most notable green parties in Europe.33Since

1995 it has also held the post of the minister of environment in theFinnish government

The Institutionalization of Environmental History

In the United States, the new environmentalism of the 1960s and1970s stimulated interest and research in environmental history.Historians in the ¤eld joined together and established an organiza-tion, The American Society for Environmental History (ASEH), in

1975 The following year, the society began publishing the journal

Environmental Review In addition, the biennial (later annual)

meet-ings of the ASEH have provided a forum for discussion and tunities to establish social and research contacts among Americanenvironmental historians Scholars in the ¤eld have also organizedpanels at the national conventions of the Organization of AmericanHistorians and the American Historical Association One reason forthe fairly late rise of organized environmental history as an academicdiscipline was the lack of communication between social and natu-ral sciences, impeding the wholesome understanding of ecologicalproblems.34

oppor-In postwar Europe, some branches of environmental history

14 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

have developed within certain older disciplines Earlier historicalresearch related to the environment was carried out under variousother disciplinary paradigms, such as economic history, anthropol-

ogy, and geography, because concepts such as environmental

his-tory, ecological hishis-tory, ecohishis-tory, histoire de l’environnement, historische Ökologie, Umweltgeschichte, historische Umweltfor- schung, milieugeschiedenis, miljöhistoria or ympäristöhistoria were

unknown at the time The great variety of new terms re¶ects the versity of points of departures and approaches

di-In the 1980s, environmental history received a great deal ofpublicity in Europe New interpretations were published in variouscountries, such as West Germany, the Netherlands, and Britain Forexample, Cambridge University Press began to publish the seriesStudies in Environment and History At least at ¤rst, however, itconcentrated on printing books containing a clear emphasis on

American topics Among the ¤rst books in the series were Nature’s

Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas by Donald Worster, cal Imperialism: The Biological Expansions of Europe, 900–1900 by

Ecologi-Alfred W Crosby, and Americans and Their Forests: A Historical

Ge-ography by Michael Williams Nevertheless, many of those works

followed the traditions of the French Annales school, which had

since the interwar years promoted the “geographication” of cal research The school’s emphasis on anthropological and re-gional approaches was re¶ected in the works of the environmentalhistorians of the 1980s

histori-In 1988 a group of scholars from eleven eastern and western ropean countries held a symposium in Bad Homburg in West Ger-many and founded the European Association for EnvironmentalHistory (EAEH) to continue discussions on the historical interac-tions between humans and the environment The founding meet-ing was attended also by a Finnish representative, botanist YrjöVasari, who has studied human-induced changes in the rural envi-ronments of northeastern Finland.35

Eu-The beginnings of the European association were promising.The proceedings of the First International Workshop on European

Environmental History v 15

Environmental History were published as an impressive book.36

Furthermore, the association began to publish a yearbook,

Envi-ronmental History Newsletter, which was edited by the

Landesmu-seum für Technik und Arbeit in Mannheim, West Germany InFinland, Yrjö Vasari was active in contacting researchers in various

¤elds and encouraging the study of Finnish environmental history

As a result, a younger generation of Finnish environmental ans organized an international symposium on environmental his-tory in Lammi in 1992.37 Some of the papers presented in thisworkshop were published as a special issue of the new British jour-

histori-nal Environment and History.38

Various factors served to exhaust the enthusiasm for theEAEH.39 For instance, lack of ¤nancial support forced the Landes-

museum in Mannheim to give up publication of the Environmental

History Newsletter in 1994.40Links between European tal historians loosened, and the EAEH was not able to organize asecond symposium However, throughout the 1990s environmentalhistorians have kept on meeting each other under the umbrella oflarge international conferences For example, environmental histo-rians held their special sessions at the International Economic His-tory Congresses in Leuven (1990), Milan (1994), and Madrid(1998).41

environmen-In April 1999 a fresh start was made in Europe Representativesfrom eight European countries held a meeting near Munich to en-hance communication between European environmental histori-ans and to institutionalize the discipline on this continent Theorganization was refounded under the name European Society forEnvironmental History (ESEH), and plans for a newsgroup, ahomepage, and a conference in St Andrews, Scotland, in Septem-ber 2001 were launched.42

In Europe, environmental history thus has made a real through in the 1990s The present decade has yielded plenty ofprominent European books on environmental history A case in

break-point is A Green History of the World by Clive Ponting, which

be-came a European best-seller.43 The scope of the ¤eld has expanded

16 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

considerably, and new approaches have emerged Considering thebackground of European environmental historians, ¤ve disciplinesseem to have dominated These are economic history (e.g., B W.Clapp, Christian P¤ster, and Jan Luiten van Zanden),44 politicalhistory (Thorkild Kjærgaard and Clive Ponting),45 intellectual his-tory (Sverker Sörlin and Gottfried Zirnstein),46 geography (HelmutJäger, David Pepper, and I G Simmons),47 and natural science (Pe-ter Brimblecombe).48

The Shared Traditions of Finns and Americans

Some common themes in American and Finnish environmental tory have become apparent Both countries were originally on theperiphery of the greater European economic system and sharedcommon features, such as vast timber resources and a great number

his-of sparsely populated areas The present territory his-of the United Stateswas colonized by several European powers, and the thirteen originalcolonies on the Atlantic seaboard gained their political indepen-dence in 1776 In the late Middle Ages, Finland, in turn, was con-quered by Sweden and was governed by that country until 1809.Under Swedish rule, Finnish peasants—particularly those in thesoutheastern provinces, who specialized in slash-and-burn cultivation

—pushed the frontier of the permanently inhabited area toward thenorth, penetrating to the land of the Sami people In that way, theyconquered new territory for the Swedish kingdom Under Russianrule (1809–1917), Finnish provinces were united and managed to de-velop their own state apparatus During the turmoil that followedthe October revolution of 1917 in Russia, Finland declared its politicalindependence

The peripheral status of colonial North America and Finlandforced them to ship raw materials and semire¤ned products to theirruling kingdoms as well as to the rest of Europe In the nineteenthcentury, they also competed with each other as suppliers of tar and

Environmental History v 17

sawn timber to Britain Ultimately, their indigenous natural sources, such as timber and hydropower, were of vital importance

re-in the re-industrialization of these two countries

Both countries also experienced a fairly late population growth,and their industrialization and urbanization took place later than inmost of western Europe Nineteenth-century Finland was predomi-nantly an agricultural country in transition from a subsistenceeconomy to a market economy Until the outbreak of World War II,more than half of Finns lived in rural areas Although industrializa-tion had accelerated during the interwar years, it was only in the1950s and 1960s that Finland became an industrialized country Inthe postwar decades, the Finnish rate of urbanization was the mosthectic in western Europe Thus the middle-aged generation of Finn-ish people still feel that their roots are in the countryside The num-ber of summer cottages, more than four hundred thousand, is anindication of town dwellers’ longing for the countryside and a logsauna by the lake in the shelter of the forest Finns have more sum-mer cottages per capita than any other European nation

The idea of wilderness has played a vital part in the culture ofboth countries The conservation of old-growth forests and otherlandscapes have been persistent issues in their environmental de-bates since the late nineteenth century, as agriculture and manufac-turing industries exerted pressures to cut old-growth forests bothfor timber and farmland

In both countries, the native peoples’ (Native American andSami) ways of life have often been contrasted with those of the ex-pansionist Anglo-American and Finnish/Swedish cultures.49 Boththe American Indians and the Nordic Sami believed that land be-longs to all collectively and opposed private land ownership Thisnotion to a certain degree has also been shared by Finns Central tothe current Finnish land law is the so-called public right of accessthat allows everyone to walk, ski, camp temporarily, and pick berriesand mushrooms in any—even privately owned—woodland.50The vast environmental effects of slash-and-burn agricultureand the ef¤cient utilization of forest resources have also been popular

18 v Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku

research topics on both sides of the Atlantic.51 In both countriesthere are regions where the pivotal natural resource has been timberand where economic development has been dominated by the wood-processing industries.52 Forest history remains a major sub¤eld ofenvironmental history, although it is important to point out thatnot all forest history can be classi¤ed as environmental history Therelationship between humans and wildlife, especially large preda-tors, has also attracted the attention of scholars in both the UnitedStates and Finland American and European attitudes toward largepredators, such as wolves, wolverines, bears, raptors, and seals, havebeen volatile and con¶icting.53

In central Europe, environmental historians have often focusedtheir research on cultural landscapes, built environment, pollution

in urban areas, emissions by industry, and epidemics.54 In theUnited States and Finland, wilderness, forests, and the problems ofprimary occupations have attracted more of the attention of re-searchers In both countries, some environmental historians haverecently claimed that disproportionate attention has been paid toissues of wild lands and agriculture and that more research isneeded on social and urban issues Greater inclusion of race, gen-der, and social class in environmental history has broadened its

scope signi¤cantly Recent issues of Environmental History and

En-vironment and History, the leading international journals in the

¤eld, offer a good general view of contemporary environmentalhistory and its research topics.55

Environmental history has sometimes been considered merely

as an offshoot of “the new social history” and even an academic

“fad” that will soon subside Although at present environmentalism

is recognized as an in¶uential social movement, environmental tory is sometimes regarded as something of a trespasser on Finnishacademe Environmental history has often been mechanically coupledwith environmental activism without paying attention to the longscholarly tradition of the discipline

his-When Donald Worster evaluated the contributions of

environ-Environmental History v 19

mental history, he claimed that one of its lessons is to “reject naiveassumptions about a static, pristine, virgin world of unspoiled na-ture.” Thus the role of an environmental historian is to help peopleclarify issues under current debate and not simply to provide sup-port to the arguments of environmentalists.56 William Crononidenti¤es further the role for environmental historians: to counter-

balance ahistorical and antihistorical impulses within

environ-mentalism.57 Finnish environmental historians have continued toargue that nature always changes and that humans have extensivelycontributed those changes—but not always in harmful ways Al-though an environmental approach to history has been growingfor a long time, we still lack an up-to-date general work on Finnishenvironmental history, which would provide an integrated synthe-sis of the interaction of humans and nature as well as a historicalperspective to counterbalance both technocratic fantasies and uto-pian environmentalist visions

Environmental history has, nevertheless, been included in thecurricula of various Finnish universities since the late 1980s The1990s has witnessed a number of master’s, licentiate’s, and doctor’stheses in the ¤eld.58 The discipline, however, does not have anyteaching posts or study programs of its own In these respects, Fin-land lags far behind the United States.59

However, in the European context, the country can hardly beclassi¤ed as a latecomer Finnish researchers have continued previoustraditions in this ¤eld of history while at the same time opening upnew directions of inquiry Furthermore, they have not restricted theirresearch to the environmental history of their home country buthave contributed, for example, to the study of African, Caribbean,European, and North American environmental history.60 In addition

to active participation in conferences abroad, Finns have also nized international meetings on environmental history in their owncountry.61 Today it can be claimed that the study of environmentalhistory in Finland has had an auspicious start, and the challenges ofthe third millennium can be met with certain con¤dence