Environmental History of the Middle East: Debates, Themes, and Trajectories

69.     Ecology and Environment in the Middle East

Although the Middle East has largely been absent from conversations about environmental history, recent developments point to a growing tendency towards ecological perspectives among historians and scholars focusing on the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. In this podcast, we discuss some of the major themes and approaches within this emerging field and explore issues of theory, methodology and sources.

Stay tuned next week for our interview with Alan Mikhail about the environmental history of Ottoman Egypt, which ties in nicely with this week's discussion.

MP3 File

Sam Dolbee is a PhD student in the department of Middle East Studies at New York University

Chris Gratien is a PhD candidate studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)
Elizabeth Williams is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Georgetown University studying the history of the modern Middle East

Timur Hammond is a PhD candidate in the Geography department at UCLA studying the social and cultural geography of modern Turkey

Citation: "Environmental History of the Middle East: Debates, Themes, and Trajectories." Samuel Dolbee, Elizabeth Williams, Chris Gratien and Timur Hammond. Ottoman History Podcast, No. 69 (September 11, 2012) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2012/09/environmental-history-of-middle-east.html.

Select Bibliography

Ottoman and Middle East Environmental History

Davis, Diana K. Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. 

Mikhail, Alan. Nature and empire in Ottoman Egypt : an environmental history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 

Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 

White, Sam. The climate of rebellion in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 

Bulliet, Richard W. Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 

Christensen, Peter. The Decline of Iranshahr: Irrigation and Environments in the History of the Middle East, 500 B.C. to A.D. 1500. [Copenhagen]: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1993. 

Tvedt, Terje. The River Nile in the Age of the British: Political Ecology and the Quest for Economic Power. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. 

Tabak, Faruk. The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870: A Geohistorical Approach. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 

McNeill, John Robert. The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: An Environmental History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 

Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediteranean World in the Age of Philip II. London: St. Jamesʼs Place, 1972. 

Issar, A., and Mattanyah Zohar. Climate Change Environment and History of the Near East. Berlin: Springer, 2007. 

Grove, A. T., and Oliver Rackham. The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 

Hughes, J. Donald. The Mediterranean: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2005. 

Davis, Diana K., and Edmund Burke. Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2011. 

Other Works

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. 

Grove, R. Green imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

McNeill, John Robert. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2000. 

Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. 

Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 

Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 

Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. 

Merchant, Carolyn. Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture. New York: Routledge, 2003. 

Tucker, Richard P. Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 

Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991. 

McCann, James. Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800-1990. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999. 

Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany. New York: Norton, 2006. 

Marks, Robert. Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 

Radkau, Joachim, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment. Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 2008. 

Beinart, William, and Lotte Hughes. Environment and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 

Guha, Ramachandra. The Unquiet Woods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 

Baviskar, Amita. In the Belly of the River. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004. 

Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 

Iqbal, Iftekhar. The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840-1943. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.


Music: Mercan Dede - Denizkızı İlhisi