Reply To: Mon 17 March: Greece and Revisionist Environmental History

Nik Petek
Reply to Mirabel Joshi

The concept of pseudo-ecology is very useful. I have to deal with it myself in the Baringo region of Kenya where I work. Through ideas spread by colonialists it became a factoid that it was the local pastoralists that caused the environmental degradation, when later environmental historians and palynologists showed that colonial reforms had a bigger impact and that the environment has been »degrading« for centuries.

Personally, I think a historical view of any environment is always necessary in order to best understand it and how it developed to its current state. It prevents false claims to become established such as that of degraded Classical Greece in the 1980s. It also shows that there is no pristine or original mode that the environment was in. Thus, no conservationist can claim that he/she is right in saying that this or that is how the environment used to be like. I am glad you found an inspiration again to applying historical methods to your analyses and to include them in your studies.