Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 2 (2011), p. 342

There are many reasons why agricultural historians would do well to pay attention to the work of environmental historians; the latter have much to say about farming and its impacts. Stephen Mosley’s slim volume, The environment in world history, is an excellent case in point. Focusing on the most significant factors behind environmental change that have taken place over the past 500 years, Mosley’s work is less general and diffuse than many other recently published environmental history primers, which tend to begin with prehistory and end at the present day.

For those seeking a clear description of environmental history itself, Mosley’s discussion of its evolution and approach is extremely helpful. Environmental history’s ‘primary goal is to reveal how human action and environmental change are intertwined’, he writes, adding that the nation state has frequently proven an inadequate framework for research undertaken by environmental historians (pp. 2–3). A key concern of environmental historians has always been understanding and documenting the extent and impacts of land use change, with Mosley reminding his readers that 35–50 per cent of the earth’s land surface has now been ‘radically transformed by human activity’ (p. 6).

The book is built around four chapters, each dedicated to either a source of environmental change or an aspect of the earth’s biosphere that has been subject to particularly severe environmental impacts. The chapters focus on hunting, forests, soils, and cities.

Discussing soils, Mosley emphasizes the acceleration in rates of erosion, exhaustion and salinization during the modern period and, most extremely, since the end of the Second World War. The role of Western European colonialism in the damaging of soils in North America and Africa is explored, with European migrants to ‘new’ lands viewed as ‘“environmental pioneers” encountering soils that were unfamiliar’. In many cases, these soils were less resilient to erosion than typical northern European soils, argues Mosley: ‘northern European farming practices had evolved in a temperate climate, typically on undulating terrain with heavy soils that were not so vulnerable to erosion by wind and rain’ (pp. 61–2). The mistake that European settlers made was to assume a similar resilience on the part of new, lighter soils they were now farming. Indeed, Mosley describes settlers’ approach as often no better than ‘soil mining’, with consequences that remain serious to this day.

Turning to the period since 1945, Mosley offers a damning overview of the cumulative impacts of industrial agriculture. He highlights the issue of soil compaction in Europe while acknowledging that since the end of the Second World War, approximately 80 per cent of ‘all significant soil degradation’ has occurred in the developing world (p. 68). Another problem arising from the embrace of industrial agriculture has been the manner in which intensive use of inorganic fertilizers has had the effect of ‘masking’ deterioration in soil health and functioning. Long-term, irreversible soil depletion is an issue yet to be confronted, argues Mosley, and because soil degradation has usually occurred ‘too slowly and too unobtrusively to attract much public attention’ there is little awareness that 1.5 billion hectares of cropland have been abandoned over the past four decades (p. 80).

The environment in world history offers a clearly-reasoned overview of major factors in recent environmental change, with a strong focus on soil (mis) management. It is also an excellent introduction to the approach taken by environmental historians.