This book considers how nature - in both its biological and
environmental manifestations - has been invoked as a dynamic force
in human history. It shows how historians, philosophers,
geographers, anthropologists and scientists have used ideas of
nature to explain the evolution of cultures, to understand cultural
difference, and to justify or condemn colonization, slavery and
racial superiority. It examines the central part that ideas of
environmental and biological determinism have played in theory, and
describes how these ideas have served in different ways at
different times as instruments of authority, identity and defiance.
The book shows how powerful and problematic the invocation of
nature can be.
"The Problem of Nature" covers a whole cycle of environmental
history and its interpretation, from the Black Death in the
fourteenth century, the first European voyages of discovery and the
opening of the American frontier through to the imperialism of the
nineteenth century and the example of India under colonial rule.
David Arnold shows how both the natural environment and ideas about
nature have changed radically over the last five centuries.
The author describes the profound influence that historical and
social theory and the biological sciences have had upon each other.
He shows how the outcomes of their interaction not only informed
and shaped the European impact upon the world and on itself, but
how crucial they are to American conceptions of the society and
history of the United States. He provides provocative answers to
the questions of what role the environment should have in the
conceptualization of time and place; and of how far societies and
their histories can beunderstood from the perspectives of natural
and biological sciences.
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