Download History of War, Environment, and Technology

History of War, Environment, and Technology
Neil Oatsvall
Course Description: The above image presents a startling spectacle. The Bravo test shot
of Operation Castle was an underwater nuclear detonation, and it created a huge
radioactive wave that tossed about ships moored in the test area. The test location in a
certifiable tropical paradise is almost paradoxical—how could such destructive energy be
unleashed in such a beautiful place? Technology, science, the natural world, geopolitical
concerns, and human culture all combined to create this moment, and each facet must be
understood to grasp why and how the test occurred.
To appreciate such historical events and themes, this course examines the intersection of
war, the natural world, and technology. Military commanders have long known the
importance of the environment in warfare, but scholars are just beginning to recognize
and focus on such a connection. How has warfare, across time, space, and cultures,
affected the environment? And perhaps more importantly, how has the environment
affected warfare, particularly the societies that engage in it?
The course will survey warfare in both United States and world history in the relatively
recent past, asking students to go beyond simple understandings of cause and effect to
make comparisons that help us better understand the human relationship to war,
technology, and the environment, separately and in combination. Our investigations will
bridge disciplines, borrowing understandings from history, technology studies, and the
sciences (especially life sciences). Students will be graded on class participation, a series
of short (one page) papers, and also a longer project due as a final that will investigate
some larger aspect of the course materials.
Oatsvall, Sample Syllabus, Page 1 of 6
Key Texts:
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Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 2004)
Gregory Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global
Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic
Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
J. R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, eds., Environmental Histories of the Cold
War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals
from World War I to Silent Spring (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001)
Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell, eds., Natural Enemy, Natural Ally:
Toward an Environmental History of War (Corvallis: Oregon State Press, 2004)
I will place a copy of each text on reserve at the library.
Exams, Assignments, and Grading
The basis of the study of history is writing, and thus all of the assignments in this class
will be in essay form. These will be in the form of short essays each week and one final
essay. The assignments are explained further below. All assignments are to be written in
Times New Roman, 12-point font, with one-inch margins. There are a total of 500 points
possible, so you should be able to calculate easily your grade at any time. Letter grades
will be assigned on a standard 10% scale, and I will assign grades as university policy.
Weekly essays (250 points total, or 25 points each): Each week you’ll turn in a one-page
paper that probes some significant issue in that week’s texts. (You decide what that issue
is.) I will take the best ten grades you get and use those.
Class participation (50 points): Being prepared for class with careful reading and
contributing to class discussion are both expected. In addition, students will take turn
leading class discussions. Points will be award based on students living up to these
responsibilities. If you display good scholarly habits and contribute to class discussions,
you should do well in this category.
Final (200 points): This will be an essay of a comprehensive nature. Topics are
negotiable. We will come up with a format that makes sense to us as a class.
Oatsvall, Sample Syllabus, Page 2 of 6
Weekly Class Schedule
Week 1: Introductions; asking questions
We’ll go over the syllabus and outline expectations for the semester. We’ll also start
laying out our intellectual framework for the semester.
Week 2: Re-sewing the seams of Pangaea
What is war, at its base, but the use of violence to conquer other peoples? We’ll begin the
course with an environmental history classic. This week will especially be used to
continue questioning our definitions of “war” and “environment”.
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Crosby, Ecological Imperialism, selections
Week 3: Wars across continents—building connections
War is a human phenomenon and can be found on every continent where humans live in
numbers. What sorts of patterns have developed across disparate times and places?
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McNeill, J.R. “Woods and Warfare in World History.” Environmental History 9
(Jul. 2004): 388-410
Stewart Gordon, “War, the Military and the Environment: Central India, 15601820,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 42-64
Roger Levine, “‘African Warfare in All Its Ferocity’: Changing Military
Landscapes and Precolonial and Colonial Conflict in Southern Africa,” in Natural
Enemy, Natural Ally, 65-92
Week 4: U.S. Civil War
The U.S. Civil War was heavily grounded in the natural world and cannot be understood
without a reckoning of the environment. How did the two sides deal with the natural
world? Did control of the environment ultimately decide the winner?
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Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 6: “The Great Food Fight.” [will be
provided]
Mark Fiege, “Gettysburg and the Organic Nature of the American Civil War,” in
Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 93-109
Lisa M. Brady, “The Wilderness of War: Nature and Strategy in the American
Civil War,” Environmental History 10:3 (July 2005), 421-447
Week 5: Origins of Modern Warfare: Bird Guano
How do you make bombs and feed soldiers? Both before and after the Haber-Bosch
process for fixing nitrogen, guano was a huge part of that answer.
Oatsvall, Sample Syllabus, Page 3 of 6
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Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World, selections
Week 6: World War I
A foundational text. Russell’s work causes us to question not only what the physical
effects of warfare on the environment have been, but the book also probes ideological
connections between the two.
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Edmund Russell, War and Nature, selections
Week 7: World War II in Europe
World War II is too big with too many global connections to study in just one week.
We’ll start with Europe, particularly cultural relationships to the natural world.
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Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), selections
Simo Laakkonen, “War – An Ecological Alternative to Peace? Indirect Impacts of
World War II on the Finnish Environment,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 175194
Week 8: World War II in the Pacific
World War II was a truly global war. We cannot understand it without understanding
what happened in the Pacific, the Japanese empire in particular.
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William M. Tsutsui, "The Pelagic Empire: Reconsidering Japanese Expansionism"
[will be provided]
William M. Tsutsui, “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental
History of Wartime Japan,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 195-216
Judith A. Bennett, “Pests and Disease in the Pacific War: Crossing the Line,” in
Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 217-251
Week 9: The Korean War and the DMZ
An oft-forgotten war, the Korean War’s most significant legacy (the DMZ) has become a
bit of a conundrum. We’ll see what we can do with it.
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Lisa M. Brady, “Life in the DMZ: Turning a Diplomatic Failure into an
Environmental Success,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (September 2008),
585-612
Julia Adeney Thomas, “The Exquisite Corpses of Nature and History: The Case
of the Korean DMZ,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (October 2009),
found at: http://japanfocus.org/-Julia_Adeney-Thomas/3242
Oatsvall, Sample Syllabus, Page 4 of 6
Week 10: The Vietnam War and forest warfare
One dissertation on the Vietnam War was called “When the Forest Became the Enemy.”
We’ll look at whether we can call the forest an “enemy” (or an “ally”) and what that
might mean if we can.
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David Biggs, “Managing a Rebel Landscape: Conservation, Pioneers, and the
Revolutionary Past in the U Minh Forest, Vietnam.” Environmental History, Vol.
10, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), 448-476
Neil Oatsvall, “Trees Versus Lives: Reckoning Military Success and the
Ecological Effects of Chemical Defoliation During the Vietnam War”
Environment and History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (November 2013): 427-458
David Zierler, “Against Protocol: Ecocide, Détente, and the Question of Chemical
Warfare in Vietnam, 1969-1975,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War,
227-256
Week 11: The Bomb
Humans have never produced any weapon more destructive than the nuclear bomb, but
what has that meant for the environment? And how has the environment affected the
bomb?
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Fiege, Mark. “The Atomic Scientists, the sense of Wonder, and the Bomb.”
Environmental History, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jul. 2007): 578-613
Toshihiro Higuchi, “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Debate on
Risk Knowledge in Cold War America, 1945-1963,” in Environmental Histories
of the Cold War, 301-322
Neil Oatsvall, “Weather, Otters, and Bombs: Policymaking, Environmental
Science, and U.S. Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1945-1958,” in Proving Grounds:
Weapons Testing, Militarized Landscapes, and the Environmental Impact of
American Empire, Edwin Martini, ed. Seattle, WA: University of Washington
Press, 2015 [will be provided]
The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to America’s Nuclear Proving Ground. Culver
City: The Center for Land Use Interpretation, 1996. [will be provided]
Week 12: Cold War, week 1
The Cold War is too big of a conflict to tackle in one week, but we’ll consider how the
environment affected world peoples in various ways during and because of the Cold War.
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Matthew Farish, “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of Globalism,”
in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, 51-84
Barker-Devine, Jenny. “‘Mightier Than Missiles’: The Rhetoric of Civil Defense
for Rural American Families, 1950-1970.” Agricultural History 80 (Autumn,
2006): 415-435
Oatsvall, Sample Syllabus, Page 5 of 6
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Hamblin, Jacob Darwin. “Gods and Devils in the Details: Marine Pollution,
Radioactive Waste, and an Environmental Regime circa 1972.” Environmental
History 32 (September 2008): 539-560
Week 13, Cold War, week 2
How did “catastrophic environmentalism” influence the Cold War?
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Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature, selections
Week 14: War and Wildlife
Simply put, war has affected animals a great deal. What does that mean?
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Greg Bankoff, “Of Beasts and Men: Animals and the Cold War in Eastern Asia,”
in McNeill and Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War
Kurk Dorsey, “Compromising on Conservation: World War II and American
Leadership in Whaling Diplomacy,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 252-279
Gordon H. Orians and E. W. Pfeiffer, “Ecological Effects of the War in Vietnam,”
Science, Vol. 168, No. 3931 (1 May 1970), 544-554
Bill Tsutsui, “Looking Straight at Them! Understanding the Big Bug Movies of
the 1950s.” Environmental History, 12 (April 2007): 237-253
Week 15: Week off
Work on your final papers.
Week 16: Wrapping up
So what does it all mean? How should we define “war” and “environment” and what do
we think about the intersection of the two?
Finals Week: Final Papers due
Oatsvall, Sample Syllabus, Page 6 of 6