Introducing 

Prezi AI.

Your new presentation assistant.

Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.

Loading…
Transcript

Enlightenment and European Environments

Recasting Conservation and Geography of Difference

The Disappearing Forest

Content Slides

Conservation as an Anxiety

We will Cover:

1. How anxieties regarding dwindling natural resources and 'national economies' of Europe become an impetus for forest conservation and state management

2. How the history of colonialism produced different "scientific" explanation for social differences and enabled subjugation of certain people - both in Europe and abroad

Nostalgia and Nation Lost: Forests of Europe

Nostalgia and Nation

  • in previous conversations, we have noted the role of anxiety and uncertainty about the future as an important force in conservative thought
  • 16th century in Europe witnesses the recovery of population growth and a new phase of European expansion
  • the primacy of naval fleets, dependent on securing timber supplies, central to the ambitions of many early European monarchs
  • many European states institute forest survey as a separate department to keep counting their woodland populations
  • in Germany and France, youth clubs begin hiking, treking and camping in forests as a way to "reclaim" a more masculine nation lost due to industrialization
  • a separate source of anxiety emanated from securing material well-being of a growing European population
  • the demographic increase coupled with shift to non-agricultural land use meant Northern and Western Europe needed more secured and diverse food supplies;
  • many religiously minded Europeans also took interest in exploration of non-European geographies as a way of exploring the mythic site of Eden
  • the difference in temperature and climate of the Americas gives birth to understanding of global climate: the idea of "tropics" as opposed to "temperate" climate gives new content to natural sciences

The Little Ice Age

Europe in the Little Ice Age

Gender of Nature

the exploration of the western hemisphere also impacts re-casting European environments in a new light

The Scottish highlands, for instance, long condemned as wastelands and bogs become a laboratory for Scottish Enlightenment and experiments in agronomy

Thomas Malthus makes great contributions in understanding the "science of demographic change" by focussing on pestilence, famine and subsistence crises and their role in human history

the gendering of the environment ("mother nature") and the depiction of indigenous people as "noble savages" further connects economic exploitation and ecological degradation under colonial rule

Learn more about creating dynamic, engaging presentations with Prezi