Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (review)

Interest in the interaction of humans and their environment has spawned a number of books on the environmental history of the world. Radkau's Nature and Power represents a valuable addition to this literature. Radkau's ultimate objective is to determine the sustainability of the world's past societies in an ecological, an economic, and a cultural context. Admittedly, this is an ambitious goal that requires a familiarity with a number of disparate disciplines. Radkau starts with an examination of the subsistence hunting and agricultural societies of the prehistoric period. He then moves to the wood- and hydraulic- or irrigation-based societies of the classical period, the expansive European societies of the colonial era, and the more complex societies of the Industrial Revolution and the era of globalization. His grasp of the ecology, the institutions, and the cultural traditions of different regions and periods makes this book a solid and exhaustive interdisciplinary contribution to the literature on the topic.

Radkau argues that ecology must join with social and political processes as an explanation for historical events. All of them are important.

Radkau is well known for his study of the eighteenth-century wood crisis in central Europe.¹ He stated that the wood crisis was more apparent than real; local German principalities used it to expand their regulatory power and income. Power (macht) trumped nature as the major explanatory variable. On the positive side, he noted that the wood crisis gave rise to the first forestry schools in the world and ultimately to modern sustainable forestry.

Most environmental narratives fall into one of two categories: Society either destroys its environment or manages to survive by transforming its environment. Although Radkau has strong opinions on certain topics, he always presents both sides of the issue of whether a particular practice was sustainable. His conclusions, however, are often tentative, filled with caveats, or limited to a specific time or place. Readers with a bias toward one side of an issue or a predilection for a simple storyline will be disappointed. Radkau notes that solutions to resource-related issues often generated new, unexpected environmental problems—for example, the use of coal and nuclear power as energy sources and the use of inorganic chemicals as fertilizers. The book takes many unexpected twists and turns. It is not easy to read.

An ecologist (like me) might prefer that more attention had been given to the pitfalls and the reliability of the scientific methodology. To what degree, for instance, can one determine the factors responsible for the fall of the classical Maya civilization on the basis of paleoecological or pollen evidence? A few references are given in the footnotes, but they are not discussed in any detail.

Radkau believes that value judgments have no place in environmental history. His attempt to bring more precision and objectivity to concepts like degraded soil and forest ecosystems mirrors the struggles of scientists to devise reliable indicators of rangeland and forest health. Many readers may well agree with Radkau's finding that, in the end, we have a checkered history on the sustainable use of our environment.