Natural Enemy, Natural Ally
Toward An Environmental History of War
Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell
Editors
6 × 9 inches. Maps. Index. 288 pages.
2004. ISBN 978-0-87071-047-6. Paperback, $29.95s.
How has war changed and damaged the environment? How has nature
influenced war? As the first collection of essays on war and
environmental history, Natural Enemy, Natural Ally heralds the advent of a major new field of study.
Contributors to the volume explore the dynamic between war and the
physical environment from a variety of provocative viewpoints. The
subjects of their essays range from conflicts in pre-colonial India and
early colonial South Africa to the U.S. Civil War and twentieth-century
wars in Japan, Finland, and the Pacific Islands. Among the topics
explored are:
- the ways in which landscape can influence military strategies;
- why the decisive battle of the American Civil War was fought;
- the impact of war and peace on timber resources;
- the spread of pests and disease in wartime.
Contributors
Judith A. Bennett, Kurk Dorsey, Mark Fiege,
Stewart Gordon, Simo Laakkonen, Roger Levine, Edmund Russell, William
M. Tsutsui, and Richard P. Tucke