Oceans: Fusing the History of Science and Technology with Environmental History

Abstract

Environmental historians have forged sophisticated understandings of interrelationships between humans and many parts of the natural world. The oceans -especially the great depths and the open seas -remain a challenge. In 1864, Henry David Thoreau expressed deeply held cultural assumptions about the timelessness and imperviousness of the sea:We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always. The Indians left no traces on its surface, but it is the same to the civilized man and the savage. The aspect of the shore only has changed. (1896: 85) This apparent contrast between land and sea continues to hold sway; the ocean remains to many "empty of history, utterly without a past" (Stilgoe 1994: 30).To the extent that historians have begun, recently, to turn seaward, the view seems always to include land as well as sea -islands, beaches, littoral environments, and ocean basins with an emphasis on rims. Scholars who take seriously the aims of environmental history must also seek to historicize the ocean itself, including its most remote parts, because even those are as intertwined with human history as the far corners of the terrestrial world. Similarly, histories of the ocean that deal only with oceanic peoples or those engaged in maritime work will never be as comprehensive as those that also succeed in accounting for the myriad other groups of people who interact with the ocean -consumers, writers, scientists, recreationalists, policymakers, dreamers -some of whom never even see the ocean. This essay situates

Forschen in einer extremen Umwelt

“…Jahrhundert mit der Entwicklung von Überlebenstechniken und anderen technischen Lösungen verschränkt war. Während der vorliegende Aufsatz als Fallstudie zwar auf die konkreten Ereignisse vor der kleinasiatischen Küste fokussiert, eröffnet sich doch eine größere Schnittstelle der Wissenschafts-, Technik- und Umweltgeschichte, die sich etwa zur selben Zeit und in ähnlicher Weise im Hochgebirge oder in der Polarforschung zeigt (Rozwadowski 2010 a; Clements 2018 ; Herzberg et al. 2018 : 3).…”

Disturbed Earth: Conceptions of the Deep Underground in Shale Extraction Deliberations in the US and UK

“…Reflecting on the invisibility of the underground, however, participants went further and raised additional concerns about knowledge. As with the deep ocean, inaccessibility has at times generated suspicion, and the mediated nature of knowledge about the underground means that cultural conceptions of this space are inextricably bound up with technologies of observation and representation (Haraway, 1997;Rozwadowski, 2010). For the deep ocean, this has led to regulatory neglect and calls for a move away from a 'frontier mentality of exploitation' (Mengerink et al, 2014).…”

Water as the ultimate sink: Linking fresh and saltwater history

“…First, there are histories in which oceans serve as an extraterritorial stage, navigated space in which voyages of exploration and conquest are filled with cultural mixing and conflict. 12 In this strand, the distinction between older works of maritime history, such as Benjamin Labaree et al, America and the Sea, and newer works of ocean history are not always clear-cut. 13 While there are many precursors, we might date a broader recognition of this strand among general historians to Marcus Rediker's groundbreaking Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (1987).…”