British Environments and Environmentalisms, c. 1880 – 1980

This course offers a survey of British environmental history since the end of the nineteenth century. It offers students a firm foundation in the key historiographical and methodological developments of a rapidly developing field. While historians of Britain have long been interested in questions of land, political economy, energy, and ‘landscape’, it is only in recent years that a historiography of the environment has begun to take shape. In doing so, British historians have engaged with a wellestablished literature shaped principally by scholars operating in very different national and international contexts, while also making new contributions to the wider field of environmental history in the process. Environmental history is by its nature transnational, and while this course is focussed on Britain, it will be helpful to draw on international comparison throughout. We will explore how environmental approaches might encourage us to challenge or reconsider established narratives within modern British history such as the rise of the welfare state, democratisation, secularisation, imperialism and colonisation, and economic growth and stagnation among others. The course’s six seminars each approach the topic through a thematic lens, covering key areas of interest to environmental historians today including energy, water, empire and activism. As we explore each theme, students will be encouraged to think critically about change over time, archival methodologies, and changing historiographical trends in relation to the topic under consideration. The course title refers to ‘environments’ and ‘environmentalisms’: the use of both terms in the plural invites students to consider the varieties of ways in which British people conceived of and experienced their surroundings in different places and at different times during the period under consideration. These terms also remind us that ‘environments’ as physical places, and ‘environmentalisms’ as conceptual, intellectual, and political ideas were in constant dialogue with each other. Starting from the assumption that these terms were neither monolithic nor fixed is the first step in gaining an understanding of the exciting opportunities for future research in the environmental history of modern Britain.