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History of War, Environment, and Technology

Neil Oatsvall Course Description: The above image presents a startling spectacle. The Bravo test shot of Operation Castle was an underwater nuclear detonation, and it created a huge radioactive wave that tossed about ships moored in the test area. The test location in a certifiable tropical paradise is almost paradoxical—how could such destructive energy be unleashed in such a beautiful place? Technology, science, the natural world, geopolitical concerns, and human culture all combined to create this moment, and each facet must be understood to grasp why and how the test occurred. To appreciate such historical events and themes, this course examines the intersection of war, the natural world, and technology. Military commanders have long known the importance of the environment in warfare, but scholars are just beginning to recognize and focus on such a connection. How has warfare, across time, space, and cultures, affected the environment? And perhaps more importantly, how has the environment affected warfare, particularly the societies that engage in it? The course will survey warfare in both United States and world history in the relatively recent past, asking students to go beyond simple understandings of cause and effect to make comparisons that help us better understand the human relationship to war, technology, and the environment, separately and in combination. Our investigations will bridge disciplines, borrowing understandings from history, technology studies, and the sciences (especially life sciences). Students will be graded on class participation, a series of short (one page) papers, and also a longer project due as a final that will investigate some larger aspect of the course materials.

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Key Texts:

• Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 2004)

• Gregory Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

• Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)

• J. R. McNeill and Corinna R. Unger, eds., Environmental Histories of the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

• Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

• Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

• Richard P. Tucker and Edmund Russell, eds., Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War (Corvallis: Oregon State Press, 2004)

I will place a copy of each text on reserve at the library. Exams, Assignments, and Grading The basis of the study of history is writing, and thus all of the assignments in this class will be in essay form. These will be in the form of short essays each week and one final essay. The assignments are explained further below. All assignments are to be written in Times New Roman, 12-point font, with one-inch margins. There are a total of 500 points possible, so you should be able to calculate easily your grade at any time. Letter grades will be assigned on a standard 10% scale, and I will assign grades as university policy. Weekly essays (250 points total, or 25 points each): Each week you’ll turn in a one-page paper that probes some significant issue in that week’s texts. (You decide what that issue is.) I will take the best ten grades you get and use those. Class participation (50 points): Being prepared for class with careful reading and contributing to class discussion are both expected. In addition, students will take turn leading class discussions. Points will be award based on students living up to these responsibilities. If you display good scholarly habits and contribute to class discussions, you should do well in this category. Final (200 points): This will be an essay of a comprehensive nature. Topics are negotiable. We will come up with a format that makes sense to us as a class.

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Weekly Class Schedule Week 1: Introductions; asking questions We’ll go over the syllabus and outline expectations for the semester. We’ll also start laying out our intellectual framework for the semester. Week 2: Re-sewing the seams of Pangaea What is war, at its base, but the use of violence to conquer other peoples? We’ll begin the course with an environmental history classic. This week will especially be used to continue questioning our definitions of “war” and “environment”.

• Crosby, Ecological Imperialism, selections Week 3: Wars across continents—building connections War is a human phenomenon and can be found on every continent where humans live in numbers. What sorts of patterns have developed across disparate times and places?

• McNeill, J.R. “Woods and Warfare in World History.” Environmental History 9 (Jul. 2004): 388-410

• Stewart Gordon, “War, the Military and the Environment: Central India, 1560-1820,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 42-64

• Roger Levine, “‘African Warfare in All Its Ferocity’: Changing Military Landscapes and Precolonial and Colonial Conflict in Southern Africa,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 65-92

Week 4: U.S. Civil War The U.S. Civil War was heavily grounded in the natural world and cannot be understood without a reckoning of the environment. How did the two sides deal with the natural world? Did control of the environment ultimately decide the winner?

• Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 6: “The Great Food Fight.” [will be provided]

• Mark Fiege, “Gettysburg and the Organic Nature of the American Civil War,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 93-109

• Lisa M. Brady, “The Wilderness of War: Nature and Strategy in the American Civil War,” Environmental History 10:3 (July 2005), 421-447

Week 5: Origins of Modern Warfare: Bird Guano How do you make bombs and feed soldiers? Both before and after the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen, guano was a huge part of that answer.

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• Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World, selections

Week 6: World War I A foundational text. Russell’s work causes us to question not only what the physical effects of warfare on the environment have been, but the book also probes ideological connections between the two.

• Edmund Russell, War and Nature, selections Week 7: World War II in Europe World War II is too big with too many global connections to study in just one week. We’ll start with Europe, particularly cultural relationships to the natural world.

• Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), selections

• Simo Laakkonen, “War – An Ecological Alternative to Peace? Indirect Impacts of World War II on the Finnish Environment,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 175-194

Week 8: World War II in the Pacific World War II was a truly global war. We cannot understand it without understanding what happened in the Pacific, the Japanese empire in particular.

• William M. Tsutsui, "The Pelagic Empire: Reconsidering Japanese Expansionism" [will be provided]

• William M. Tsutsui, “Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 195-216

• Judith A. Bennett, “Pests and Disease in the Pacific War: Crossing the Line,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 217-251

Week 9: The Korean War and the DMZ An oft-forgotten war, the Korean War’s most significant legacy (the DMZ) has become a bit of a conundrum. We’ll see what we can do with it.

• Lisa M. Brady, “Life in the DMZ: Turning a Diplomatic Failure into an Environmental Success,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 4 (September 2008), 585-612

• Julia Adeney Thomas, “The Exquisite Corpses of Nature and History: The Case of the Korean DMZ,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (October 2009), found at: http://japanfocus.org/-Julia_Adeney-Thomas/3242

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Week 10: The Vietnam War and forest warfare One dissertation on the Vietnam War was called “When the Forest Became the Enemy.” We’ll look at whether we can call the forest an “enemy” (or an “ally”) and what that might mean if we can.

• David Biggs, “Managing a Rebel Landscape: Conservation, Pioneers, and the Revolutionary Past in the U Minh Forest, Vietnam.” Environmental History, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), 448-476

• Neil Oatsvall, “Trees Versus Lives: Reckoning Military Success and the Ecological Effects of Chemical Defoliation During the Vietnam War” Environment and History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (November 2013): 427-458

• David Zierler, “Against Protocol: Ecocide, Détente, and the Question of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam, 1969-1975,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, 227-256

Week 11: The Bomb Humans have never produced any weapon more destructive than the nuclear bomb, but what has that meant for the environment? And how has the environment affected the bomb?

• Fiege, Mark. “The Atomic Scientists, the sense of Wonder, and the Bomb.” Environmental History, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jul. 2007): 578-613

• Toshihiro Higuchi, “Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Debate on Risk Knowledge in Cold War America, 1945-1963,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, 301-322

• Neil Oatsvall, “Weather, Otters, and Bombs: Policymaking, Environmental Science, and U.S. Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1945-1958,” in Proving Grounds: Weapons Testing, Militarized Landscapes, and the Environmental Impact of American Empire, Edwin Martini, ed. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2015 [will be provided]

• The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to America’s Nuclear Proving Ground. Culver City: The Center for Land Use Interpretation, 1996. [will be provided]

Week 12: Cold War, week 1 The Cold War is too big of a conflict to tackle in one week, but we’ll consider how the environment affected world peoples in various ways during and because of the Cold War.

• Matthew Farish, “Creating Cold War Climates: The Laboratories of Globalism,” in Environmental Histories of the Cold War, 51-84

• Barker-Devine, Jenny. “‘Mightier Than Missiles’: The Rhetoric of Civil Defense for Rural American Families, 1950-1970.” Agricultural History 80 (Autumn, 2006): 415-435

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• Hamblin, Jacob Darwin. “Gods and Devils in the Details: Marine Pollution, Radioactive Waste, and an Environmental Regime circa 1972.” Environmental History 32 (September 2008): 539-560

Week 13, Cold War, week 2 How did “catastrophic environmentalism” influence the Cold War?

• Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature, selections Week 14: War and Wildlife Simply put, war has affected animals a great deal. What does that mean?

• Greg Bankoff, “Of Beasts and Men: Animals and the Cold War in Eastern Asia,” in McNeill and Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War

• Kurk Dorsey, “Compromising on Conservation: World War II and American Leadership in Whaling Diplomacy,” in Natural Enemy, Natural Ally, 252-279

• Gordon H. Orians and E. W. Pfeiffer, “Ecological Effects of the War in Vietnam,” Science, Vol. 168, No. 3931 (1 May 1970), 544-554

• Bill Tsutsui, “Looking Straight at Them! Understanding the Big Bug Movies of the 1950s.” Environmental History, 12 (April 2007): 237-253

Week 15: Week off Work on your final papers. Week 16: Wrapping up So what does it all mean? How should we define “war” and “environment” and what do we think about the intersection of the two? Finals Week: Final Papers due