The Changing Place of Environmental History in the World History Survey.

The world history survey is of course the “impossible class,” inevitably has too much in it already. One of the founders of the field, Leften Stavrionis, urged instructors to focus the course and “dare to omit”! But one of the main objectives of the course has been and remains to prepare students to understand the origins of the modern world, to view modern problems in historical perspective, and to prepare students to be responsible citizens. In the 21^stcentury, the environment is one of the most important aspects of human life, and environmental problems are among the most serious that the world faces now and will increasingly face in the future. These considerations suggest that environmental history might not be a topic that we should “dare to omit.” But the environment has played different roles and has had different degrees of importance for people in different periods and societies, which means that environmental history fits into the first half of the world history survey differently from the way it fits into the second half. In particular, for the most part, human actions brought less change to the environment, and caused (with some exceptions) much less damage to the environment in the earlier periods of human history than in the modern period. The consequences of human-environmental interaction have in turn been much more dramatic and devastating for people in the modern and especially contemporary period than ever before in human history. My paper will discuss these differences and suggest ways that the world history survey can approach and incorporate these different characters and degrees of human-environmental interaction.