New Horizons in Environmental History Context Dipesh Chakraborty and Rachel Carson/ পরিবেশের ইতিহাস চর্চায় নয়া দিগন্ত : প্রসঙ্গ দীপেশ চক্রবর্ত্তী ও র‌্যাচেল কারসন

Abstract

Environment History offers an earth’s-eye view of the past. It addresses the many ways in which human beings have interacted with the natural environment over time. As one of the newest perspectives within the discipline of History, it is a field that is still in the process of self-definition. It therefore offers the exciting challenge of engaging in a dialogue with the documents of the past and with historians of the present to create individual interpretations of history.

            For environmental historian the term environment refers to the Natural and Human-created surroundings that affect a living organism or group of organisms ability to maintain itself and develop over time. Ecology deals with the relationship between these organisms and their surroundings. In the case of humans, it also includes social and cultural patterns, ecological history is therefore somewhat broader than environmental history but the two terms are often used interchangeably.

            Environmental History is a rather new discipline that came into being during the 1960 and 1970. The foundations on which environmental history was founded in the 1960’s : Rodrick Nash coined the term environmental history in an article about the impact of past human society on the environment published in the Pacific Historical Review in 1972. Environmental history is always about human interaction with the Natural world, or to put it in another way, it studies the intervention between culture and nature. The Principal goal of environmental history is to defend our understanding of how humans has been affected by the natural.

            Environmental history is an interdisciplinary subject that means that historians, scientists and other scholars must look over the boundaries of their own subject the historian must be aware that he or she sometimes needs to apply some principles from natural sciences, such as ecology, biology and forestry, to understand what happened in the past. However, this does not mean that historian must become a scientist. He is and remains and historian with the task to master and understanding past as a key to a better understanding of the present. But to do so he or she must look over the boundaries of history and even the humanities and acquaint themselves with the nomenclature and principles of their disciplines, especially the natural sciences. This does not mean that they have to become experts in these fields, but to use it as a tool to get a better understanding of historical problems.

            During last 40 years environmental history grew from an interest of some historians and natural scientists into a full-fledged academic discipline. In the United States environmental history gained a firm institutionalized base which is reflected in the fact that the annual meetings of the American Society for environmental history established in 1975.

            In this article of mine environmental history practice is new horizon by Rachel Louis Carson and Dipesh Chakrabarty. In 1962 Rachel Carson brought the environmental movement into spotlight with the publication of ‘Silent Spring’ in which she described the effects of chemical pesticides on biodiversity and other hand Dipesh Chkraborty is a cultural historian and postcolonial theorist who has made particularly important contributions to environmental historiography. Dipesh Chakraborty believes that environmental historiography is an important part of human history, helping to understand the relationship between environment and human society.