Agricultural History Review, Volume 63 Part 2 (2015), p. 326

In An environmental history of wildlife in England, 1650–1950, Tom Williamson address a subject that emerged in the 1970s and was raised in the Agricultural History Review at least as long ago as 1984, when Adrian H. Cowell’s article, ‘An Approach to the Agrarian History of Upland Country: Ecology and Habitat’, posited the idea that historians of agriculture might make up for a lack of documentary evidence by using the evidence of vegetation instead to demonstrate changes in habitat and environment. As Cowell suggested 35 years ago, the plants alone, grazed by sheep, for example, and thwarted in the normal succession that would take place as each species seeks to out-compete its neighbours, provide ample testimony of the complex of interwoven cultural, biological, economic and environmental factors that go to make up what we consider to be agrarian history. Since Cowell wrote his article, which drew on the work of ecological historians and historians of ecology, environmental history has both changed and become more widespread; by 2006, for example, we see a paper by Kristin Asdal discussing its use and interpretation of ‘nature’ in History and Theory. Points in between these two quite methodological papers include detailed analyses of specific case studies focused on individual locations or species through to the story of world-wide impacts of natural disasters. That is to say, environmental history is now an established discipline. This is worth stating, as in his book Tom Williamson seeks to make a point, which, as Asdal observed in her 2006 paper, is both new and fundamental to the field as it progresses: that is, that environmental historian need to consider very carefully what is thought or perceived to be ‘natural’. By traversing 300 years, Williamson makes it very clear that environments often referred to as ‘natural’ – that is, innocent of human intervention – are far from it. This might seem quite evident to historians of agriculture, who are more aware than most that the land has been used to produce raw resources, food and fuel for centuries, but Williamson seeks to make this clear through sharp and systematic summaries of the position of wildlife in relation to each productive landscape through time, and therefore brings it nicely into sharp relief.

There are ten chapters, of which the first sets the scene and the last offers some concluding remarks. The book proceeds broadly chronologically, with the chapters centred on themes appropriate to the period: ‘Seventeenth-century environments: woodland and waste’, ‘Seventeenth-century environments: farmland’, ‘The social contexts of wildlife, c.1650–1750’, ‘The industrial revolution’, ‘The revolution in agriculture’, ‘New roles for nature’, ‘Wildlife in depression, c.1870–1940’, ‘New urban environments, c.1860–1950’. In each instance the environment includes the farm, but also wasteland and common, town and (eventually) city, and the position and use of ‘intermediate’ wildlife such as game, as well as the effects on plants and animals of agriculture and husbandry. His interest is in the uses of wildlife for amenity as well as the effects of industry or farming, and he constantly seeks to give the reader pause. Thus, for example, he addresses the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for nature study, which did not necessarily benefit the nature studied given the Victorians’ equal enthusiasm for collecting it, and he demonstrates that agricultural depression had a catastrophic effect on many wild species which were no longer able to benefit from the maintenance of land as it fell out of production.

Williamson argues overall that the story here is not a simple, linear one of the steady erasure of wildlife. Instead some forms of agricultural and other types of production increased the diversity of wildlife, both numerically in terms of species but also by sustaining diverse communities of organisms locally. He makes the point that even the highest tallies within the killing sprees directed at pests and vermin and catalogued by parish officials, leaving a horrific tale for Roger Lovegrove to tell in Silent Fields (2007), did not result in the erasure or even significant diminution of those species that were subject to control. The development of towns and cities offered some species new habitats and environments ripe for exploitation and therefore resulted in an increase in their numbers. And, he states in his conclusion, though there are those species that have been denuded in specific localities and regions – thus the pine marten, polecat and wildcat certainly fell foul of the gamekeepers between 1800 and 1853 – very few of the other 100,000 species to be found nationally have been made extinct within Britain as a whole in the period he looks at, even after 1950. In sum, there are always criticisms that can be made of any text if one is so minded: on p. 17, for example, Williamson uses ‘man’ for humanity, which certainly grates. However, the book offers a very useful and accessible introduction to the subject of environmental history for the place and period, and also makes a crucial point overall: it is essential that history remains in the picture.