Militarized landscapes in the twentieth-century: Britain, France and the United States

The decimation of Vietnamese jungles with Agent Orange in the 1960s and the black smoke billowing from burning oil wells during the Gulf War of 1990-1991 directed media and public attention toward war's environmental impact. Yet even before the first bomb is dropped, militarism and the preparation for warfare materially and imaginatively reshape landscapes and environments. However, this form of military mobilization remains under-researched. This project seeks to rectify this neglect through a comparative analysis of military mobilization of land to prepare for and to wage war. We will also explore the role of military lands as reservoirs of biodiversity often superior in 'green' value to surrounding non-militarized landscapes subject to intensive agricultural practices and other customary forms of human encroachment. The relationship between this high conservation value and the status of defence estates as landscapes emptied of human residents and civilian activities is a central ingredient of our study. Also integral is the study of tensions between ecological restoration and the preservation of the historic environment represented by military structures (also the pre-military features of the humanized landscape).

With the development of increasingly powerful weaponry between the first and second world wars, European military organizations appropriated ever more land for training recruits and testing hardware (acquisition peaking in Britain during 1940s but continuing in France into the 1970s). At present, the military is the largest landowner in France and the British Ministry of Defence controls approximately one percent of UK territory. This project will focus on the military's justification for its control of national territory and the strategies it adopts to maintain its authority. It will also consider the challenges to militarized landscapes from those seeking access and a share of decision making and control: local communities, conservation organizations, environmentalists and other government bodies such as national park authorities. Of particular interest here is the interplay between the imperatives of defending the nation and defending nature. Yet nonhuman nature is also an integral part of the story. An analysis of the environmental history of military sites will address a central paradox in the war-environment relationship, namely, the suggestion that militarized landscapes sometimes become unexpected refuges for rare species of animals and plants. The French army has signed conservation agreements with the Ministry of the Environment, established 'Natural Zones of Ecological Interest for Flora and Fauna,' and advertises its ecological credentials, pointing to restrictions on intensive agriculture and urbanization on its bases. In Britain, Ministry of Defence lands hosts over 170 Site of Special Scientific Interest. How and why have military authorities embraced nature conservation policies? No environmental histories of militarized landscapes in France and Britain (nor of these nation's overseas holdings) have been written to date.

As well as exploring how the military and social forces such as environmentalism interact, this project investigates how militarized landscapes have become sites for competing claims and conceptions of landscape and environment, natural value and historic value, and national defence and national heritage. Our case studies will be drawn principally from France (including sites in Fontainebleau forest, the Vercors, and Canjeurs) and southwest England/South Wales (including Dartmoor, Salisbury Plain, Tyneham Range, Castlemartin and the Brecon Beacons). These will be supplemented by an American case study (decommissioned weapons manufacturing plants in Colorado, whose former sites now host national wildlife refuges). This comparative focus contributes to the breaking down of monolithic concepts such as "militarism" and "militarized landscapes". The focus on British, French and American histories will bring out the common ground and divergences between national military culture and the local, national and continental specificity of their expression and impact on the landscape. This project is inheriently interdisciplinary, drawing on geography, history, and the natural sciences as it seeks to explore the material and cultural histories of militarized landscapes as well as themes of authority and access, and settlement and movement. By uncovering this largely untouched area of historical study, this project provides a vital historical perspective on highly topical questions of military power and environmental responsibility.