Early Modern Discourses of Environmental Change and Sustainability

This network examines discourses of environmental change and sustainability in the period 1500-1800. Anxieties over land productivity, resource management, environmental deterioration were as prevalent in the early modern past as they are today. Governments and local communities in this period had to find ways of dealing with drought, floods, harvest failures, over-grazing and fuel shortages. Environmental change brought about widespread dearth, social unrest and political destabilisation. Despite this historical heritage, current discourses of environment and sustainability are perceived as expressing fundamentally modern anxieties. This network is designed to bring together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to consider the expression, negotiation and transformation of notions of environment and sustainability over time and place.

The main aim of the research network is to advance understanding of both early modern and modern cultures of sustainability through collaborative research. The core disciplines involved are literary studies and history, which will collaborate with disciplines such as archaeology, geography, politics and development studies in a series of linked workshops and a conference. Discussions in our workshops will focus on: how, in the 'organic', low-carbon economy and culture of pre-industrial Britain, households and communities adapted to environmental change; how society as a whole responded to real and imagined crises, and the strategies people devised in order to safeguard future generations. Moving beyond purely economic explanations, we will consider the social, cultural, political and moral meanings invested in early modern discourses of sustainability. The workshops will lead to a major conference on the broad theme of 'Environment and Identity'. The conference will extend the geographical, chronological and political scope of the workshops by investigating the relationship between government policies and local initiatives, and encouraging comparison between past and present. The network thus also includes specialists working on regions other than Britain and on modern times. To further secure this liaison between past and present, we operate in partnership with two organisations: on the one hand, with English Heritage, an enterprise for national heritage site conservations; and on the other hand, with the Peninsula Partnership for the Rural Environment (PPRE), an enterprise led by agricultural and social scientists and ecologists to inform rural and environmental policy. There is much potential for using historical examples to inform modern debates on sustainable solutions. We intend to publish a volume of essays, based on the conference, thus covering a subject of burgeoning interest for which no comparable publication exists.

As environmental change has a direct impact upon the meanings of place and the formation of social identities associated with particular locales and landscapes, local dissemination is central to the network and will be promoted through regional collaborations with institutions such as the University of Exeter's Institute of Cornish Studies, the Cornish Audio Visual Archive (CAVA), Cornwall Heritage Trust, Cornish Mining World Heritage, and County Record Office. To raise the regional and public profile of the network, Exeter's Cornwall Campus will provide the venue for a public day school. The day school will be a forum for the exchange of ideas concerning issues of environmental change and sustainability in the past and present, and for the future of Cornwall. At this event, speakers will include members of the Institute of Cornish Studies, English Heritage, Peninsula Partnership for the Rural Environment and Exeter's Centre for Rural Policy Research.

1) Who will benefit?

- Researchers within Humanities and Social Sciences
- National and regional environmental groups and heritage organisations
- National and regional policy makers
- Wider public

2) How will they benefit?

This network will benefit the above groups by demonstrating the relevance of historical models for modern sustainable development. Prior to nineteenth-century industrialisation, Britain supported an organic economy in which locally derived resources and low carbon energy prevailed. The benefits of an historical perspective of environmental change and processes of human adaptation are twofold: a) greater understanding of historic environments and early modern eco-cultures is directly relevant to the development and practice of regional initiatives for sustainable growth; b) the shift from renewable resources to fossil fuel consumption that took place in Britain between 1500 and 1800 provides an important parallel to the developing world. The network facilitates direct comparison between modern concerns and an early organic economy, its cultural understandings and its struggles to reconcile itself to a new emerging world of fossil fuels, exponential growth rates, rising consumption and waste. Within the timescale of the grant, the network will establish a significant dialogue between the Humanities and Social Sciences and increase public awareness. Both aims are reflected in the network's partnership and liaison with expert organisations whose work focuses on: i) rural policy, agribusiness, and poverty reduction; ii) historic environments, conservation and sustainability. Both groups have expressed enthusiastic interest in learning from the network's discussions of the history of environmental change.

3) What will be done to ensure that they have the opportunity to benefit?

Partnership with the external organisations PPRE (Peninsula Partnership for the Rural Environment) and English Heritage will consolidate the network's impact. Their representatives, who are leading figures in their fields of rural policy and archaeological conservation, are on our Advisory Board. Both organisations will send representatives to our public day school and workshops and contribute to the conceptualising of panels for our conference in which they will participate. The conference will be held at Pendennis Castle, an early modern site in Cornwall managed by English Heritage. Our partners' endorsement of the network's initiatives will create foundations for future collaboration exploring the wider potential of historical perspectives to modern national and international discourses of sustainability.
The support of environmental groups and heritage societies in Cornwall will raise the regional profile of the network. Our public day school is central to this aspect of our engagement plan. Focusing on the theme 'Past Environments: Sustainable Futures in Cornwall, 1500 to the Present', the event will be hosted at Exeter's Cornwall Campus. Speakers will include members of the Cornish Studies Institute (Exeter), Cornish Audio Visual Archive, Centre for Rural Policy Research (Exeter), English Heritage, and Peninsula Partnership for the Rural Environment.
Using Exeter's Knowledge-Transfer and Media Services, we will publicise our discussions and debates to a wide audience. A network website (created by Exeter IT services, maintained by PI, CI, and assistant) will include working papers by workshop participants, empirical data (images of maps, artifacts, historic landscapes), links to resources provided by project partners and regional groups, and a notice board for discussion and feedback. We will liaise with academic societies (e.g. British Agricultural History Society, Institute of Historical Research) and campaign groups (e.g. UK Soil Association), and network details will be advertised on we