An Environmental History of Medieval Europe [Hardcover]

A pioneering study of how medieval Europeans used and changed their environment, integrating social, economic and environmental history approaches.How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This is a pioneering survey of medieval relations with the natural world which integrates approaches from social and economic history and environmental studies.How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This is a pioneering survey of medieval relations with the natural world which integrates approaches from social and economic history and environmental studies.As the very first book of its kind, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe provides a highly original survey of medieval relations with the natural world. Engaging with the interdisciplinary enterprise of environmental history, it examines the way in which natural forces affected people, how people changed their surroundings, and how they thought about the world around them. Exploring key themes in medieval history  including the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, and the long fourteenth century  Hoffmann draws fresh conclusions about enduring questions regarding agrarian economies, tenurial rights, technology and urbanization. Revealing the significance of the natural world on events previously thought of as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, sustainability, epidemic disease and climate change, and by introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself.Introduction: thinking about medieval Europeans in their natural world; 1. Long no wilderness; 2. Intersecting instabilities: culture and nature at medieval beginnings (c.400900); 3. Humankind and God's creation in medieval mindlcb