Views from the South. Environmental Stories from the Mediterranean World (19th-20th centuries)

This volume collects the papers presented at the conference 'Views from the South. Environmental stories from the Mediterranean World, 19th-20th centuries' (Naples, 12-13 September 2003). The reason that led us to call this conference was our perception of the significant weakness of environmental history in Southern Europe: this does not mean, of course, that little research on this subject has been done; rather it is hard to say what is going on in each country because of the scarce international relations among scholars. For instance one can see how very few members from these countries are in the European Society for Environmental History, or at international meetings. This weakness is compounded by the linguistic problem, since few of our publications are in English, and our research hence goes largely unnoticed in the international scientific debate. Thus, the aim of our conference was to support environmental history in Mediterranean countries by establishing a network of Southern European environmental historians.