Emmanuel Krieke, Scorched Earth

 I was impressed by this book. It is an important contribution to the growing scholarship at the intersection of military and environmental history. With such global warming induced security risks as flooding, ecologically forced migration, conflicts over fresh water, heat, deterioration of the arctic, etc., this is a most relevant field of inquiry. 

As historian Emmanuel Krieke demonstrates through a series of case studies ranging across several continents during the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries total war and its environmental consequences existed long before the twentieth century. As an alternative to total war, Scorched Earth offers the new concept of environcide, or deliberate warfare waged against both nature and humans primarily by targeted the environmental infrastructure of the enemy. An attack on one multiplied the damaging effects on both. For example, intentionally opening dikes in the Netherlands to flood fields damaged the farmland and displaced the human population dependent on that land. Seeking food and shelter, these hungry, sick, and weak refugees further strained the resources of the towns and cities they travelled through and to, leading to more environcide. Environcide created both immediate, devastating shocks to both nature and human society, as well as long-term consequences that lasted for generations or longer.  

 

One finding that some might find shocking is that this form of warfare was common from the 1600s to the twentieth century on all continents and societies and was not the exclusive domain of European settler societies.  Indigenous groups used against one another and the European invaders. Moreover, Europeans utilized environcide against each other, even during civil wars, as much as they did against peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.  

 

Another point he makes is that there is an element of human agency in the spread of disease. Smallpox, for example, did not kill so many millions of indigenous Americans solely because it entered a virgin environment. Instead, he contends, germs found susceptible hosts made more vulnerable to death from the hunger, violence, forced migration, and physical and emotional trauma caused by environcidal warfare and the destruction of environmental infrastructure.