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Environments - Landscapes, nature and culture

6 important questions on Environments - Landscapes, nature and culture

Why did European authorities encourage draining of wetlands? What consequences does it have?

Throughout Europe, authorities encouraged the draining of wetlands to increase the cultivable area for arable and pasture.
Such schemes disrupted long-established livelihoods, none more so than the Desagüe in Spanish America, one of the most ambitious engineering projects, which drained the complex of lakes around Tenochtitlan in central Mexico and put an end to the system of Chinampa lake farming practised by Aztec agriculturalists.
Drainage projects were met with fierce resistance from locals who stood to lose their land and livelihoods; the drainage of the East Anglian fens provoked repeated protests and riots during the mid-seventeenth century.

What belief did Catholics and Protestants share?

While Catholics and Protestants disagreed over the exact role of God in their physical world, they shared a belief in nature as a gift of providence, and its aberrations as signs of divine wrath or grace.

How did historians view changes of nature?

Historians have come to understand early modern change as less the 'death of nature' or disenchantment and more a series of re-enchantments, each with different confessional and epistemological emphases.

How did the elemental properties of landscapes and bodies linked landscapes with characteristics in people?

The correspondence between the elemental properties of landscapes and bodies linked landscapes with characteristics in their peoples: inhabitants of wetlands (cool, moist places) were slow and relaxed ('plegmatic'), while cold, dry places like uplands made people introspective ('melancholic').

In what three zones did climate theory divide the earth?

Climate theory divided the earth into three latitudinal zones - frigid at its polar extremes, torrid at its equator and temperature at the latitudes in between, placing the Mediterranean as the climatically optimal location for civilization.

Through which lens were landscape and livelihood read? What are some examples of this?

Landscape and livelihood were read through a moral lens which lent ecological regions distinct and sometimes caricatured identities.
The Dutch coastal landscape was a product of centuries of draining and embanking and required constant investment and attention to maintain its productivity.
As such, the well-drained Polders were synonymous with hard work and godly labour, whereas wet and boggy grounds were seen as a moral failure.
Links between cultural identities and landscape types are equally apparent in the Alps.