The Influence Of Environmental History

Environmental History is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time. Environmental history is a rather new discipline that came into being during the 1960’s and 1970’s. It came about as a direct consequence of the growing awareness of worldwide environmental problems. Some of important practitioners of environmental history are Donald Worster, Christian Pfister, and Peter Brimblecombe. Environmental history works by emphasizing the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs. In 1994, the tiny east African country of Rwanda, played host to one of the most vicious genocides of the twentieth century. This tiny country, with a population of approximately 7,500,000 people in 1994, lost nearly 1,000,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu people living there to bloody conflict. In the years leading up to the genocide, there were many underlying issues waiting to bubble over into full-blown conflict. Part of the conflict in Rwanda was the ethnic division between the Hutu and Tutsi people, as well as the assassination of Rwandan President …show more content…
As the population grew, the amount of land available for subsistence farming decreased dramatically, leaving many people landless and unemployed. As a result of this loss of land, Hutu leaders were more easily able to persuade the Hutu people to kill the Tutsi, and reclaim their lands. The loss of land was detrimental to the people living there. Losing land meant that not only did you lose your place to live, but you also lost your chief way of providing sustenance to your family. The Hutu leaders easily able to persuade their constituents that the Tutsi were to blame for the Hutu losing their land. Another way of Hutu government persuaded the Hutu that the Tutsi should be eliminated, was by pointing to vast tracts of land which had been freed up for Hutu settlement and cultivation; which was taken from the Tutsi in the 1960’s and