Environmental History and World History: Developments in Congruence

Patrick Manning, in his book Navigating World History, suggests that world history “has the potential to become a scholarly nexus linking many fields of study” that will enable historians to escape the “national paradigm that continues to constrain most studies in humanities and social sciences.” This article will test Manning’s proposal in the developing field of environmental history by examining the topics of panels and papers selected for the annual conferences of the American Society of Environmental Historians in the years following the 2003 publication of Navigating World History. Environmental history has evolved to enlarge its lens of analysis to span both borders and time frames. Born with a strong interdisciplinary base and shaped by works that straddle world and environmental history, the field has had a natural affinity with world history. Increasingly, research topics have served to blur the line between environmental and world history.