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The human impact: Man's role in environmental change
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REVIEWS
countries, identifies the main historical issues and gaps in our knowledge, and suggests directions for future research. With 50 chapters and 45 different contributors, the coverage and quality vary considerably, but there is useful information in every chapter. The four country editors each had a different approach to the material. The authors on Bolivia concentrate on concise, descriptions of the archives and their contents; for Peru the coverage is much wider, often with summaries of existing approaches to Peruvian history. Peru and Chile are better researched than Ecuador or Bolivia, so that these differences also reflect the interest of previous researchers. The discussion of the principal sources available for research on individual topics in Chile and Peru is especially useful. Although the information may be somewhat dated, the details of procedures, hours of opening, copying facilities, as well as an inventory of documents, will save those contemplating research in these countries many frustrations. The obstacles of research are also touched upon and anyone who has worked in the Third World will recognize the tragi-comedy of the ceremonial canon which twice a year fired thousands of “useless” documents into oblivion. Escap, Bangkok
ANDREW
RONALD~ICELDON
GOUDIE, The Human Impact: Man’s Role in Environmental Change (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. x+316. S15XrOand E6.50 softback) In the preface to this ambitious synthesis the author’s debt to his colleagues and former students at Oxford is fully acknowledged. The many illustrations are clear and apt, a useful bibliography is given, and typographical errors are few; the book should, therefore, prove a helpful guide to the research published in English on a politically and socially sensitive theme, valuable for both students and teachers. The dilemma of the twentieth century is placed in the historical and social context of past philosophical and scientific discussions of man’s place in the natural world. The human need to control the environment, to produce food for a rapidly increasing world population, to provide raw materials for modern technology is shewn not only to emphasize problems already existing in earlier societies, but also to create others; increasing salinity and disease resulting from irrigation are two of many discussed. Dr Goudie is more at ease with geomorphological themes; some biological aspects receive summary treatment (the domestication of animals merits only one page) and some research is uncritically quoted. Is it really possible to state categorically that the cereal crop yield in Mesopotamia was 2,537 litres per hectare (p. 113)?
RICHARD GOUGH, The History of Myddle, edited and with an introduction
(Harmondsworth:
by David Hey
Penguin Books, 1981. Pp. 334. E2.50)
The publishers are to be congratulated on making the full text of this remarkable and unique local history available at a reasonable cost, and in their choice of editor. Dr Hey’s own study of Myddle was published in 1974 (the year before the French edition of Ladurie’s MontaiIZou, with which the publishers bracket Gough’s book) and his knowledge and scholarship are made available in the excellent introduction and helpful footnotes. The book leaves many impressions: familiarity with the qualities and frailties of the seventeenth-century inhabitants of Myddle, which differ little from our own twentieth-century experience; a sense of greater mobility than might have been expected; a picture of piecemeal enclosure, of building and re-building. But behind all the stories, scandalous or informative, one glimpses the author himself: a raconteur, a keen observer of human foibles, appreciative of beauty in both men and women, a master of the pungent phrase, who, with the experience and compassion of age, describes and com-
REVIEWS
countries, identifies the main historical issues and gaps in our knowledge, and suggests directions for future research. With 50 chapters and 45 different contributors, the coverage and quality vary considerably, but there is useful information in every chapter. The four country editors each had a different approach to the material. The authors on Bolivia concentrate on concise, descriptions of the archives and their contents; for Peru the coverage is much wider, often with summaries of existing approaches to Peruvian history. Peru and Chile are better researched than Ecuador or Bolivia, so that these differences also reflect the interest of previous researchers. The discussion of the principal sources available for research on individual topics in Chile and Peru is especially useful. Although the information may be somewhat dated, the details of procedures, hours of opening, copying facilities, as well as an inventory of documents, will save those contemplating research in these countries many frustrations. The obstacles of research are also touched upon and anyone who has worked in the Third World will recognize the tragi-comedy of the ceremonial canon which twice a year fired thousands of “useless” documents into oblivion. Escap, Bangkok
ANDREW
RONALD~ICELDON
GOUDIE, The Human Impact: Man’s Role in Environmental Change (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. x+316. S15XrOand E6.50 softback) In the preface to this ambitious synthesis the author’s debt to his colleagues and former students at Oxford is fully acknowledged. The many illustrations are clear and apt, a useful bibliography is given, and typographical errors are few; the book should, therefore, prove a helpful guide to the research published in English on a politically and socially sensitive theme, valuable for both students and teachers. The dilemma of the twentieth century is placed in the historical and social context of past philosophical and scientific discussions of man’s place in the natural world. The human need to control the environment, to produce food for a rapidly increasing world population, to provide raw materials for modern technology is shewn not only to emphasize problems already existing in earlier societies, but also to create others; increasing salinity and disease resulting from irrigation are two of many discussed. Dr Goudie is more at ease with geomorphological themes; some biological aspects receive summary treatment (the domestication of animals merits only one page) and some research is uncritically quoted. Is it really possible to state categorically that the cereal crop yield in Mesopotamia was 2,537 litres per hectare (p. 113)?
RICHARD GOUGH, The History of Myddle, edited and with an introduction
(Harmondsworth:
by David Hey
Penguin Books, 1981. Pp. 334. E2.50)
The publishers are to be congratulated on making the full text of this remarkable and unique local history available at a reasonable cost, and in their choice of editor. Dr Hey’s own study of Myddle was published in 1974 (the year before the French edition of Ladurie’s MontaiIZou, with which the publishers bracket Gough’s book) and his knowledge and scholarship are made available in the excellent introduction and helpful footnotes. The book leaves many impressions: familiarity with the qualities and frailties of the seventeenth-century inhabitants of Myddle, which differ little from our own twentieth-century experience; a sense of greater mobility than might have been expected; a picture of piecemeal enclosure, of building and re-building. But behind all the stories, scandalous or informative, one glimpses the author himself: a raconteur, a keen observer of human foibles, appreciative of beauty in both men and women, a master of the pungent phrase, who, with the experience and compassion of age, describes and com-