Resurrecting the Granary of Rome
It was such a good book title, I had to use it as a post title (link).
Although this isn't what I would normally consider "my" kind of book, I'm glad I picked it up. Mainly, the initial appeal was that I went to high school with the author, though I can't claim to have known her well.
The book has a certain amount of resonance with me, having just completed Tim Egan's The Worst Hard Times, a book about farmers in the Dust Bowl.Diana's [ahem] Dr. Davis' thesis in RtGoR is that the French colonists created a narrative in which Algeria was once a vast green sea of forests and grain, but that the nomads (read: barbaric Arabs) had ruined it with their primitive farming and especially herding methods. This "declensionist narrative" was used to justify the obvious outcome: the French were morally obligated to re-civilise Algeria and restore the region to its former glory.
The trouble was that it wasn't true.
There were three topics in the book that intrigued me. The first was the discussion of various types of property recognized by the indigenous Algerians, including communal property used to rotate grazing animals to allow for leaving some land fallow. The second was the interrelationship between deforestation and dessicationist [1] theories that instructed 19th century environmentalism and their foundation in Christian mythology. The third was the idea of environmentalism as social control.
The first is interesting to me as an example of alternative social organization. Davis describes briefly the concepts of melk, achaba, habous, and arsh [2]. The first is private property, the second is a "pasture contract" exchanging grazing rights for labor, and the third is land reserved for religious insttitutions. The fourth, the idea of communal property (mostly pasture but some cultivation) is curious: if the system is stable, it challenges my notions of the sustainability of commons found in narratives such as this description of the pilgrims' attempts to establish communal agriculture. Perhaps the tragedy is not as inevitable as Hardin would have us believe. Under some circumstances -- perhaps only those of small, nomadic, strictly religious tribes -- communal property may be sustainable and productive.
The second theme is interesting to me because of an embarrassing moment I suffered shortly after university. I had a friend there who was into environmental issues, and he preached that North America had once been entirely covered in forest [3]. I remember the look of bemused disbelief when I professed this at work one day, and realized how silly it was. It is one of the most striking memories I have about how I had acquired what I thought was knowledge, only to discover that it was pseudo-knowledge I had bought hook, line, and sinker based on no more than the strength of conviction of the source. On another occasion, I ran into a co-worker who believed that England had recently been completely barren of forests, the mirror image of my error. It would have been awfully difficult to build half-timbered houses, hide in the Sherwood forest, build pipes out of wood [4], build the world's most fearsome navy in the 19th century, or any number of other things if there were no trees on the island.
Indeed, both ideas are born of the same myth, the idea that the world was once covered in forests (Eden), but since man's fall from grace, the forest has gradually given way to hot deserts (reminiscent of what biblical location?). Because they contribute to this decline through their use of fire as an agricultural tool, natives (Algerians, North American Indians) must be deprived of their traditional ways of life and, not incidentally, of their property. Call them reservations, cantonments, or concentration camps, nomadic peoples must be controlled, "attached" to the land, and turned into farmers if possible and imprisoned if not. In Algeria, they also forced them to use money by forcing them to pay taxes in cash rather than in kind. Having deprived them of their traditional, nomadic, pastoral ways, and having also forced them out of barter and into the cash system, many had no choice but to enter the workforce as a laborer for the new French masters. That is my synopsis of Davis' thesis on environmentalism as social control; I related similar arguments earlier under this post.
The parallels between those conservation-as-state-expansion efforts and the intent of modern Global Warming enthusiasts are too obvious to overlook. Of course environmentalism is about social control. Although there are thoughtful believers who would like to see genuine threats to our future existence mitigated, there are others who latch onto any fad as a means of advancing state power. Sometimes called "watermelons" -- Green on the outside, Red on the inside -- such people move from one cause to another in hopes of finding the magic lever for bringing about a technocratic utopia. It seems to escape their notice that their causes are frequently the cover story for the simultaneous expansion of state-capitalism (which Davis rightly identifies by its simpler name, capitalism). Algeria went from a land of traditional herding and farming to a colony of small farmers to a corporation-dominated extension of France. Likewise, the American Plains transitioned from the land of the buffalo to a land of small land-grant farmers to ADM's central production facility. Both changes happened under cover of conservationist narratives - as it happens, those providing moral cover with a Christian-fall-from-Eden myth were almost literally Baptists to the corporate-colonial Bootleggers.
This revisionist history seems to me to be a great companion to recent responses to Jared Diamond's version of the Rapa Nui myth. Diamond claimed that the decline of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was due to stupid and greedy human tendencies to destroy their own environment. In his version, they cut down all of their trees in a fit of one-upsmanship, with devastating consequences. The revisionists are finding two alternatives to the story: one is that rats caused the deforestation and that there was no long period of stability followed by collapse. Of course, the rats probably arrived at the island with the natives, but at least the humans intentional actions are off the hook. A second version (pdf) points out that the first Europeans verified trees on the island, were greeted by natives bearing palm leaves, and saw natives living in palm-thatched huts. Shortly after their arrival, the trees disappeared and the natives went into decline; Benny Peiser argues that this was no coincidence. His version, sometimes called The Rape of Rapa Nui, is a direct, though compressed, version of the Algerian story.
----------------------------
[1] Despite Dr. Davis' dissection of the dessicationist theory, I am under the impression that recent research has indeed shown a relationship between deforestation in the Amazon and decreasing rainfall. Without pulling up lots of research and trying to figure out which findings are most reliable, all I can do is point out that (a) her reference was old (though she cited more recent research on the dessicationist narrative, I think the only physical science paper cited in refutation of the dessicationist theory was from 1982), and (b) her argument still seems correct. That is, I don't believe that the nomads destroyed so much vegetation that they created the Sahara; it seems rather more likely that they adapted to an existing fact. In a future edition, I would like to see her present and then answer stronger versions of the dessicationist theory.
[2] She also notes beylick and mokhzen, properties of the Ottoman state, and muwat, unproductive land that could be cleared, cultivated, and claimed.
[3] It's still a tempting myth given misleading maps like these - what does "virgin" mean? A recent National Geographic described in detail the number of modifications the natives had been making to their environment before the European arrival. The map creators are either unaware of natives' use of fire or unconcerned by it. The latter is consistent with the Noble Savage myth. It is perhaps notable that Rousseau was a popularizer of the myth, and Frenchmen would have been familiar with it even as they conquered the savages in Algeria. In fact, could this explain why they favored the sedate Berbers over the nomadic Arabs?
[4] This is a reference to something I recall reading in T. S. Ashton in which the poor were supposedly confined to neighborhoods where greedy developers couldn't even be bothered to use iron pipe. Ashton found that developers' greed wasn't the problem. It seemed that the neighborhoods in question had been built in the early 19th century, when England was busy fighting someone named Bonaparte. Iron was scarce and expensive, so the inhabitant-builders used wood for their own sewer pipes.
[5] As I noted in the review of Egan's book, Roosevelt's pet conservation method was to introduce forests to the Plains. Not only did that not work, but it made things worse as the trees soaked up what little groundwater there was. The Algerian experience was similar: in the 1870s, Francois Trottier tried to introduce eucalyptus trees throughout the country. The trees interfered with natural springs and soon enough they were removed and forgotten. The first repetition is tragedy, the second is farce.
Although this isn't what I would normally consider "my" kind of book, I'm glad I picked it up. Mainly, the initial appeal was that I went to high school with the author, though I can't claim to have known her well.
The book has a certain amount of resonance with me, having just completed Tim Egan's The Worst Hard Times, a book about farmers in the Dust Bowl.
The trouble was that it wasn't true.
There were three topics in the book that intrigued me. The first was the discussion of various types of property recognized by the indigenous Algerians, including communal property used to rotate grazing animals to allow for leaving some land fallow. The second was the interrelationship between deforestation and dessicationist [1] theories that instructed 19th century environmentalism and their foundation in Christian mythology. The third was the idea of environmentalism as social control.
The first is interesting to me as an example of alternative social organization. Davis describes briefly the concepts of melk, achaba, habous, and arsh [2]. The first is private property, the second is a "pasture contract" exchanging grazing rights for labor, and the third is land reserved for religious insttitutions. The fourth, the idea of communal property (mostly pasture but some cultivation) is curious: if the system is stable, it challenges my notions of the sustainability of commons found in narratives such as this description of the pilgrims' attempts to establish communal agriculture. Perhaps the tragedy is not as inevitable as Hardin would have us believe. Under some circumstances -- perhaps only those of small, nomadic, strictly religious tribes -- communal property may be sustainable and productive.
The second theme is interesting to me because of an embarrassing moment I suffered shortly after university. I had a friend there who was into environmental issues, and he preached that North America had once been entirely covered in forest [3]. I remember the look of bemused disbelief when I professed this at work one day, and realized how silly it was. It is one of the most striking memories I have about how I had acquired what I thought was knowledge, only to discover that it was pseudo-knowledge I had bought hook, line, and sinker based on no more than the strength of conviction of the source. On another occasion, I ran into a co-worker who believed that England had recently been completely barren of forests, the mirror image of my error. It would have been awfully difficult to build half-timbered houses, hide in the Sherwood forest, build pipes out of wood [4], build the world's most fearsome navy in the 19th century, or any number of other things if there were no trees on the island.
Indeed, both ideas are born of the same myth, the idea that the world was once covered in forests (Eden), but since man's fall from grace, the forest has gradually given way to hot deserts (reminiscent of what biblical location?). Because they contribute to this decline through their use of fire as an agricultural tool, natives (Algerians, North American Indians) must be deprived of their traditional ways of life and, not incidentally, of their property. Call them reservations, cantonments, or concentration camps, nomadic peoples must be controlled, "attached" to the land, and turned into farmers if possible and imprisoned if not. In Algeria, they also forced them to use money by forcing them to pay taxes in cash rather than in kind. Having deprived them of their traditional, nomadic, pastoral ways, and having also forced them out of barter and into the cash system, many had no choice but to enter the workforce as a laborer for the new French masters. That is my synopsis of Davis' thesis on environmentalism as social control; I related similar arguments earlier under this post.
The parallels between those conservation-as-state-expansion efforts and the intent of modern Global Warming enthusiasts are too obvious to overlook. Of course environmentalism is about social control. Although there are thoughtful believers who would like to see genuine threats to our future existence mitigated, there are others who latch onto any fad as a means of advancing state power. Sometimes called "watermelons" -- Green on the outside, Red on the inside -- such people move from one cause to another in hopes of finding the magic lever for bringing about a technocratic utopia. It seems to escape their notice that their causes are frequently the cover story for the simultaneous expansion of state-capitalism (which Davis rightly identifies by its simpler name, capitalism). Algeria went from a land of traditional herding and farming to a colony of small farmers to a corporation-dominated extension of France. Likewise, the American Plains transitioned from the land of the buffalo to a land of small land-grant farmers to ADM's central production facility. Both changes happened under cover of conservationist narratives - as it happens, those providing moral cover with a Christian-fall-from-Eden myth were almost literally Baptists to the corporate-colonial Bootleggers.
This revisionist history seems to me to be a great companion to recent responses to Jared Diamond's version of the Rapa Nui myth. Diamond claimed that the decline of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was due to stupid and greedy human tendencies to destroy their own environment. In his version, they cut down all of their trees in a fit of one-upsmanship, with devastating consequences. The revisionists are finding two alternatives to the story: one is that rats caused the deforestation and that there was no long period of stability followed by collapse. Of course, the rats probably arrived at the island with the natives, but at least the humans intentional actions are off the hook. A second version (pdf) points out that the first Europeans verified trees on the island, were greeted by natives bearing palm leaves, and saw natives living in palm-thatched huts. Shortly after their arrival, the trees disappeared and the natives went into decline; Benny Peiser argues that this was no coincidence. His version, sometimes called The Rape of Rapa Nui, is a direct, though compressed, version of the Algerian story.
----------------------------
[1] Despite Dr. Davis' dissection of the dessicationist theory, I am under the impression that recent research has indeed shown a relationship between deforestation in the Amazon and decreasing rainfall. Without pulling up lots of research and trying to figure out which findings are most reliable, all I can do is point out that (a) her reference was old (though she cited more recent research on the dessicationist narrative, I think the only physical science paper cited in refutation of the dessicationist theory was from 1982), and (b) her argument still seems correct. That is, I don't believe that the nomads destroyed so much vegetation that they created the Sahara; it seems rather more likely that they adapted to an existing fact. In a future edition, I would like to see her present and then answer stronger versions of the dessicationist theory.
[2] She also notes beylick and mokhzen, properties of the Ottoman state, and muwat, unproductive land that could be cleared, cultivated, and claimed.
[3] It's still a tempting myth given misleading maps like these - what does "virgin" mean? A recent National Geographic described in detail the number of modifications the natives had been making to their environment before the European arrival. The map creators are either unaware of natives' use of fire or unconcerned by it. The latter is consistent with the Noble Savage myth. It is perhaps notable that Rousseau was a popularizer of the myth, and Frenchmen would have been familiar with it even as they conquered the savages in Algeria. In fact, could this explain why they favored the sedate Berbers over the nomadic Arabs?
[4] This is a reference to something I recall reading in T. S. Ashton in which the poor were supposedly confined to neighborhoods where greedy developers couldn't even be bothered to use iron pipe. Ashton found that developers' greed wasn't the problem. It seemed that the neighborhoods in question had been built in the early 19th century, when England was busy fighting someone named Bonaparte. Iron was scarce and expensive, so the inhabitant-builders used wood for their own sewer pipes.
[5] As I noted in the review of Egan's book, Roosevelt's pet conservation method was to introduce forests to the Plains. Not only did that not work, but it made things worse as the trees soaked up what little groundwater there was. The Algerian experience was similar: in the 1870s, Francois Trottier tried to introduce eucalyptus trees throughout the country. The trees interfered with natural springs and soon enough they were removed and forgotten. The first repetition is tragedy, the second is farce.
Labels: Baptists_Bootleggers, book, environment, property_rights, state-capitalism
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