Tales of deforestation and desertification in North Africa have been told from the Roman period to the present. Such stories of environmental decline in the Maghreb are still recounted by experts and are widely accepted without question today. International organizations such as the United Nations frequently invoke these inaccurate stories to justify environmental conservation and development projects in the arid and semiarid lands in North Africa and around the Mediterranean basin. Recent research in arid lands ecology and new paleoecological evidence, however, do not support many claims of deforestation, overgrazing, and desertification in this region. Diana K. Davis’s pioneering analysis reveals the critical influence of French scientists and administrators who established much of the purported scientific basis of these stories during the colonial period in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, illustrating the key role of environmental narratives in imperial expansion. The processes set in place by the use of this narrative not only systematically disadvantaged the majority of North Africans but also led to profound changes in the landscape, some of which produced the land degradation that continues to plague the Maghreb today. Resurrecting the Granary of Rome exposes many of the political, economic, and ideological goals of the French colonial project in these arid lands and the resulting definition of desertification that continues to inform global environmental and development projects. The first book on the environmental history of the Maghreb, this volume reframes much conventional thinking about the North African environment. Davis’s book is essential reading for those interested in global environmental history.

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During the nineteenth century, the development and codification of forest science in France were closely linked to Provence’s time-honored tradition of mobile pastoralism, which formed a major part of the economy. At the beginning of the century, pastoralism also featured prominently in the economies and social traditions of North Africa and southwestern Anatolia until French forest agents implemented ideas and practices for forest management in these areas aimed largely at regulating and marginalizing Mediterranean mobile pastoral traditions. These practices changed not only landscapes but also the social order of these three Mediterranean societies and the nature of French colonial administration. In Nomad’s Land Andrea E. Duffy investigates the relationship between Mediterranean mobile pastoralism and nineteenth-century French forestry through case studies in Provence, French colonial Algeria, and Ottoman Anatolia. By restricting the use of shared spaces, foresters helped bring the populations of Provence and Algeria under the control of the state, and French scientific forestry became a medium for state initiatives to sedentarize mobile pastoral groups in Anatolia. Locals responded through petitions, arson, violence, compromise, and adaptation. Duffy shows that French efforts to promote scientific forestry both internally and abroad were intimately tied to empire building and paralleled the solidification of Western narratives condemning the pastoral tradition, leading to sometimes tragic outcomes for both the environment and pastoralists.

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries, increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to critically examine culturally constructed views of the environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the questionable policies and practices born of these environmental imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge production.

The French invaded Algeria in 1830, and found a landscape rich in Roman remains, which they proceeded to re-use to support the constructions such as fortresses, barracks and hospitals needed to fight the natives (who continued to object to their presence), and to house the various colonisation projects with which they intended to solidify their hold on the country, and to make it both modern and profitable. Arabs and Berbers had occasionally made use of the ruins, but it was still a Roman and Early Christian landscape when the French arrived. In the space of two generations, this was destroyed, just as were many ancient remains in France, in part because “real” architecture was Greek, not Roman.

This multi-disciplinary account of the fate of ancient monuments and technologies in Asia Minor studies the processes and their results with the help of archaeology, history, construction engineering, and travel documentation. To clarify changes, their causes and repercussions, it compares infrastructure engineering (transportation, water management, utilitarian architecture) in antiquity with developments over the past 200 years, using the accounts of European travellers and then of excavations. It analyses patterns of and reasons for the deterioration of material life, documenting the perceptions and understanding of Roman antiquities and engineering by populations living amidst ancient Roman art and architecture, roads, and aqueducts. These are complemented by travellers' accounts of the myriad aspects of the plundering of archaeological sites and antiquities.

How did ancient societies change the environment and how do their actions continue to affect us today? In this dramatically revised and expanded second edition of the work entitled Pan’s Travail, J. Donald Hughes examines the environmental history of the classical period and argues that the decline of ancient civilizations resulted in part from their exploitation of the natural world. Focusing on Greece and Rome, as well as areas subject to their influences, Hughes offers a detailed look at the impact of humans and their technologies on the ecology of the Mediterranean basin. Evidence of deforestation in ancient Greece, the remains of Roman aqueducts and mines, and paintings on centuries-old pottery that depict agricultural activities document ancient actions that resulted in detrimental consequences to the environment. Hughes compares the ancient world's environmental problems to other persistent social problems and discusses attitudes toward nature expressed in Greek and Latin literature. In addition to extensive revisions based on the latest research, this new edition includes photographs from Hughes's worldwide excursions, a new chapter on warfare and the environment, and an updated bibliography.