Environmental History: The Origins, Stakes, and Perspectives of a New Site for Research

This introduction has three main purposes. First of all, it establishes a genealogy of the environmental history field by analyzing its origins and stages of development. Then it analyzes the specific context of the French academic community in terms of the reception and production of environmental history research, by re-evaluating in particular the role played by the Annales School and its heritage. Finally it provides an analytical panorama of this academic subfield which emerged in the United States during the 1970s and developed more recently in France.