An Environmental History of Warfare

Martin Clemis, Command and General Staff College

This course examines the intersection of war and the natural environment. It explores the ways in which armed conflict and collective violence have shaped both the physical and the ideational world we inhabit. Warfare has not only had a sweeping impact on the physical landscape, including adverse ecological consequences and the creation of militarized spaces, it has profoundly altered the patterns and conditions of human settlement, and fashioned the world’s political, economic, religious, cultural, and ideological character by creating, destroying, or altering political geographies such as territories, borders, states, empires, and so on. The course also investigates how the environment has shaped warfare. The natural world is more than just a setting for collective violence; it is an active agent that generates and sustains armed conflict, and that exerts a powerful influence on strategy and military operations. This course will use historical case studies to historicize this critical linkage between war and the natural world.