Nation and Nature

Issues of Alpine Agrarian Historiography

Abstract

In a European perspective, the Alps form a region with an extraordinary density of national borders, and they belong to the few regions, which are defined on environmental criteria and, at the same time, politically sanctioned by an international treaty. These two issues – the state borders and the natural environment – are in the center of this analysis of the developments of Alpine agrarian historiography. One can use them to discuss problems and trends, which could be of interest for other regions, too. How does the international exchange of methodological approaches and empirical knowledge work, or fail to work, in the domain of agrarian historiography? And how do agrarian historians conceptualize the relationships of their subject matter to the environment?