西方英语学界海洋环境史研究的兴起、发展及其问题

The Rise,Development and Challenges of the Marine Environmental History in the Western English-Speaking Academia

海洋环境史是20世纪晚期兴起的史学新领域,它关注的是历史上人类与海洋环境的互动和相互影响。20世纪下半叶世界范围内出现的渔业资源衰退和海洋生态危机在很大程度上推动了历史学者对海洋环境的关注。发轫于西方的海洋环境史在发展初期主要关注海洋渔业资源的多寡与人类活动之间的关系,随着研究的深入,研究视域扩展到历史上人类与整个海洋生态系统的相互作用。海洋环境史研究在其发展过程中同时受到自然科学发展和史学新潮流的影响。海洋环境史研究不但拓展了环境史的研究范畴,挑战了传统环境史研究中陆地本位的历史观,而且证明了历史学者跨越学科界限与自然科学学者进行合作的可能性和必要性,为环境史的书写提供了前沿范式。由于发展时间较短,西方海洋环境史研究在内容、方法、理论等方面遭遇一定的困境。

Marine environmental history is a new field of historical studies which rose in the late 20^(th)century.It focuses on the interaction and mutual influence between the human society and the marine environment.The worldwide depletion of fishery resources and marine ecological crisis in the second half of the 20^(th)century to a great extent aroused the attention of historians to the marine environment.Originated in the West,marine environmental history mainly concentrated on the relationship between the amount of fishery resources and human activities in the early stage of its development.With the advance of research,the scope of the research expanded to include human interactions with the entire marine ecosystem throughout history.The study of marine environmental history was influenced by both development of natural science and new trends of history studies.This new field not only expands the scope of environmental history research,challenging land-based historical view of the traditional environmental history studies,but also proves the possibility and necessity for historians to cooperate with scholars of natural science across disciplinary boundaries,providing cutting-edge paradigms for environmental history writing.However,the Western marine environmental history encounters certain difficulties in aspects of research content,methodology and theory because its development is still in the early stage.