British Geographer Ian Simmons Of Environmental History

Nowadays, numerous American scholars have shown their powerful influence on environmental history circle, in English-speaking countries or even the entire world, by virtue of their abundant works. When translating or introducing environmental history works written by foreign scholars, Chinese scholars often focus on American scholars; it is the same with historiography research on it. This situation reflects two sides of one coin: on the one hand, American scholars truly have reached a higher level as a whole; on the other hand, we have insufficient understanding of non-American foreign scholars'achievements in this field.When talking about environmental history studies, it is not proper to ignore British scholars. The U.K. is one of the centres for environmental history research in Europe, with famous scholars and high-grade masterpieces, showing a considerable amount of diversity. So a more detailed full-scale understanding is needed. To do so, in chapter 1, there will be a systemic introduction to British environmental history studies: their background, subfields and famous scholars. This can help us to draw an outline of British environmental history, from its beginning to nowadays.Geography and British geographers play an important role in the foundation and development process of environmental history there. This dissertation will make a detailed discussion of the academic career of Ian Simmons, a famous British geographer. The discussion is a core and main part of the dissertation, which will follow a common logic of historiography: contents and viewpoints of scholar's study→methods and characteristics of the study→understandings contributed by the scholar.Chapter 2: contents & viewpoints of Simmons'original researches on human ecology and biogeography. Chapter 3: contents & viewpoints of Simmons'large-scale regional environmental history. Chapter 4: contents & viewpoints of Simmons'small & medium-scale regional environmental history.Chapter 5: The characteristics of Simmons'environmental history study will be analysed in detail, using a vertical dimension to review his academic career: not only on the impact caused by life experience and educational background, but also on the continuity and change of his research inclination, epistemology and methodology in different periods; and then, a horizontal dimension is used to make comparative studies between geographers and historians, on the similarities and differences of their theory and methods. Chapter 6: the understandings that can be gained from Simmons'environmental history research, on the basis of the above analysis.