Quand les blancs voulurent conserver la planète -- Christophe Bonneuil

When White People Wanted to Keep the Planet: A History of Geopower, 1865-1914 Lecture by Christophe Bonneuil given on June 13, 2019, at Inria Grenoble as part of the "Understanding and Acting" series: https://team.inria.fr/steep/seminars/... Subscribe to the series newsletter: https://sondages.inria.fr/index.php/2... Abstract: What if our contemporary global "environmental awareness" isn't as new as we think? What if ignoring the environmental reflections of past societies hinders our ability to envision the future in the face of current global upheavals? For half a millennium, defining the Earth's resources, balances, and limits, and its "proper," sustainable, and rational use, has been a matter of power. Rather than a narrative of a gradual "awakening" to the damage inflicted on planet Earth, recent work in environmental history has highlighted the antiquity—and historicity—of environmental reflections. As Europe extended its empire across the globe, its religious, political, economic, and scholarly elites forged discourses and bodies of knowledge concerning the "proper use" of the entire Earth. One example: from Christopher Columbus to the Comte de Buffon, a theory of large-scale climate change contributed to legitimizing the European project of conquering the Americas. After outlining the implications of such a history of the constitution of the entire Earth as an object of knowledge and power, this presentation will focus on a particular moment in this geopower: the "age of empires" from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Bio: Christophe Bonneuil is a historian; he is a research director at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and teaches at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). He works on the transformations of the relationships between environment, knowledge, and societies since the 19th century and notably co-authored (with Jean-Baptiste Fressoz) *The Anthropocene Event: The Earth, History, and Us*, Seuil, Points Histoire, 2016. He directs the "Anthropocene" series at Seuil publishers, which focuses on global socio-ecological issues. Learn more about the "Understanding and Acting" lecture series: https://team.inria.fr/steep/seminars/... Learn more about the STEEP research team: https://team.inria.fr/steep/ Next video to be released: "Why was King Louis XVI deposed in 1792? The role of sociopolitical imaginaries during a period of upheaval" -- Sophie Wahnich