War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring

by Edmund Russell

While cultural and scholarly traditions have led us to believe that war and control of nature are separate, there are many more similarities than most people might suspect. Tracing the history of chemical warfare and pest control, Edmund Russell shows how war and control of nature coevolved. Ideologically, institutionally, and technologically, the paths of chemical warfare and pest control intersected repeatedly in the twentieth century. War and Nature helps us to understand the impact of war on nature and vice versa, as well as the development of total war, and the rise of the modern environmental movement. Edmund Russell is an assistant professor in the Division of Technology, Culture, and Communication in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. This is his first book.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, School, Grad School, American History, Historical

334 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can honestly say this is the first work of military history to ever capture my attention.

War and Nature is a history of both chemical warfare and chemical pest control between WWI (1914) and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). Russell combines environmental history and military history to deepen our understanding of the role of chemicals (and chemical control of human and non-human populations) in the twenteith-century. At the center of his book is the Army's Chemcial Warfare Service. He attends to the relationship between the government and corporations in developing these chemicals. He draws on cultural history to examine the use of metaphor and the pesticide ads that equated "pests" with racist dehumanizing imagery of the Japanese enemy during World War II. This is a well-researched book full of detail.

Russell argues for three ways in which pest control and chemical warfare expanded each other: Ideologically (creating a set of values -- eradication of human pests is okay because eradication of non-human pests is a good); Scientifically and techologically; orgnaizationally (the linkages between miliatary and civilian/corporate institutions).

I appreciated that Russell's chapter on the backlash against pesticides focuses on the cultural and scientific work that occured prior to Silent Spring . Too often, Carson's work is presented as if it appeared in a vacuum, rather than as a culmination of existing concerns. I certainly intend to use this book the next time I teach Silent Spring .

One of my only concerns with Russell's work is his overall frame. According to Russell, the thesis of his book "is that war and control of nature coevolved: the control of nature expanded the scale of war, and war expanded the scale on which people controlled nature. More specifically, the control of nature formed one root of total war, and total war helped expand the control of nature to the scale rued by modern environmetnalist" (2-3). The idea of "control over nature" assumes a certain definition of nature with which I'm not quite comfortable. It places humans and nature at opposite ends of the spectrum. This is a frame and a larger claim that appears at the start of the book but to which Russell rarely returns. And it is certainly a point I can see being quite useful to debate in an undergraduate classroom. My discomfort with it does not undercut the quality of the rest of the work.

[Pearse Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

We read three chapters for Anima Biocapital with Les Beldo, and I found them to be engaging if dry, definitely not the popular science reading I would prefer when it comes to insecticide work. Oh man, I have a lot of work to do today. Better get going, I did learn a lot from this.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book about the linkage of insecticide and chemical warfare but you're not gonna talk about Agent Orange?

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book links our obsession to control nature to our killing strategies in war. The use of words like "infestation" "swarm" and "exterminate" all come from the killing of insects. By labeling the enemy as "insects" we are able to dehumanize and ultimately destroy them. Intriguing look at war psychology.

[Jason S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting thesis about the connections between the development of chemical weapons during war and the development of the insecticide industry during peacetime. While the book tends to wander from the thesis from time to time, there are many useful anecdotes in the text that make it an interesting read.

[Marcelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

All sorts of crazy intersections between war technology and medicine/social fads, like using leftover war gas to 'treat colds." Well wortht he read. For a history book, it's informative without being dry or reading like a catalog.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I regularly teach Silent Spring and have been struck by the ways in which the mechanisms of war helped to drive the chemical industry. This book blows that history wide open and maps out the co-evolution of chemical warfare and insecticide industry.