Over the course of the early modern period, Europeans came to look at, engage with, and even transform nature and the environment in new ways, as they studied natural objects, painted landscapes, drew maps, built canals, cut down forests, and transferred species from one continent to another. The term “nature” meant many things during this period, from the inmost essence of something to those parts of the world that were nonhuman, such as the three famous “kingdoms” of nature: the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral. This article focuses on nature in this latter sense and broadens it out to include more recent understandings of the modern term “environment,” so as to encompass not only plants, animals, and rocks but also entire landscapes. Scholars from a wide variety of fields, ranging from the histories of science, art, and literature through historical geography, historical archeology, historical ecology, and landscape history, have long been interested in issues related to the environment and the natural world; more recently, they have been joined by practitioners of “environmental history” and additional branches of the environmental humanities and social sciences, who have drawn on these preexisting approaches and brought still further perspectives to the table.
