FROM FLOODS TO TOURISM: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING AND POTENTIAL SCHOLARSHIP ON MACEDONIAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
FROM FLOODS TO TOURISM: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING AND POTENTIAL SCHOLARSHIP ON MACEDONIAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

Summary/Abstract: While Balkan Environmental History has grown in recent years and produced important studies, the field is still rather nascent in Macedonian Historiography, which has been generally concerned with studies of empire, nation-building, and political economy. The broader Region of Macedonia, however, including the ancient Roman Provinces, the recently renamed Republic of North Macedonia, along with the eponymous region in Northern Greece, is ripe with possibilities for further explorations relevant to the environmental history of Southeastern Europe. We contend that existing studies on the aforementioned topics also present several possibilities for reframing and utilizing with an environmental historical lens. This paper therefore seeks to assess the state of the field and to propose possibilities for further engagement and new approaches. We divide up the subject matter of current and potential scholarship into three different time periods; late antiquity, the Early Modern and Ottoman, and Modern (including socialist and post-socialist) periods of Macedonian history, along with three different major categories of study: natural disasters, migration and movement, and environmental management. These three categories represent the greatest possibilities for studying Macedonian environmental history by examining continuations and interconnections, providing cohesion in current and future studies, and pointing to a potential narrative for the history of the Macedonian Region’s environment.

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