History, cculture aand cconservation
quest of Moorish Spain, knocked down the
delightful Arab gardens as well as the
trees (destroying the silk trade in the
process) to graze their bulls and, later, to
bring in maize. But things really went
wrong in the last two or three hundred
years, as the Mediterranean became
enmeshed in the capitalism of the indus-
trial revolution and the highlands came
under the power elites of the plains. The
traditional self-reliant communities broke
down and the young left the uplands to
be exploited for wage labour. Those who
stayed were very poor, overtaxed and
forced to abandon nomadic ways.
Certainly a growing population cut too
much forest for fuel, unwisely cleared and
planted maize, or tried to adopt a cash-
based intensive pastoral economy. Often,
however they ended up in debt or perpet-
ual bondage. Only occasionally did they
prosper, as when the Rif grew kif
(cannabis) or from the spoils of brig-
andage and smuggling.
“Miseria” set in, but was in itself also
something of a defence mechanism, as it
persuaded authorities that villages were
not worth taxing. At best, they could be
used to exile political prisoners, like Carlo
Levi who said that “Christ stopped at
Eboli”. Many children and closed kin
groups were not “amoral familism” as
Banfield and other anglosaxons thought,
but a necessary means to independence
where mechanisation was so difficult.
They also were a sort of “revenge of the
cradle”, whilst polytheistic magic was the
vessel in which traditional cultures and
languages could be preserved. Even Islam
had trouble incorporating the residents of
the Rif, who managed to persuade the
Sultan to give them a special dispensation
to continue to make and drink alcohol.
Mountain lawlessness became often open
rebellion as local peoples sought inde-
pendence or, more prosaically, access to
water as the droughts intensified.
Worst of all, says McNeill, the environ-
mental degradation became irreversible
through vicious cycles— too much ero-
sion, silt and floods, too thin a soil, too
many fires and deserts, and so on.
Ecological overshoot combined with cli-
mate change rendered the environment
drier and drier— a tinder box constantly
at risk of igniting, physically and socially,
leading to regional if not world wars.
Tragedy for the Mediterranean... but
McNeill warns this may also be the fate of
other regions where similar stories are
sadly, if more slowly, unfolding, whatever
the superficial differences of religion, soci-
ety and culture.
More on this book from Lorena Verdes at
Cambridge (phone 0044 1223 325921).
Cited books:
Banfield, E., The Moral Basis of a
Backward Society, Free Press, Glencoe
(Illinois, USA), 1958.
Braudel, F. (in translation), The
Mediterranean, Fontana, London, 1966.
Crosby, A., Ecological Imperialism,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
(UK), 1992.
Levi, C., (in translation), Christ Stopped at
Eboli, Farrar Straus, New York (NY,
USA), 1947.
Meiggs, R., Trees and Timber in the
Ancient World, Clarendon Press, Oxford
(UK), 1982.
David Pitt([email protected]) is a member of CEESP/
CMWG and was the editor with Jack Ives of
Deforestation - Social Dynamics of Watersheds and
Mountain Ecosystems - Routledge (1988). He is cur-
rently preparing a gazetteer of sustainable develop-
ment in the Mediterranean.
