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Sowing and Reaping the Seeds of American Influence: The reconstruction and Reforestation of Europe

I propose to use a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship to sponsor research for my second book-length project, Sowing and Reaping the Seeds of American Influence. This project examines an American plan to repopulate the depleted forests of Europe in 1919. Armed with tens of thousands of seeds and saplings of the Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) as well as experience in managing the species, American foresters crossed the Atlantic to plant the coniferous evergreen on lands where deciduous beeches and oaks once dominated. Why did these Americans seek to alter the environmental and agricultural landscapes of the Old World right after the First World War? How did their scientific and environmental project relate to other issues in U.S.-European

foreign relations in the interwar years? And what were the lasting effects of this project?

As many historians have noted, the massive disruptions caused by the Great War opened doors for Americans seeking to expand their political, economic, and cultural influence in Europe.
This scholarship has paid little attention to matters of science, agriculture, and the environment.
The extant historiography on American environmental management and ecological change beyond U.S. borders remains a Cold War story with New Deal roots. The work of these foresters, however, reveals that American conservation efforts in the Progressive Era were not confined to the United States and its empire; they formed a critical tool for reengaging and restructuring relations with the rest of the world during and after World War I.

When Europe erupted into war in 1914, the once pristine and well-managed forests of the continent succumbed to an insatiable hunger for wood. Over the course of the Great War, France alone lost nearly 2 million acres of forested land; the British Isles’ total forest acreage declined by half. Immediately after the war, the governments of Belgium, Britain, and France each estimated that only massive seeding efforts—requiring up to 1.2 billion seeds per year—could revive their forests. For the American Forestry Association, which sponsored the program, and its supporters, this environmental catastrophe created an opportunity. The Americans who pushed the introduction of the Douglas fir to Europe—foresters, lumber mill owners, and federal agents among them—anticipated that the conifer would “play a prominent part in rebuilding Europe after the war,” to quote one Yale professor. Foresters hoped that the new species would help reintegrate the scientific forestry communities of Europe and North America. Mill owners, who had already developed lucrative markets for Douglas fir lumber in parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America, wanted to drum up demand for it in Europe; as early as 1916, the Department of Commerce allowed them to collude in overseas selling so that they could gain an advantage in foreign markets. Military leaders in turn considered forests critical to national defense, and the reforestation of Western Europe essential to ensuring postwar stability.

By using a wide range of sources—forestry journals, scientific and agricultural reports, diplomatic correspondence, and a trove of untapped archival records on the seeding program—this project will reveal how these groups, in pursuing their own agendas, brought this non-native tree species to Europe and remade the continent’s landscape and ecosystem in the process.

Having defended my dissertation, “Archaeologists and American Foreign Relations in a World of Empire, 1879-1945,” in May 2020, I am in the earliest stages of researching Sowing and Reaping the Seeds of American Influence. While I have made some progress in uncovering the American side of the story, the European portions of this new project remain less clear. With its research activities centered on Sovereignties and Humanities, the Centre for History of Sciences Po would make an ideal location for beginning this project so entwined with international relations and humanity’s relationship to the natural world. I intend to use this fellowship opportunity to
study the relationship between American and European forestry communities before, during, and after the Great War; identify and visit relevant archival collections in Western Europe; inspect the forests transformed by the American Forestry Association’s project; study the ecological effects of the introduction of the Douglas fir (now the second most-common non-native tree species in Europe) as well as the accompanying changes in forestry practices in Europe since 1919; trace the history of these forests and their role in the Second World War, which broke out as the first Douglas firs would have been ready for harvesting; and acquaint myself with the environmental and agricultural history of Western Europe in the twentieth century in order to position my research
more effectively in histories of science, agriculture, and the environment.

Andrew W. Bell

 

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