Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World

Environmental History, Jan 1999 by Williams, Michael

Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World. By Stephen J. Pyne. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. xvii 659 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.

Vestal Fire is a big book (approx. 220,ooo words), and it needs to be because it covers a big topic. It encompasses no less than an interpretation of Europe's history of settlement, civilization and overseas expansion as seen through the medium of fire and its control. Pyne contends that both actually and metaphorically fire is at the core of western civilization-the conflict between tamed and untamed fire being part of the dialectic between humans and uncontrolled nature and a fundamental force in human history. It is the culmination and summary of the cycle of fire books that Pyne has written during the past decade and a half.

The first three chapters in Book 1, entitled "Flame, Torch, and Hearth," explore the generic significance of fire. The author reminds us that fire is a physical process, a chemical reaction, and not an object, and that it is therefore elusive and difficult to define, but all-pervasive and especially embedded in religion and belief. As a physical process, fire has the ability to alter vegetation through burning, it is the key to metallurgy, and the taming of fire domestically and industrially has allowed modern civilization to exist in otherwise inhospitable regions. Fire is the basis of modern warfare (gunpowder) and power.

Book 2 (nearly two-thirds of the text) deals with fire in Europe. Although many readers will be reasonably familiar with the idea of fire in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, fire in Europe seems surprising. But Pyne amply demonstrates its importance in European life in chapters on the Mediterranean, Central, Boreal, Eurasian (Siberia), and Atlantic Europe. The chapters on Boreal and Eruasian Europe are particularly enlightening. Book 3 covers Europe overseas and brings the fire story onto the more familiar ground of the Americas, the Caribbean, and India.

In the foreword, the general editor of the series, William Cronon, warns us that this is not an easy book to read; it is even "frustrating," and he has a point. One has no quarrel with the writing; the imagery and expression are rich, and embellished with elegant, pithy, even aphoristic phrases-for example, "Eventually, the cold flicker of television, not the warm flames of the hearth, became the focus of social life" (p. 58), or on the European encounter with tropical islands, "Eden met Enlightenment" (p. 403), and so on. But the overall plot is not linear. It is sometimes difficult to grasp the sequence and the significance of pages, sections, and chapters in the larger whole. There are overlaps and repetitions, and as Cronon points out, we lack the usual stars to guide us, such as a central character, moral meaning, or even objective, sequential change. Perhaps it cannot be otherwise, for the narrative and analysis is like the subject of the book-fire-a physical process, a chemical reaction, not an object, and therefore elusive.

But for all that, this is a tour de force. Its breadth of treatment and deep scholarship are illuminated by writing that displays much energy and brio. It sweeps along like the wildfire it describes; the mass of material is consumed and a new fresh growth sprouts up to fertilize our ideas of how humans interact and absorb (make?) the natural. In that process, culture becomes nature and nature culture; society and environment are inextricably intertwined. It is a model of what environmental history can, and perhaps ought, to be.

Reviewed by Michael Williams. Mr. Williams is Professor of Geography at Oxford University. He is the author of Americans and Their Forests (Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Wetlands: A Threatened Landscape (Blackwells, 1990). He is currently completing a book on global deforestation for the University of Chicago Press.