Peat Bogs, Marshes and Fen as Disputed Landscapes
81
linking the British Isles to the continent was gradually eroded by the
seas on either side of it.
25 What remained of it provided a rampart
against which the sea waters deposited huge amounts of sediment and
vegetal debris. As the sea receded in this part of the world, these
coastal deposits were both spread over large areas and rose out of the
subsiding waters. As they did so, they formed the Zealand wetlands in
Holland, the Romney marshes and Norfolk, Lincoln and Ely fens in
England while a similar process created the Crau de Provence and
Rhône delta marshes in France. These wetlands were defined by
Buffon by their inability to drain water and their propensity to flood:
“Lorsque les eaux qui sont à la surface de la terre ne peuvent trouver
d’écoulement, elles forment des marais & des marécages”.
26 That is,
marshes have no natural means of drainage. Hence their reclamation
is to be numbered among those acts which constitute man’s dominion
over the natural world and a further mark of his progress towards a
“perfected” civilized state. Buffon’s famous Époques de la nature of
1778 make this clear. Writing against the Rousseauist myth of a lost
Golden Age of primitive humanity as well as parodying the seven
days of biblical Creation, Buffon devotes the seventh and final
“Époque” of his geological history of the Earth to man’s ultimate triumph over his natural environment. This is his victorious humanity:
“Par son intelligence, les animaux ont été apprivoisés, subjugués,
domptés, réduits à lui obéir à jamais; par ses travaux, les marais ont
été desséchés, les fleuves contenus, leurs cataractes effacées […]”.
27
Moreover, according to the powerful metanarrative of a unilateral
global cooling that runs through Buffon’s Époques, the practices of
both wetland draining and deforestation were not merely the effects of
local land economies; they were intelligent, essential acts for retarding, if not checking, the irreversible loss of the Earth’s heat. Ironically
for our age of global warming, Buffon maintained that marsh draining,
deforestation as well as urbanization were welcome means of raising
the earth’s surface temperature by drying, clearing and peopling it:
“c’est lui rendre de la chaleur pour plusieurs milliers d’années”.
28 The
localized temperature increases of Western Europe towards the end of
___________________________
25 Buffon, Histoire naturelle, I, pp. 586-87.
26 Buffon, Histoire naturelle, I, p. 575.
27 Buffon, “Époques de la nature”, in Histoire naturelle: Supplément. Tome
cinquième, p. 236.
28 Buffon, “Époques de la nature”, p. 240.
81
linking the British Isles to the continent was gradually eroded by the
seas on either side of it.
25 What remained of it provided a rampart
against which the sea waters deposited huge amounts of sediment and
vegetal debris. As the sea receded in this part of the world, these
coastal deposits were both spread over large areas and rose out of the
subsiding waters. As they did so, they formed the Zealand wetlands in
Holland, the Romney marshes and Norfolk, Lincoln and Ely fens in
England while a similar process created the Crau de Provence and
Rhône delta marshes in France. These wetlands were defined by
Buffon by their inability to drain water and their propensity to flood:
“Lorsque les eaux qui sont à la surface de la terre ne peuvent trouver
d’écoulement, elles forment des marais & des marécages”.
26 That is,
marshes have no natural means of drainage. Hence their reclamation
is to be numbered among those acts which constitute man’s dominion
over the natural world and a further mark of his progress towards a
“perfected” civilized state. Buffon’s famous Époques de la nature of
1778 make this clear. Writing against the Rousseauist myth of a lost
Golden Age of primitive humanity as well as parodying the seven
days of biblical Creation, Buffon devotes the seventh and final
“Époque” of his geological history of the Earth to man’s ultimate triumph over his natural environment. This is his victorious humanity:
“Par son intelligence, les animaux ont été apprivoisés, subjugués,
domptés, réduits à lui obéir à jamais; par ses travaux, les marais ont
été desséchés, les fleuves contenus, leurs cataractes effacées […]”.
27
Moreover, according to the powerful metanarrative of a unilateral
global cooling that runs through Buffon’s Époques, the practices of
both wetland draining and deforestation were not merely the effects of
local land economies; they were intelligent, essential acts for retarding, if not checking, the irreversible loss of the Earth’s heat. Ironically
for our age of global warming, Buffon maintained that marsh draining,
deforestation as well as urbanization were welcome means of raising
the earth’s surface temperature by drying, clearing and peopling it:
“c’est lui rendre de la chaleur pour plusieurs milliers d’années”.
28 The
localized temperature increases of Western Europe towards the end of
___________________________
25 Buffon, Histoire naturelle, I, pp. 586-87.
26 Buffon, Histoire naturelle, I, p. 575.
27 Buffon, “Époques de la nature”, in Histoire naturelle: Supplément. Tome
cinquième, p. 236.
28 Buffon, “Époques de la nature”, p. 240.