New Books In Environmental Studies

In West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshlands, 1839-1914 (University of British Columbia Press, 2017), Jim Clifford brings together histories of water and river systems, urban history, environmental history, and labor history. Using archival materials with a particular focus on Ordnance Survey maps and historical GIS (geographical information systems), he explores Greater London’s second important river, the Lea, using it as a lens through which to track industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century. He shows how the River Lea made West Ham an attractive area for industrial development, drawing manufacturing and chemical plants to the area. Workers followed, and over the course the second half of the 19th century the area grew rapidly in population, so that West Ham became one of Britain’s largest industrial centers. At the same time, the River Lea and the marshlands through which it flowed were transformed by pollution and development, ultimate