Princeton University History Department

Emmanuel Kreike, a citizen of the Netherlands, has a PhD in African history from Yale University (1996) and a Dr. Science (PhD)  in Tropical Forestry from the School of  Environmental Sciences,   Wageningen  University (2006), the Netherlands. His research and teaching interests focus on the intersection of war/violence, population displacement, environment, and society. He is particularly interested in how violence (including, for example, colonial conquest, the apartheid wars, slave raiding) and ensuing forced migration led to the destruction of human landscapes and how people rebuild lives and livelihoods in often alien environments. He has taught courses in African history and environmental history at Princeton University as well as courses in forestry and environmental sciences in Namibia and South Africa.

 His publications include Re-Creating Eden: Land Use, Environment, and Society in Southern Angola and Northern Namibia (Heinemann, 2004) and Deforestation and Reforestation in Namibia: The Global Consequences of Local Contradictions (Brill and Markus Wiener, 2010). With William Chester Jordan he edited Corrupt Histories (University of Rochester Press, 2004).

He is completing two book-length manuscripts.  “Architects of Nature: Environmental Infrastructuring and the Myth of Natural Resources Management” introduces a new conceptualization and vocabulary to analyze and narrate environmental change beyond the constraints of the Nature-Culture dichotomy (contracted by Cambridge University Press and forthcoming 2012). “Environmental Warfare, Humanitarian Disasters, and Indirect Genocide: From the Conquest of Mexico to the Apartheid Wars”(contracted by Princeton University Press) discusses environmental warfare throughout four major colonial wars: the 16^th-19^th century European Conquest of the Americas, the late 16^th/early 17^th century Dutch Revolt/War of Flanders in the Low Countries, the late 19^th century Aceh Wars on Sumatra, Indonesia, and the early 20^th century Portuguese and South African conquest of the Ovambo floodplain in Angola and Namibia.

Talk: Podcast
Presentation: PDF
Online article about presentation: Beyond Words: Environmental History, Digitization, and GIS
Animation: kreik20.mov
(Quicktime movie incorporating Quickbird image from Digital Globe and globe image from ESRI)

Education

• 1982 Kandidaats (B.A.), History, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• 1986 Dokterandus (M.A.), Department of History, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• 1986-1988 M.A., Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles.
• 1987-1988 Exchange Scholar, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. 
• 1990-1991 Department of Forestry, Wageningen Agricultural University.
• 1996 Ph.D., History Department, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
• 2006 Dr. Sc., School of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, the Netherlands.