Documenting the richness and variety of environmental ideas and initiatives in modern France, Natural Interests aims to restore pride of place to the formative era from the French Revolution to World War II. Although Ford thankfully does not seek the absolute origins of environmental ideas, her book amply demonstrates “the emergence of an environmental consciousness” in the period under review (193). Her book showcases and interprets a range of environmental thought within metropolitan France, the role of France’s colonies as important terrains of environmental experimentation, and the multiplicity of political persuasions among those who articulated environmental ideas, an important point in situating the larger cultural context of environmentalism.
The scope of this monograph extends to the following topics—concern for the protection and expansion of France’s forest cover, largely revealed through the writings of François-Antoine Rauch and Rougier de La Bergerie; the genesis of preservationism in France, its aesthetic ethos, and...