Losing an Archive: Doing Place-Based History in the Age of the Anthropocene

Abstract How will climate change affect place-based historical research? In this personal essay, author Catherine Dunlop reflects on her experience of researching historical attitudes toward France’s mistral wind while simultaneously feeling the wind’s powerful gusts firsthand. Unsatisfied with the French state’s indoor weather archives, Dunlop develops her research project around the outdoor archives that she encounters on a daily basis. Through her sensory experiences of the mistral, both at sea and on land, Dunlop hones her research questions and ultimately deepens her understanding of the mistral’s role in modern French history. Even as she acknowledges the benefits that came from her firsthand encounters with the mistral, Dunlop recognizes the fragile and tenuous aspects of place-based historical research. Places like Provence, and their distinctive winds, are changing. The Anthropocene, she argues, will alter historians’ ability to connect with and learn from the landscape heritage of the places that they visit. Losing our outdoor archives to climate change will impact historical research in ways that we are just beginning to realize.