In the humanities, however, concern about the environment has blossomed since the late 1960s, and the field of environmental history offers a powerful model for political ecologists interested in change over time. Pouring over the accounts of explorers, settlers, missionaries, business people, and administrators, environmental historians provide clues to long-term political change. In France The tradition of weaving complex interlinkages between geography and history has long been practiced. The ‘Annales’ school of history, established and championed by Fernand Braudel, documented the emergence of global economies in longue duree-history over the long haul-as focused around and through the environmental possibilities and limits of landscapes (see,for example,Braudel 1982)