Macdonald, eds., The organic carbon cycle in the Arctic Ocean (Berlin, 2004), which offers a comprehensive view of the geographic, oceanographic and climatic changes in the Arctic ocean over the last several glaciation cycles, based on the state of knowledge at the beginning of the new millennium. Two state of the art reports from the Arctic Council provide a review in accessible form of several trends and issues mainly to do with recent and ongoing, and threatening, change in the Arctic environment. The Arctic resilience report (Oslo and Stockholm, 2016) has a broad remit and discusses the Arctic Ocean only parsimoniously, which is a good indicator of how terrestrial, and possibly atmospheric, the geographical concept of the Arctic has become. The other report, Arctic Ocean review - final report (Oslo and Akureyri, Iceland, 2015), puts the Arctic Ocean centre stage and is focused especially on maritime governance. Still useful for its comprehensive coverage of climate effects on both terrestrial and coastal Arctic communities is the Arctic climate impact assessment report (Cambridge, 2004). A brief, general background to latter day concerns is offered by Paul Arthur Berkman’s book-length Whitehall Paper series report, Environmental security in the Arctic Ocean: Promoting co-operation and. preventing conflict (London, 2010) with separate chapters on governance, security and the legal regime wrapped in a largely contemporary framing with forays into the Cold War era. Also focusing on legal regimes is Suzanne Lalonde and Ted L. McDorman, eds., International law and politics of the Arctic Ocean: Essays in honor of Donat Pharand (Leiden, 2015), although with a special focus on the Canadian Arctic archipelago and the disputes between the US and Canada over access to the Northwest Passage.

It has a solid coverage of the last one hundred years, for example in an essay by P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Peder Kikkert, ‘The dog in the manger - and letting sleeping dogs lie: The United States, Canada and the sectoral principle, 1924-1955’, pp. 216-39. Also focusing on legal issues are Klaus Dodds and Richard C. Powell, eds., Polar geopolitics: Knowledges, resources and legal regimes (Cheltenham, 2014), and Leif Christian Jensen and Geir Honneland, eds., Handbook of the politics of the Arctic (Cheltenham, 2015), with several contributions probing into the historical background to current territorial treaties and disputes. A still useful and very thorough introduction to the legal history of Spitsbergen is Geir Ulfstein, The Svalbard Treaty: From terra nullius to Norwegian sovereignty (Oslo, 1995). Older Arctic histories tended to be national or local, or focus on the history of exploration. At the tail end of that long period of historiography we find works such as Pierre Berton, Arctic grail: The quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909 (New York, 1988). A more recent comprehensive history of the entire region, with a focus on resources, science and environment is John McCannon, A history of the Arctic: Nature, exploration and exploitation (London, 2012). Also wide-ranging with contributions on diplomatic history, maritime resources, cultural heritage and identity formation, particularly in the Nordic countries including Greenland but also Russia, is Sverker Sorlin, ed., Science, geopolitics and culture in the Polar region - Norden beyond borders (Farnham, 2013). The discussion of the Arctic as a geographical megaproject is covered by Carina Keskitalo, Negotiating the Arctic: The construction of an international region (New York, 2004). Two useful volumes on the Arctic Ocean as a dimension of Russian and Soviet history are John McCannon, Red Arctic: Polar exploration and the myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932-1939 (Oxford, 1999), and Paul R.

Josephson, The conquest of the Russian Arctic (Cambridge, MA, 2014). The history of science in the Arctic is one of the strands of history that is well covered by work in recent years, for example, Trevor Levere, Science and the Canadian Arctic: A century of exploration, 1818-1918 (Cambridge, 1993), that obviously focuses on Canada; Michael T Bravo and Sverker Sorlin, eds., Narrating the Arctic: A cultural history of Nordic scientific practices (Canton, MA, 2002), that covers the entire Arctic region; Ronald E. Doel, Kristine C. Harper and Matthias Heymann, eds., Exploring Greenland: Cold War science and technology on ice (New York, 2016), that focuses on Greenland. Good entry points to the history of Arctic oceanography are found in: Keith R. Benson and Helen M. Rozwadowski, eds., Extremes: Oceanography's adventures at the Poles (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2007); Robert Marc Friedman, ‘Contexts for constructing an ocean science: The career of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup (1888-1957)’, in Keith Rodney Benson and Philip F. Rehbock, eds., Oceanographic history: The Pacific and beyond (Seattle, WA, 2002), pp. 17-27; Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts, eds., The surveillance imperative: Geosciences during the cold war (New York, 2014); and Julia Lajus and Anatolii Pantiulin, ‘Soviet oceanography and the second International Polar Year: National achievements in the international context’, in Christiane Groeben, ed., Places, people, tools: Oceanography in the Mediterranean and beyond (Naples, 2013), pp. 69-84. A synthetic overview of Arctic science in the twentieth century is Ronald E. Doel, Robert Marc Friedman, Julia Lajus, Sverker Sorlin and Urban Wrakberg, ‘Strategic Arctic science: National interests in building natural knowledge - interwar era through the Cold War’, Journal of Historical Geography, 42 (2014): 60-80. A growing interest is Arctic environmental history: Dolly Jorgensen and Sverker Sorlin, eds., Northscapes: History, technology, and the making of Northern environments (Vancouver, BC, 2013) includes chapters ranging from the history of fossil collecting on Arctic islands to Russian Arctic industrial policy.

Andrew Stuhl, Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, colonialism, and the transformation of Inuit lands (Chicago, IL, 2016) uses Alaska as its empirical foundation but also offers innovative approaches for how to link marine and terrestrial scientists to different communities such as indigenous populations, whalers and oil drillers. A study of the cultural and aesthetic appreciation of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, with useful observations of maritime travel and collecting, is Angela Byrne, Geographies of the Romantic North: Science, antiquarianism, and travel, 1790-1830 (New York, 2013). There is a rich literature on impressions and images of the Arctic world, for example R. G. David, The Arctic in British imagination 1818-1914 (Manchester, 2000). Work on historical dimensions of Arctic climate change has been growing considerably in recent years and in it there is interspersed information about sea ice, coastal communities, issues of sea-level change and other oceanic dimensions: Kirsten Hastrup and Martin Skrydstrup, eds., The social life of climate change models: Anticipating nature (New York, 2013); Igor Krupnik, Claudio Aporta, Shari Gearheard, Gita J. Laidler and Lene Kielsen Holm, eds., SIKU: Knowing our ice (Heidelberg, 2010); Miyase Christensen, Annika E. Nilsson and Nina Wormbs, eds., Media and the politics of Arctic climate change:When the ice breaks (New York, 2013).

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Source: Armitage David, Bashford Alison et al. (eds.). Oceanic Histories. Cambridge University Press,2018. — 338 p.. 2018

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