A "Watery Desert" in Vichy France: The Environmental History of the Camargue Wetlands, 1940-1944

This article traces the environmental history of the Camargue wetlands in southern France during World War II. War, defeat, and occupation ushered in agricultural modernization, the establishment of military training grounds, and German submersion plans, all of which threatened constructions of the region as a pure, wild landscape as well as existing ecological conditions. Throughout the war the Societe Nationale d'Acclimatation de France (SNAF) campaigned to save its nature reserve, engaging in actions that lay between resistance and collaboration. The SNAF was aided unwittingly by the Camargue's singular climate. This article supports Bruno Latour's call for a reconceptualization of historical agency that includes the nonhuman. It also exposes wider continuities in French environmental history and contributes to Vichy historiography and the burgeoning literature on war and the environment.