In Undying Fire: A Fire History of Europe author Stephen J. Pyne presents a sweeping history of Europe as told through flame—and a history of fire refracted through Europe’s landscapes, sciences, and empires. In the following Q&A, Pyne reflects on why an update to his classic Vestal Fire was necessary, what has changed in Europe’s attitude toward fire, and how the fire history of Europe informs our global response to present-day crises.
What compelled you to return to the history of fire in Europe?
A push and a pull. A lot has happened with Europe and fire since Vestal Fire was written thirty years ago. As fire science has developed, fire institutions have emerged, Europe has grappled with adapting concepts and principles devised for dealing with fire on large public reserves to managing fire in intricate cultural landscapes, and of course there are fires—some horrific. Yet Vestal Fire remained the only book that attempted to tell the story of Europe’s relationship with fire other than locally or regionally.
Over those decades, I had written fire histories for Canada, Mexico, and the Earth overall and updated a sequel volume for Fire in America, along with shorter pieces for half a dozen other countries. I understood better the larger dimensions of Earthly fire and its interaction with humans. I’d developed the concept of Pyrocene—that humanity’s fire habits were creating the fire equivalent of an ice age. A major rewrite was there if I wanted to take it on. I decided I did.
Why is understanding European fire culture essential for the study of fire globally?
Fire on Earth today is largely a result of how Europe used, imagined, quashed, confined, and unwittingly unleashed fire. No other civilization has had a comparable impact.
Europe had its own fire traditions, myths, and ceremonies. It also had a deep split in attitude regarding fire between elites and those who live on the land. Ordinary life demanded fire; without fire much of European agriculture was impossible. But authorities distrusted fire, which they saw as primitive, messy, bilious with noxious smoke.
Few regions could have a more distorted perspective on fire or a more problematic one to establish as a planetary norm.
Onto this rootstock, Europe grafted three events, all in the latter eighteenth century. Modern science redefined fire by taking it out of its natural habitat, deconstructing it into combustion, and abstracting it into energy. Fire as fire ceased to be studied. Meanwhile, modern technology devised new fire appliances to house combustion, which sparked a quest for fuels and led to extracting lithic landscapes from deep time. This granted humans almost unchecked power at the cost of overloading the air, seas, and land with pollutants. A new wave of colonization carried these ideas, inventions, and institutions around the world.
What are the most marked changes—in fire science, fire policy, or your own perspective—that you’ve observed over the past twenty-five years?
Thirty years ago, European fire was something of a backwater. Researchers studied in the US or looked to Australia. Europe had no fire labs, no journals, no community of fire folk; those interested in fire traveled to former fire-rich colonies. Researchers and policy makers responded to landscape fire as they would to urban fire. Fires were a problem in civil protection, not landscape management.
Almost all that has changed. Europe has its own satellite surveillance system, research projects, programs to cultivate a next generation of researchers, training to build capacity and assure interoperability, and caches of equipment. Its experts fully understand that more firefighting will not solve its present and future issues, that it will need to find modern analogues for its traditional landscapes and recover aspects of the cultural burning that long shaped its lands. Amid myriad crises, it’s hard to get the funding and political attention needed, but Europe’s fire community knows what is happening and why—and what should be done. It’s a remarkable achievement.
You identify five fire “provinces” in Europe: Mediterranean, Central, Boreal, Eurasian, and Atlantic Europe. What is the relationship between these provinces and the nations they encompass?
I identify the provinces by their characteristic fire regimes. These are underpinned by climate, but they incorporate other elements of geography and human history. Mediterranean Europe has a distinctive cycle of annual wetting and drying that is ideal for burning. Central Europe has a temperate climate that does not provide a natural basis for fire. Boreal Europe has natural conditions for burning in the spring and fall, and summer when occasional dry spells occur, along with a biota well-adapted to high-intensity fire. Eurasian Europe carries temperate Europe across the Eurasian landmass, which becomes more fire-prone in its interior. Atlantic Europe is the cluster of islands that extend Boreal, Central, and Mediterranean Europe into the Atlantic Ocean.
Countries and provinces don’t match exactly, and for me, one of the intriguing features of Europe’s fire history occurs when countries attempt to cross provincial borders. For example, when a model adapted to Central Europe tries to impose its fire notions on Mediterranean Europe; or when Britain applies its models in fire-flushed overseas colonies, like Australia, South Africa, and India.
What do you hope readers and policymakers will take away from your book?
I would hope they appreciate that fire is not just an occasional disaster but rather an elemental part of the Earth and of human history, and that this fact applies to Europe as it does to the rest of the planet. Fire has been our constant companion, even though in recent times, we’ve often made it our worst enemy.
There are good and bad fires, wise and stupid policies, institutions that work and agencies that stumble. Undying Fire offers plenty of cautionary tales. But it’s rare that we can take something out of the past and apply it directly to contemporary circumstances. Our relationship to fire is a process in which we always find ourselves between two (or more aptly, three) fires. Seeing how people in the past operated within those ambiguities and uncertainties, how they juggled humility with boldness, is a study in character that does transfer. The book offers a pyric prism that links what might otherwise seem to be unconnected phenomena and events. I hope I offer a sensibility to fire that will allow us to make better choices. Fire takes its character from its context. A fire history can help us understand that context.
Stephen J. Pyne is emeritus professor in the Biology and Society Program at Arizona State University. He is author of The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next; Fire: A Brief History; Fire in America; and many other works.
