Abstract
The specificity of environmental history lies in new paradigmatic starting points, which abandon the anthropocentric presuppositions of traditional historiography. In this article, these theoretical and philosophical starting points will be analysed by taking into account the long term evolution of ecologically aware historical writing from the early nineteenth century onwards and the emergence of the academically established field of environmental history in the US and Europe since the 1960s. We describe how the ontological basis of environmental history and the modes of historical explanations clearly differ from that of traditional historiography and traditional historical explanations respectively. In conclusion, we provide a philosophical overall assessment of environmental history.