Economic, Social and Environmental History of Slovenia

We wish to highlight the complexity, interconnections, and different levels of these relationships from a long-term historical perspective by presenting the backgrounds and the relationships between nature, economy, and society. We focus on the relationship between the economy, society, and population on the one hand and the natural environment where people live and manage resources, on the other hand. We also transcend two traditional methodologically constitutive paradigms of the Slovenian historiography, i.e. the ethnocentric and anthropocentric optics. We introduce the principles of the macro concept of Anthropocene and the concept of environmental history in view of the long-term social and economic transformation in the Slovenian territories.  We consider Slovene historical dynamics as a part of  global economic, social, and environmental development. The Anthropocene is defined as a new geological epoch, in which the industrial revolution and the consequent scientific and technological revolution have gradually transformed the human economic and social activities into a fundamental force that alters the natural environment – not only with regard to climate change but also through the constant exploitation of the available natural resources that exceeds their natural renewal capacities. In contrast with the pre-modern era and organic economy, human impact on the environment has increased dramatically in the Anthropocene due to the exceptional growth of technological ability to extract and transform natural resources. The analysis focuses on the period from the gradual decline of feudalism to the end of the 20th century, i.e. on the era of modern economic and social systems, encompassed by the concept of Anthropocene. In the Slovenian case, the economic and social systems are defined as capitalism and socialism.