The ‘environment’ emerged as a global crisis concept after WWII. Environmental history as a field has its roots in political movements of the late 1960s and 70s. Thus, both the term and the field have had, from their impetus, a strong political and global flavour. Environmental history is still driven by approaches that are akin to the field of political ecology, i.e. based on critical social theory. Early modern environmental history often finds its raison d’être in either attempting to take on a global perspective, or in pointing out power imbalances and the centralisation of state control over natural resources. Similar binary narratives of power used to define the historical study of state-building; however, already since the late 90s, the focus here has shifted onto ‘state-building from below’, which has not only questioned previous meta-narratives but also ascribed more agency to local actors lower down the social scale. Many of the sources used by these scholars (especially supplications/petitions) can also help us take on more locally embedded perspectives in understanding that environmental interests of governments and the governed were not always binary, and that ‘commoners’ had more power in shaping the land, or ‘environing’ (Sörlin and Wormbs) from below, than has been acknowledged.