The Environment and World History

Since around 1500 C.E., humans have shaped the global environment in ways that were previously unimaginable. Bringing together leading environmental historians and world historians, this book offers an overview of global environmental history throughout this remarkable 500-year period. In eleven essays, the contributors examine the connections between environmental change and other major topics of early modern and modern world history: population growth, commercialization, imperialism, industrialization, the fossil fuel revolution, and more. Rather than attributing environmental change largely to European science, technology, and capitalism, the essays illuminate a series of culturally distinctive, yet often parallel developments arising in many parts of the world, leading to intensified exploitation of land and water.

The wide range of regional studies—including some in Russia, China, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Southern Africa, and Western Europe—together with the book's broader thematic essays makes The Environment and World History ideal for courses that seek to incorporate the environment and environmental change more fully into a truly integrative understanding of world history.

CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Adas, William Beinart, Edmund Burke III, Mark Cioc, Kenneth Pomeranz, Mahesh Rangarajan, John F. Richards, Lise Sedrez, Douglas R. Weiner

Edmund Burke III is Professor, Presidental Chair, and Director of the Center for World History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and coeditor, with David N. Yaghoubian, of Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (second editon, UC Press). Kenneth Pomeranz is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and author of The Great Divergence, among other books.

List of Figures, Maps, and Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments

Part One: Overview
1. Introduction: World History and Environmental History
Kenneth Pomeranz
2. The Big Story: Human History, Energy Regimes, and the Environment
Edmund Burke III
3. Toward a Global System of Property Rights in Land
John F. Richards

Part Two: Rivers, Regions, and Developmentalism
4. The Transformation of the Middle Eastern Environment, 1500 B.C.E.-2 C.E.
Edmund Burke III
5. The Transformation of China's Environment, 1500-2
Kenneth Pomeranz
6. The Rhine as a World River
Mark Cioc
7. Continuity and Transformation: Colonial Rice Frontiers and Their Environmental Impact on the Great River Deltas of Mainland Southeast Asia
Michael Adas

Part Three: Landscapes, Conquests, Communities, and the Politics of Knowledge
8. Beyond the Colonial Paradigm: African History and Environmental History in Large-Scale Perspective
William Beinart
9. Environmental Histories of India: Of States, Landscapes, and Ecologies
Mahesh Rangarajan
10. Latin American Environmental History: A Shifting Old/New Field
Lise Sedrez
11. The Predatory Tribute-Taking State: A Framework for Understanding Russian Environmental History
Douglas R. Weiner

Select Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index