num_pages: 384
description: 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 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 studiesincluding some in Russia China the Middle East India Southeast Asia Latin America Southern Africa and Western Europetogether 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. Michael Adas William Beinart Edmund Burke III Mark Cioc Kenneth Pomeranz Mahesh Rangarajan John F. Richards Lise Sedrez Douglas R. Weiner
language: English
title: The Environment and World History
publisher: University of California Press