A Companion To Global Environmental History

The Companion to Global Environmental History offers multiple points of entry into the history and historiography of this dynamic and fast-growing field, to provide an essential road map to past developments, current controversies, and future developments for specialists and newcomers alike. Combines temporal, geographic, thematic and contextual approaches from prehistory to the present day Explores environmental thought and action around the world, to give readers a cultural, intellectual and political context for engagement with the environment in modern times Brings together environmental historians from around the world, including scholars from South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and China

Courses which deal with environmental history have long lacked a comprehensive overview. I. G. Simmons has made a significant contribution with a book that looks at the long-term history of environment and humanity from 10,000 BC to AD 2000. This far-reaching text considers the global picture and recognises the contributions of many disciplines including the natural sciences, the social sciences, and increasingly, the humanities.As a starting point, this book takes the major phases of human technological evolution of the last 12,000 years and considers how these have affected the natural world. It then considers the response to conditions such as climate change, putting today's preoccupations into a long-term perspective. This is a book of history, not prophecy, and so makes no judgements on current anxieties.

Global Environmental History introduces this rapidly developing field through a broad and thought-provoking range of expert contributions, it will be an essential resource for students of Environmental History and Global History.

A Companion to American Environmental History gatherstogether a comprehensive collection of over 30 essays that examinethe evolving and diverse field of American environmental history. Provides a complete historiography of American environmentalhistory Brings the field up-to-date to reflect the latest trends andencourages new directions for the field Includes the work of path-breaking environmental historians,from the founders of the field, to contributions frominnovative young scholars Takes stock of the discipline through five topically themedparts, with essays ranging from American Indian EnvironmentalRelations to Cities and Suburbs

This book is an overview of human history in relationship to the natural environment, from origins to the present, with case studies of different societies in each period.

A COMPANION TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of “the global” – in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of “the global” as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought. Complementing A Companion to Western Historical Thought, this book places non-Western perspectives on historiography at the center of discussion, helping scholars and students alike make sense of the discipline at the start of the twenty-first century.

Now in its second edition. This text has been extensively revised and rewritten to reflect the growth in environmental research during the last decade. Human-induced environmental change is occurring at such a rapid rate that, inevitably, the fundamental processes involved in biogeochemical cycling are being altered. Global Environmental Change considers alterations to the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and other elements as a result of industrial/technological development and agriculture, which have significantly altered the natural environment. The book adopts a temporal and spatial approach to environmental change, beginning with the natural environmental change of the Quaternery period and continuing with the culturally-induced change since the inception of agriculture 10,000 years ago.

"How did the Civil War and the emancipation of the South's four million slaves reconfigure the natural landscape and the farming economy dependent upon it? An important reconsideration of the Civil War's role in southern history, Unredeemed Land uncovers the environmental constraints that shaped the rural South's transition to capitalism during the late nineteenth century. Dixie's 'King Cotton' required extensive land use techniques, fresh soil, and slave-based agriculture in order to remain profitable. But wartime destruction and the rise of the contract labor system closed off those possibilities and necessitated increasingly intensive cultivation in ways that worked against the environment. The resulting disconnect between farmers' use of the land and what the natural environment could support went hand-in-hand with the economic dislocation of freedpeople, poor farmers, and sharecroppers. Drawing on extensive archival and governmental sources as well as scholarship in the natural sciences, Erin Mauldin demonstrates how the Civil War and emancipation accelerated ongoing ecological change in ways that hastened the postbellum collapse of the region's subsistence economy, encouraged the expansion of cotton production, and ultimately kept cotton farmers trapped in a cycle of debt and tenancy. The first environmental history to bridge the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods, this work will appeal to anyone who is interested in the landscape of the South or the legacies of the Civil War"--