World Agriculture Before And After 1492

The year 2022 is the 50th anniversary of Alfred Crosby's celebrated book - The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. In the book, Crosby was the first to discuss the impact that the Spanish and Portuguese colonial period had on world agriculture and human culture. How the crops of the world became homogenized, and how an indigenous culture was destroyed by disease after Columbus landed. His landmark study broke new ground in its broad conceptualization of the Atlantic exchange. Building on what Crosby so succinctly and brilliantly presented, the main goal of this new work is to present the depth of information that has emerged since "The Columbian Exchange" and to discuss more fully the development of crops and agriculture before and after the Iberian contact. It follows the journey of crops and livestock in the Old and New Worlds and end's with their distribution in today's world.

The year 2022 is the 50th anniversary of Alfred Crosby’s celebrated book - The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. In the book, Crosby was the first to discuss the impact that the Spanish and Portuguese colonial period had on world agriculture and human culture. How the crops of the world became homogenized, and how an indigenous culture was destroyed by disease after Columbus landed. His landmark study broke new ground in its broad conceptualization of the Atlantic exchange. Building on what Crosby so succinctly and brilliantly presented, the main goal of this new work is to present the depth of information that has emerged since "The Columbian Exchange" and to discuss more fully the development of crops and agriculture before and after the Iberian contact. It follows the journey of crops and livestock in the Old and New Worlds and end’s with their distribution in today’s world.

Thirty years ago, Alfred Crosby published a small work that illuminated a simple point, that the most important changes brought on by the voyages of Columbus were not social or political, but biological in nature. The book told the story of how 1492 sparked the movement of organisms, both large and small, in both directions across the Atlantic. This Columbian exchange, between the Old World and the New, changed the history of our planet drastically and forever. The book The Columbian Exchange changed the field of history drastically and forever as well. It has become one of the foundational works in the burgeoning field of environmental history, and it remains one of the canonical texts for the study of world history. This 30th anniversary edition of The Columbian Exchange includes a new preface from the author, reflecting on the book and its creation, and a new foreword by J. R. McNeill that demonstrates how Crosby established a brand new perspective for understanding ecological and social events. As the foreword indicates, The Columbian Exchange remains a vital book, a small work that contains within the inspiration for future examinations into what happens when two peoples, separated by time and space, finally meet.

About neglected crops of the American continent. Published in collaboration with the Botanical Garden of Cord�ba (Spain) as part of the Etnobot�nica92 Programme (Andalusia, 1992)

When Columbus landed in 1492, the New World was far from being a vast expanse of empty wilderness: it was home to some seventy-five million people. They ranged from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, spoke as many as two thousand different languages, and lived in groups that varied from small bands of hunter-gatherers to the sophisticated and dazzling empires of the Incas and Aztecs. This brilliantly detailed and documented volume brings together essays by fifteen leading scholars field to present a comprehensive and richly evocative portrait of Native American life on the eve of Columbus's first landfall. Developed at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian and edited by award-winning author Alvin M. Josehpy, Jr., America in 1492 is an invaluable work that combines the insights of historians, anthropologists, and students of art, religion, and folklore. Its dozens of illustrations, drawn from largely from the rare books and manuscripts housed at the Newberry Library, open a window on worlds flourished in the Americas five hundred years ago.

Only once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted. Mazoyer and Roudart’s A History of World Agriculture is a path-breaking and panoramic work, beginning with the emergence of agriculture after thousands of years in which human societies had depended on hunting and gathering, showing how agricultural techniques developed in the different regions of the world, and how this extraordinary wealth of knowledge, tradition and natural variety is endangered today by global capitialism, as it forces the unequal agrarian heritages of the world to conform to the norms of profit. During the twentieth century, mechanization, motorization and specialization have brought to a halt the pattern of cultural and environmental responses that characterized the global history of agriculture until then. Today a small number of corporations have the capacity to impose the farming methods on the planet that they find most profitable. Mazoyer and Roudart propose an alternative global strategy that can safegaurd the economies of the poor countries, reinvigorate the global economy, and create a livable future for mankind.

Now in its second edition and refreshed by a decade of new research, The Environment in World History uncovers the deep-rooted causes of interconnected climate, biodiversity, and ecological crises that have brought the environment to the top of the global political agenda in the twenty-first century. Its expanded chapters and case studies explore a wide range of issues including the following: the hunting of wildlife and the loss of biodiversity across the globe; deforestation and the development of strategies to protect the world’s forests; soil degradation caused by worldwide agricultural expansion, one of the most profound ways that humans have altered the planet; the widening impact of urban-industrial growth and the deepening ecological footprints of the world’s cities; and the rising levels of air, land and water pollution as the trade-off for continued economic growth worldwide. Covering the last five hundred years, it offers an essential environmental perspective on well-known world history narratives of imperialism and colonialism, trade and commerce, technological progress and the advance of civilisation. Clearly written and fully up-to-date, it is an invaluable resource for all students of world history and environmental studies.