A Companion to Global Environmental History

A Companion to Global Environmental History orients readers to this dynamic, fast–growing field and provides an essential reference to current issues and controversies within the research arena. Bringing together environmental historians from around the world, the Companion surveys past developments in scholarship, current contours of the field, and possible approaches for the future. Four themed sections encompass temporal, geographic, and thematic approaches from prehistory to the present day, offering multiple points of entry into the substance and historiography of global environmental history. Chapters explore environmental processes, thought, and action across time and place to give readers a historical, cultural, and political context for engagement with the environment in modern times. The Companion is a road map, not only for scholars and students who are coming to environmental history for the first time, but also for professional historians and specialists looking for comparative perspectives.

List of Maps x Notes on Contributors xi Acknowledgments xv Global Environmental History: An Introduction xvi J. R. McNeill and Erin Stewart Mauldin PART I TIMES 1 1 Global Environmental History: The First 150,000 Years 3 J. R. McNeill 2 The Ancient World, c. 500 BCE to 500 CE 18 J. Donald Hughes 3 The Medieval World, 500 to 1500 CE 39 Daniel Headrick 4 The (Modern) World since 1500 57 Robert B. Marks PART II PLACES 79 5 Southeast Asia in Global Environmental History 81 Peter Boomgaard 6 Environmental History in Africa 96 Jane Carruthers 7 Latin America in Global Environmental History 116 Shawn W. Miller 8 The United States in Global Environmental History 132 Erin Stewart Mauldin 9 The Arctic and Subarctic in Global Environmental History 153 Liza Piper 10 The Middle East in Global Environmental History 167 Alan Mikhail 11 Australia in Global Environmental History 182 Libby Robin 12 Oceania: The Environmental History of One–Third of the Globe 196 Paul D′Arcy 13 The Environmental History of the Soviet Union 222 Stephen Brain PART III DRIVERS OF CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATIONS 245   14 The Grasslands of North America and Russia 247 David Moon 15 Global Forests 263 Nancy Langston 16 Fishing and Whaling 279 Micah S. Muscolino 17 Riverine Environments 297 Alan Roe 18 War and the Environment 319 Richard P. Tucker 19 Technology and the Environment 340 Paul Josephson 20 Cities and the Environment 360 Jordan Bauer and Martin V. Melosi 21 Evolution and the Environment 377 Edmund Russell 22 Climate Change in Global Environmental History 394 Sam White 23 Industrial Agriculture 411 Meredith McKittrick 24 Biological Exchange in Global Environmental History 433 J. R. McNeill PART IV ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT AND ACTION 453 25 Environmentalism in Brazil: A Historical Perspective 455 José Augusto Pádua 26 Environmentalism and Environmental Movements in China since 1949 474 Bao Maohong 27 Religion and Environmentalism 493 Joachim Radkau 28 The Environmentalism of the Poor: Its Origins and Spread 513 Joan Martinez–Alier Index 530

J. R. McNeill is Professor of History at Georgetown University, where he held the Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental and International Affairs before becoming University Professor in 2006. His book Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth–Century World was listed by The Times as one of the best science books ever written. The book was cowinner of the World History Association and Forest History Society book prizes and runner–up for the BP Natural World book prize. McNeill has authored a number of other award–winning books on environmental history, and in 2010 he was awarded the Toynbee Prize for “academic and public contributions to humanity.” Erin Stewart Mauldin is a PhD candidate in US environmental history at Georgetown University. She is currently writing her dissertation on the environmental history of the Reconstruction period in the southern United States.

"This is an interesting book."  ( Reference Reviews , 1 March 2014) “Summing Up:  Highly recommended.  Lower–division undergraduates through professionals.” ( Choice , 1 September 2013)