A 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.
List of Maps x
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xv
Global Environmental History: An Introduction xvi
PART I TIMES 1
1 Global Environmental History: The First 150,000 Years 3
2 The Ancient World, c. 500 BCE to 500 CE 18
3 The Medieval World, 500 to 1500 CE 39
PART II PLACES 79
4 The (Modern) World since 1500 57
5 Southeast Asia in Global Environmental History 81
6 Environmental History in Africa 96
7 Latin America in Global Environmental History 116
8 The United States in Global Environmental History 132
9 The Arctic and Subarctic in Global Environmental History 153
10 The Middle East in Global Environmental History 167
11 Australia in Global Environmental History 182
12 Oceania: The Environmental History of One-Third of the Globe 196
PART III DRIVERS OF CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATIONS 245
13 The Environmental History of the Soviet Union 222
14 The Grasslands of North America and Russia 247
15 Global Forests 263
16 Fishing and Whaling 279
17 Riverine Environments 297
18 War and the Environment 319
19 Technology and the Environment 340
20 Cities and the Environment 360
21 Evolution and the Environment 377
22 Climate Change in Global Environmental History 394
23 Industrial Agriculture 411
PART IV ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT AND ACTION 453
24 Biological Exchange in Global Environmental History 433
25 Environmentalism in Brazil: A Historical Perspective 455
26 Environmentalism and Environmental Movements in China since 1949 474
27 Religion and Environmentalism 493
28 The Environmentalism of the Poor: Its Origins and Spread 513
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 co-winner 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 currently a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University studying American Environmental History with an emphasis on the nineteenth-century South.