An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period

An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period PDF

Author: Martin Knoll

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 3643904630

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The environmental history of early modern times is a seminal and lively field of historical research. This volume offers ten concise essays that provide an overview of current research debates on a broad span of topics, such as historical climatology and climate reconstruction, coping with disaster, land use and agricultural knowledge, forest history, urbanization, the perceptions of (alpine) nature, and societal dealings with water and rivers. Taken together, the contributions establish early modern studies as a promising laboratory for new avenues in environmental history. (Series: Austria: Research and Science - History / Austria: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Geschichte - Vol. 10) [Subject: History, Environmental Studies]

The Unending Frontier

The Unending Frontier PDF

Author: John F. Richards

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2003-05-15

Total Pages: 697

ISBN-13: 0520939352

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It was the age of exploration, the age of empire and conquest, and human beings were extending their reach—and their numbers—as never before. In the process, they were intervening in the world's natural environment in equally unprecedented and dramatic ways. A sweeping work of environmental history, The Unending Frontier offers a truly global perspective on the profound impact of humanity on the natural world in the early modern period. John F. Richards identifies four broadly shared historical processes that speeded environmental change from roughly 1500 to 1800 c.e.: intensified human land use along settlement frontiers; biological invasions; commercial hunting of wildlife; and problems of energy scarcity. The Unending Frontier considers each of these trends in a series of case studies, sometimes of a particular place, such as Tokugawa Japan and early modern England and China, sometimes of a particular activity, such as the fur trade in North America and Russia, cod fishing in the North Atlantic, and whaling in the Arctic. Throughout, Richards shows how humans—whether clearing forests or draining wetlands, transporting bacteria, insects, and livestock; hunting species to extinction, or reshaping landscapes—altered the material well-being of the natural world along with their own.

Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World

Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World PDF

Author: Sara Miglietti

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-03-27

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1317200292

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Throughout the early modern period, scientific debate and governmental action became increasingly preoccupied with the environment, generating discussion across Europe and the wider world as to how to improve land and climate for human benefit. This discourse eventually promoted the reconsideration of long-held beliefs about the role of climate in upholding the social order, driving economies and affecting public health. Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World explores the relationship between cultural perceptions of the environment and practical attempts at environmental regulation and change between 1500 and 1800. Taking a cultural and intellectual approach to early modern environmental governance, this edited collection combines an interpretative perspective with new insights into a period largely unfamiliar to environmental historians. Using a rich and multifaceted narrative, this book offers an understanding as to how efforts to enhance productive aspects of the environment were both led by and contributed to new conceptualisations of the role of ‘nature’ in human society. This book offers a cultural and intellectual approach to early modern environmental history and will be of special interest to environmental, cultural and intellectual historians, as well as anyone with an interest in the culture and politics of environmental governance.

The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire PDF

Author: Sam White

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-08-15

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1139499491

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The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores the serious and far-reaching impacts of Little Ice Age climate fluctuations in Ottoman lands. This study demonstrates how imperial systems of provisioning and settlement that defined Ottoman power in the 1500s came unraveled in the face of ecological pressures and extreme cold and drought, leading to the outbreak of the destructive Celali Rebellion (1595–1610). This rebellion marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes, as a combination of ongoing Little Ice Age climate events, nomad incursions and rural disorder postponed Ottoman recovery over the following century, with enduring impacts on the region's population, land use and economy.

Humans Versus Nature

Humans Versus Nature PDF

Author: Daniel R. Headrick

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0190864710

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"This book is about the ongoing conflict between humanity and the natural environment. Over the past 200,000 years, humans have multiplied and populated the Earth. When they domesticated plants and animals and replaced foraging with agriculture and herding, they depleted natural resources, deforested the land, and caused mass extinctions. But nature has agency too, causing pandemics of plague, smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases and a climate change called the Little Ice Age. In recent centuries, industrialization has accelerated extinctions, deforestation, and resource depletion, even in the oceans. Twentieth-century developmentalism and mass consumerism have caused global warming and other climate changes. Environmental movements have argued for the need to mitigate the negative consequences of technological and economic change. The future of humanity and the Earth depends on choices between achieving a sustainable balance between humans and nature, carrying on as before, or learning to manage the biosphere. environment, mass extinction, domestication, agriculture, pandemic, industrialization, developmentalism, consumerism, global warming"--

The Environment and World History

The Environment and World History PDF

Author: Edmund Burke

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780520256873

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In 11 essays, the contributors examine the connections between environmental change and other major topics of early modern world history: population growth, commercialization, imperialism, industrialization, the fossil fuel revolution, and more.

An Environmental History of Medieval Europe

An Environmental History of Medieval Europe PDF

Author: Richard Hoffmann

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-10

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1139915711

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How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons', agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself.

The Smoke of London

The Smoke of London PDF

Author: William M. Cavert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-04-07

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1107073006

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William M. Cavert investigates the origins of urban air pollution, explaining how this problem arose during the early modern period.