Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment

by Joachim Radkau , Translated by Thomas Dunlap

• ISBN13: 9780521616737
• ISBN10: 0521616735
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book aims to demonstrate that the changing relationship between humanity and nature is key to understanding world history. Humans have been grappling with environmental problems since prehistoric times, and the environmental unsustainability of human practices has often been a decisive, if not immediately evident, shaping factor in history. The measures that societies and states have adopted to stabilize the relationship between humans and the natural world have repeatedly contributed to environmental crises over the course of history. Nature and Power traces the expanding scope of environmental action: from initiatives undertaken by individual villages and cities, environmental policy has become a global concern. Efforts to steer human use of nature and natural resources have become complicated, as Nature and Power shows, by particularities of culture and by the vagaries of human nature itself. Environmental history, the author argues, is ultimately the history of human hopes and fears.

Author Biography

Joachim Radkau is Professor of History at the University of Bielefeld in Germany

Table of Contents

Preface to the German Edition	p. xi
Preface to the English Edition	p. xv
Thinking about Environmental History	p. 1
Blinders and Dead Ends in Environmental History	p. 1
The Sameness of Vicious Circles and the Complex Ways of Escaping Them	p. 6
In the Depth of Time, and the Mysterious Regenerative Power of the Nature Idea	p. 15
Trees or Sheep? The Problem of Value Judgments in Environmental History	p. 20
Ecology as Historical Explanation: From the Collapse of Mayan Culture to the Great Irish Famine	p. 27
Terra Incognita: Environmental History as Secret History or the History of the Obvious?	p. 32
The Ecology of Subsistence and Tacit Knowledge: Primeval Symbioses of Humans and Nature	p. 36
In the Beginning Was Fire: Global Slash-and-Burn Agriculture and Pyromania in Environmental History	p. 41
Humans and Animals: Hunting and Domestication	p. 45
Gardens and Fruit Trees	p. 55
Farmers and Herders	p. 62
The "Tragedy of the Commons" and the Plaggen Plague: Was Premodern Agriculture "Unconscious Plunder"?	p. 71
Mother Earth and the Father in Heaven: On the Ecology of Religion	p. 77
Water, Forests, and Power	p. 86
Hydraulic Engineering, Power, and Ecological Chain Reactions	p. 87
Egypt and Mesopotamia: An Archetypal Contrast	p. 93
The Irrigated Terrace: A Socioecological Cell Culture	p. 97
China as a Model and a Terrifying Vision	p. 103
Water Civilizations within Constrained Spaces: Venice and the Netherlands	p. 117
Malaria, Irrigation, Deforestation: Endemic Disease as Nature's Avenger and the Protector of Ecological Reserves	p. 127
Deforestation and "Ecological Suicide" in the Mediterranean Region: A Fictitious Problem? Erosion in Harmony with Nature and Misleading Historicization	p. 131
Forest and Power in Europe: From the Forest-Clearance Movement to the Era of Forest Regulations	p. 136
Focal Points of an Early Consciousness of Crisis: Cities and Mining	p. 142
Colonialism as a Watershed in Environmental History	p. 152
The Mongol Empire and the "Microbial Unification of the World"	p. 154
Ecological Dynamics in Overseas Colonialization	p. 157
The Birth of the Global Perspective: Colonial and Insular Origins of Modern Environmental Awareness	p. 164
Colonial and Postcolonial Turning Points in India's Environmental History	p. 169
Yankee and Mushik Ecology	p. 177
The Question of European Exceptionalism in Environmental History: The Effect of Colonialism on the Colonial Powers	p. 184
At the Limits of Nature	p. 195
Toward the Last Reserves	p. 195
"Wo Mistus, da Christus" (Where there is dung, there is Christ): From the Fallow to the "Cult of Dung" and the Politicization of Agriculture	p. 205
Alarm over Wood Scarcity, the Afforestation Movement, and the Rise of an Ecological Forest Apologetics	p. 212
"Sweet, Holy Nature": The Ambiguous Development of the Modern Religion of Nature	p. 221
Nature and Nation: Making Concrete the Nature in Need of Protection	p. 226
The First Industrial Environmental Crisis and the Genesis of Basic Patterns of Modern Crisis Management	p. 239
In the Labyrinth of Globalization	p. 250
The Deepest Rupture in the History of the Environment: The Failed Americanization of the World	p. 250
Blood and Soil: Self-Sufficiency Gone Mad	p. 260
Substrata of Environmental Concerns: The Nuclear Apocalypse and Cancer Fears	p. 265
Scientific, Spiritual, and Economic Origins of the Environmental Movement	p. 272
Nepal, Bhutan, and Other Summit Perspectives: Environmental Problems in Tourism, Development Aid, and Space Flight	p. 280
The Problems of Power and Uncertainty in Environmental Policy	p. 294
Epilogue: How to Argue with Environmental History in Politics	p. 304
Notes	p. 331
Index	p. 409
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.