Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene Perspectives on Asia and Africa

by Austin, Gareth

• ISBN13: 9781474267496
• ISBN10: 1474267491
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-07-13
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

For the populations of the developing economies – the vast majority of humanity – the present century offers the prospect of emulating Western standards of living. This hope is combined with increasing awareness of the environmental consequences of the very process of global industrialisation itself. This book explores the interactions between economic development and the physical environment in four regions of the developing world: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. The contributors focus on the 'Anthropocene': our present era, in which humanity's influence on the physical environment has begun to mark the geological record.

Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene examines environmental changes at global level and human responses to environmental opportunities and constraints on more local and regional scales, themes which have been insufficiently studied to date. This volume fills this gap in the literature by combining historical, economic and geographical perspectives to consider the implications of the Anthropocene for economic development in Asia and Africa.

Author Biography

Gareth Austin is Professor of International History at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland. He works on African, comparative and global economic history and his recent publications include Labour, Land and Capital in Ghana (2005).

Table of Contents

1.Introduction (Gareth Austin, Graduate Institute Geneva, Switzerland)
2. Environmental Impacts of Colonial Dynamics, 1400-1800: Ecological Imperialism Versus Ecological Adaptation (Amélia Polónia, University of Porto, Portugal)
3. Agricultural Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa 1500-1800: the Role of the Environment (Mats Widgren, Stockholm University, Sweden)
4. A New Energy Economy in Nineteenth-Century South India (Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College, USA)
5. The Monsoon and the Market for Money: Evidence from Interwar India (Tirthankar Roy, LSE, UK)
6. Developing the Rainforest: Rubber, Environment and Economy in Southeast Asia (Corey Ross, University of Birmingham, UK)
7. Africa and the Anthropocene (Gareth Austin, Graduate Institute Geneva, Switzerland)
8. Containerization, Energy and the Anthropocene in West Africa (Emily Osborn, University of Chicago, USA)
9. Environmental Sustainability for the Asian Path of Economic Development: A Long-Term Perspective (Kaoru Sugihara, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan)
10. The Development of Energy Conservation Technology in Japan, 1920-1970: An Analysis of Energy-Intensive Industries and Energy Conservation Policies (Satoru Kobori, Nagoya University, Japan)
11. The Development of South Korea's Nuclear Energy Industry in a Resource- and Capital-Scarce Environment (Se Young Jang, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland)
12. Water, Energy, and Politics: Chinese Industrial Revolutions in Global Environmental Perspective (Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago, USA)
13. The Present Climate of Economic History (Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame, USA)
Bibliography
Index