The Unending Frontier

by Richards, John F.

• ISBN13: 9780520246782
• ISBN10: 0520246780
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-31
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

John F. Richards is Professor of History at Duke University

Table of Contents

List of Maps	ix
List of Tables	xi
Preface	xiii
Introduction	1	(16)
PART I. THE GLOBAL CONTEXT
The Early Modern World	17	(41)
Climate and Early Modern World Environmental History	58	(31)
PART II. EURASIA AND AFRICA
Pioneer Settlement on Taiwan	89	(23)
Internal Frontiers and Intensified Land Use in China	112	(36)
Ecological Strategies in Tokugawa Japan	148	(45)
Landscape Change and Energy Transformation in the British Isles	193	(49)
Frontier Settlement in Russia	242	(32)
Wildlife and Livestock in South Africa	274	(35)
PART III. THE AMERICAS
The Columbian Exchange: The West Indies	309	(25)
Ranching, Mining, and Settlement Frontiers in Colonial Mexico	334	(43)
Sugar and Cattle in Portuguese Brazil	377	(35)
Landscapes of Sugar in the Antilles	412	(51)
PART IV. THE WORLD HUNT
Furs and Deerskins in Eastern North America	463	(54)
The Hunt for Furs in Siberia	517	(30)
Cod and the New World Fisheries	547	(27)
Whales and Walruses in the Northern Oceans	574	(43)
Conclusion	617	(6)
Bibliography	623	(38)
Index	661