The unending frontier : an environmental history of the early modern world /
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| Author / Creator: | Richards, John F. |
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| Imprint: | Berkeley : University of California Press, c2003. |
| Description: | xiv, 682 p. ; 24 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | The California world history library ; 1 California world history library ; 1. |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/4863223 |
| 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.<br> <br> 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. |
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| Physical Description: | xiv, 682 p. ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 623-659) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0520230752 |
