Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire provides the first wide-ranging environmental history of the heyday of European imperialism, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the colonial era. It focuses on the ecological dimensions of the explosive growth of tropical commodity production, global trade, and modern resource management-transformations that still visibly shape our world today-and how they were related to broader social, cultural, and political developments in Eur...

A bold new account of European imperialism told through the history of waterIn the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These sprawling empires encompassed not only rainforests, deserts, and savannahs but also some of the world’s most magnificent rivers, lakes, marshes, and seas. Liquid Empire tells the story of how the waters of the colonial world shaped t...

Few developments in the industrial era have had a greater impact on everyday social life than the explosion of the mass media and commercial entertainments, and none have exerted a more profound influence on the nature of modern politics. Nowhere in Europe were the tensions and controversies surrounding the rise of mass culture more politically charged than in Germany-debates that played fatefully into the hands of the radical right. Corey Ross provides the first general account of the exp...

**“The MOST IMPORTANT BOOK I imagine I'll ever read.”—Mary RoachFROM AN AWARD-WINNING SCIENCE JOURNALIST comes an urgent investigation of environmental migration—the most underreported, seismic consequence of our climate crisis that will force us to change where—and how—we live.“An IMPORTANT and PROVOCATIVE start to a crucial conversation.” —Bill McKibben**“We are facing a species emergency. We can survive, but to do so will require a planned and deliberate migr...

This global environmental and political history “will redefine the way we think about the European colonial project” (Observer).“ . . . sets the triumph of the late 19th-century Western imperialism in the context of catastrophic El Niño weather patterns at that time . . . groundbreaking, mind-stretching.” —The IndependentExamining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in th...

Drawing on many years of African experience, John Reader has written a book of startling grandeur and scope that recreates the great panorama of African history, from the primeval cataclysms that formed the continent to the political upheavals facing much of the continent today. Reader tells the extraordinary story of humankind's adaptation to the ferocious obstacles of forest, river and desert, and to the threat of debilitating parasites, bacteria and viruses unmatched elsewhere in the wo...

The success of the first four editions shows that this book fills a vacuum for readers who wish to learn about the countries of South-East Asia. Recent years have seen a number of important developments all of which are covered here. With the global climate becoming more uncertain and the threat of terrorism spilling over, this book will aid readers' knowledge of this region by addressing its historical past and political future.

The definitive environmental history of the twentieth-century world, now updated for the twenty-first.Humans have long transformed the planet, scratching its surface for stones and ores, planting and harvesting crops, sparking fires for light and heat. But since the dawn of industrialization and especially since 1950, our impact has accelerated sharply. Economic, technological, and demographic changes have driven rapid and ongoing shifts in patterns of pollution, h...

Acclaimed author and award-winning scientist and activist Vandana Shiva lucidly details the severity of the global water shortage, calling the water crisis “the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.” She sheds light on the activists who are fighting corporate maneuvers to convert the life-sustaining resource of water into more gold for the elites and uses her knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corpora...

Pankaj Sekhsaria is the most consistent chronicler of contemporary issues in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and one of the best known. His writings on the environment, wildlife conservation, development and indigenous communities have provided insights and perspective on the life of the islands for over two decades. Islands in Flux is a compilation of Sekhsaria's writings on key issues in the Islands over this period and provides an important, consolidated account that is releva...

This volume examines the economic, political, social and environmental challenges facing rural communities in the Asia-Pacific region, as global issues intersect with local contexts. Such challenges, from climatic change and volcanic eruption to population growth and violent civil unrest, have stimulated local resilience amongst communities and led to evolving regional institutions and environment management practices, changing social relationships and producing new forms of stratification...

The story begins with a dream – the dream of Africa. Virgin forests, majestic mountains surrounded by savannas, vast plains punctuated with the rhythms of animal life where lions, elephants and giraffes reign as lords of nature, far from civilization – all of us carry such images in our heads, imagining Africa as a timeless Eden untouched by the ravages of modernity.But this Africa has never existed. The more we destroy nature here, the more we fantasize about it in Africa. Along w...