Increasing awareness of the extent and cause of environmental problems has fuelled the emergence of a new and timely discipline: environmental history. An exciting blend of geography, history, archaeology, anthropology, landscape, environment and science, it seeks to reveal how human activity has affected the environment in the past and how we, in turn, have been affected by that environment. How did people use and transform their environment? What problems of pollution and resource depletion occurred? What has been the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation? How have people's perceptions of nature and the environment changed over time? Environmental historians are revealing how and why our environment changed in the past, they are providing key insights into the mechanisms that influence environmental change today, and are helping to make informed decisions on crucial environmental concerns such as deforestation, desertification, pollution, global warming and climate change. Professor Whyte's A Dictionary of Environmental History provides in a single volume a comprehensive reference work covering the past 12,000 years of the Earth's environmental history. An introduction to the discipline is followed by almost 1,000 entries covering key terminology, events, places, dates, topics, as well as the major personalities in the history of the discipline. Entries range from shorter factual accounts to substantial mini-essays on major topics and issues. Fully cross-referenced and with an extensive bibliography, this pioneering work provides an authoritative yet accessible resourcethat will form essential reading for academics, practitioners and students of environmental history and related disciplines.

"Increasing awareness of the extent and cause of environmental problems has fuelled the emergence of a new and timely discipline: environmental history. An exciting blend of geography, history, archaeology, anthropology, landscape, environment and science, it seeks to reveal how human activity has affected the environment in the past and how we, in turn, have been affected by that environment. How did people use and transform their environment? What problems of pollution and resource depletion occurred? What has been the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation? How have people's perceptions of nature and the environment changed over time? Environmental historians are revealing how and why our environment changed in the past, they are providing key insights into the mechanisms that influence environmental change today, and are helping to make informed decisions on crucial environmental concerns such as deforestation, desertification, pollution, global warming and climate change. Professor Whyte's A Dictionary of Environmental History provides in a single volume a comprehensive reference work covering the past 12,000 years of the Earth's environmental history. An introduction to the discipline is followed by almost 1,000 entries covering key terminology, events, places, dates, topics, as well as the major personalities in the history of the discipline. Entries range from shorter factual accounts to substantial mini-essays on major topics and issues. Fully cross-referenced and with an extensive bibliography, this pioneering work provides an authoritative yet accessible resourcethat will form essential reading for academics, practitioners and students of environmental history and related disciplines."--Bloomsbury publishing.

Considering the ways in which the ‘global turn’ is changing the theory and practice of historical disciplines, Explorations in History and Globalization engages with the concept and methodology of globalization, challenging traditional divisions of space and time to offer a range of perspectives on how globalization has affected social, economic, political and cultural history. Each chapter covers a specific theme, discussing how globalization has shaped these themes and how they have contributed to globalization throughout history. Including topics such as ecological exchanges, trade, exchanges of knowledge, migration, empire and urbanization, this volume both explains historical trajectories through a global analytical framework and provides tools that students can employ when posing their own research questions about historical globalization. Containing suggestions for further reading and guidance on the ways in which primary source material can be used as a basis for global historical studies, this is the ideal volume for all students interested in the global exchanges between people throughout history.

This first study of the environmental challenges handled by the League of Nations pioneers new perspectives on legal and environmental history.

From the outset, society in Japan has been shaped by its environmental context. The lush green mountainous archipelago of today, with its highly productive lowlands, supports a population of more than 127 million people and one of the most advanced economies in the world. How has this come about and at what environmental cost? Conrad Totman, one of the world's foremost scholars on Japanese, here provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the country's environmental history, from its beginnings to the present day. Professor Totman traces the country's development through successive historical phases, as early agricultural society based on non-intensive forms of cultivation gave way to more intensified forms. With each stage came greater utilisation of natural resources but a steady reduction in the richness of the indigenous biosystem. By the late seventeenth century the country was well on the way to ecological disaster. Yet Japan's isolation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led to an unusually enlightened set of environmental policies, and the system of regenerative forestry brought in during the Tokugawa period prevented certain devastation of the country's forests. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, the country began to go to the opposite extreme, as industrialisation brought with it a period of unprecedented change. Growth and diversification led to a surge in environmental pollution as it became necessary to look beyond the country's domestic natural resources to meet the demand for foodstuffs, fossil fuels and the raw materials necessary to an advanced industrial economy. The population was particularly badly affected, and some of the problems that emerged, especially from the 1960s onwards, provided important test cases not just for Japan but worldwide. What makes the Japanese story particularly instructive is that the country's boundaries are uncommonly clear and the nature, timing, and extent of external influences on its history are unusually identifiable. The Japanese experience, therefore, not only yields important insights into the processes of environmental history, it offers important lessons for the wider environmental history of the planet and for our understanding of current global ecological problems. A work of immense erudition and reflecting a lifetime of scholarship, Japan: an Environmental History will be welcomed by all with an interest in environmental history and the historical development of Japan.

The Crimean Peninsula has a rich and complex environmental history. The Black Sea in particular has had a major impact on nearly all aspects of Crimea's natural and cultural history. Carlos Cordova explains the making of Crimea's natural environment, from its geology and relief to its climate and soils. He explores the rich flora and fauna of the peninsula, including the biogeographical isolation of Crimea, the transformation of the landscape brought about by Mediterranean farmers, as well as Khrushchev's Virgin Lands Campaign, which saw virtually all the steppe turned into cropland. The development of the south coast as a tourist destination and the pollution brought about by agricultural and industrial development are also discussed. This pioneering study represents the first modern work in the English language on the environmental history of a little known but environmentally significant region.

Cities are amongst our greatest creations. Yet at the start of the twenty-first century there is increasing concern over their unchecked expansion and the detrimental effect this is having on the planet, as induced climate change and ever increasing demands upon the world's resources take effect. How can we make the world's cities more sustainable? Ian Douglas tells the story of cities - why they exist, how they have evolved, the problems they have encountered and those they will face as our century progresses. Global in geographical coverage, and ranging from the cities of the classical world to the megacities of today, it is the first comprehensive environmental history of cities.

Geoarchaeology is traditionally concerned with reconstructing the environmental aspects of past societies using the methods of the earth sciences. The field has been steadily enriched by scholars from a diversity of disciplines and much has happened as the importance of global perspectives on environmental change has emerged. Carlos Cordova, provides a fully up-to-date account of geoarchaeology that reflects the important changes that have occurred in the past four decades. Innovative features include: the development of the human-ecological approach and the impact of technology on this approach; how the diversity of disciplines contributes to archaeological questions; frontiers of archaeology in the deep past, particularly the Anthropocene; the geoarchaeology of the contemporary past; the emerging field of ethno-geoarchaeology; the role of geoarchaeology in global environmental crises and climate change.

The traditional image of New Zealand is one of verdant landscapes with sheep grazing on lush green pastures. Yet this landscape is almost entirely an artificial creation. As Britain became increasingly reliant on its overseas territories for supplies of food and raw material, so all over the Empire indigenous plants were replaced with English grasses to provide the worked up products of pasture - meat, butter, cheese, wool, and hides. In New Zealand this process was carried to an extreme, with forest cleared and swamps drained. How, why and with what consequences did the transformation of New Zealand into these empires of grass occur? 'Seeds of Empire' provides both an exciting appraisal of New Zealand's environmental history and a long overdue exploration of the significance of grass in the processes of sowing empire.

The Middle Ages was a critical and formative time for Western approaches to our natural surroundings. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages is a unique and unprecedented cultural survey of attitudes towards the environment during this period. Exploring the entire medieval period from 500 to 1500, and ranging across the whole of Europe, from England and Spain to the Baltic and Eastern Europe, John Aberth focuses his study on three key areas: the natural elements of air, water, and earth; the forest; and wild and domestic animals. Through this multi-faceted lens, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages sheds fascinating new light on the medieval environmental mindset. It will be essential reading for students, scholars and all those interested in the Middle Ages