Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene

Gareth Austin is Professor of Economic History at Cambridge University, UK, and until recently was a professor in the Department of International History at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland. He has numerous publications on Ghanaian, African, comparative and global economic history.

• 1.Introduction (Gareth Austin, Cambridge University, UK)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 (Mats Widgren, Stockholm University, Sweden)4. Containerization, Energy and the Anthropocene in West Africa (Emily Osborn, University of Chicago, USA)5. Africa and the Anthropocene (Gareth Austin, Cambridge University, UK)6. Local Resource Constraints, Regional Trade and Environmental Sustainability: An Asian Historical Perspective (Kaoru Sugihara, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan)7. Forests and a New Energy Economy in 19th-Century South India (Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College, USA)8. Land Quality, Carrying Capacity and Sustainable Agricultural Change in 20th-Century India (Tirthankar Roy, LSE, UK)9. Forest Development in Southeast Asia and the Human Factor, 1500-2000 (Peter Boomgaard, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)10. Developing the Rainforest: Rubber, Environment and Economy in Southeast Asia (Corey Ross, University of Birmingham, UK)11. The Development of Energy Conservation Technology in Japan, 1920-70: An Analysis of Energy-Intensive Industries and Energy Conservation Policies (Satoru Kobori, Nagoya University, Japan)12. 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)13. Water, Energy, and Politics: Chinese Industrial Revolutions in Global Environmental Perspective (Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago, USA)14. The Present Climate of Economic History (Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame, USA)BibliographyIndex

Austin’s volume shows the benefit of a looser, non-stratigraphical dating. By avoiding any strict periodization of the Anthropocene, Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene allows for rich discussions of the multiple entanglements of the histories of the environment and the economy.