Global deforestation and the nineteenth-century world economy (Duke Press policy studies)

The period between 1800 and 1914 saw an unprecedented expansion of agriculture and population throughout the world, with an accompanying clearing of land and forests. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that this global trend toward deforestation was not so much a response to the pressure of growing population as it was a function of world market forces generated by Europes growing demand for commodities and raw materials. The result of this increased demand was the clearing of land and the rapid disappearance of much of the worlds forest cover. This deforestation made many rural populations, especially in the non-Western world, more dependent on these international market forces than they had ever been before. Their natural resources, previously readily available in the form of forest and woodland products, were rapidly depleted. The essays in this book, drawing from the North American, Asian, South American, and African historical present case studies which for the first time reveal the full extent of this process of economic and environmental change, a process which has been obscured in the past by the compartmentalization of national histories and the lack of integration between economic history and forest history. Edited By Richard P. Tucker And J.f. Richards. Based On Meeting At Oakland University In May, 1981. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.