The unending frontier: an environmental history of the early modern world by

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. 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. "John F. Richards identifies four broadly shared historical processes that accelerated 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 and 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. 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."--Jacket Maps 10 Tables 12 Preface 14 Introduction 16 1. The Early Modern World 32 2. Climate and Early Modern World Environmental History 73 3. Pioneer Settlement on Taiwan 104 4. Internal Frontiers and Intensified Land Use in China 127 5. Ecological Strategies in Tokugawa Japan 163 6. Landscape Change and Energy Transformation in the British Isles 208 7. Frontier Settlement in Russia 257 8. Wildlife and Livestock in South Africa 289 9. The Columbian Exchange: The West Indies 324 10. Ranching, Mining, and Settlement Frontiers in Colonial Mexico 349 11. Sugar and Cattle in Portuguese Brazil 392 12. Landscapes of Sugar in the Antilles 427 13. Furs and Deerskins in Eastern North America 478 14. The Hunt for Furs in Siberia 532 15. Cod and the New World Fisheries 562 16. Whales and Walruses in the Northern Oceans 589 Conclusion 632 Bibliography 638 Index 676 During the early modern centuries, for the first time in human history, a truly global, interconnected society rapidly knit together. Describes the effect of human action on the world's environment