City, country, empire : landscapes in environmental history / edited by Jeffry M. Diefendorf and Kurk Dorsey.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Diefendorf, Jeffry M., 1945- editor.

Dorsey, Kurkpatrick, editor.

Series:

University of Pittsburgh Digital Collections

University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human ecology--History.

Human ecology.

Urban ecology (Sociology)--History.

Urban ecology (Sociology).

Landscape changes--History.

Landscape changes.

Economic development--Environmental aspects.

Economic development.

Social history.

Genre:

Aufsatzsammlung.

History

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2005]

Summary:

In the urgently expanding field of environmental history, two trends are emerging. Research has internationalized, crossing political and historical borders. And urban spaces are increasingly seen as part of, not apart from, the global environment. In this book, Jeffry Diefendorf and Kurk Dorsey have gathered much of the important work pushing the field in new directions. Eleven essays by prominent and regionally diverse scholars address how human and natural forces collaborate in the creation of cities, the countryside, and empires. The Cities section features essays that examine pollution and its aftermath in Pittsburgh, the Ruhr Valley (Germany), and Los Angeles. These urban areas are far apart on the globe but closely linked in their histories of how human decision making has affected the environment. Changing rural and suburban spaces are the focus of Countryside. Elizabeth Blackmar \u0022follows the money\u0022 in order to understand why the financing of suburban mall developments makes local resistance difficult. Studies of the fractious history of the creation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon and the ongoing impact of hydraulic mining in the early California goldmining era emphasize the misuse of technology in rural spaces. Such misuse is a central idea of Empires. In \u0022When Stalin Learned to Fish, \u0022 Paul R. Josephson tells the story of Soviet fishing technology designed to \u0022harness fish to the engine of socialism.\u0022 Other essays explore the failures of Western agricultural technology in Africa and the relationship between such technology and disease in European attempts to conquer the Caribbean. In a stirring, wide-ranging consideration of the neo-European colonies (the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), Thomas R. Dunlap observes the ongoing, unsettled interaction of lands and dreams. An afterword by Alfred W. Crosby, an eminent scholar of environmental history, closes the book with a broad and insightful synthesis of the history and future of this critical field.

Contents:

Challenges for environmental history / Jeffry M. Diefendorf and Kurk Dorsey

The metabolism of the industrial city: the case of Pittsburgh / Joel A. Tarr

Los Angeles's nature: urban environmental politics in the twentieth century / Sarah S. Elkind

The environmental transformation of the Ruhr / Ursula von Petz

Of REITS and rights: absentee ownership at the periphery / Elizabeth Blackmar

Floods and landscapes in the inland west / Nancy Langston

The industrial alchemy of hydraulic mining: law, technology, and resource-intensive industrialization / Andrew C. Isenberg

West Africa's colonial fungus: globalization and science at the end of empire, 1949-2000 / James C. McCann

When Stalin learned to fish: natural resources, technology, and industry under socialism / Paul R. Josephson

Yellow Jack and geopolitics: environment, epidemics, and the struggles for empire in the American tropics, 1650-1900 / J.R. McNeill

Creation and destruction in landscapes of empire / Thomas R. Dunlap

Afterword: environmental history, past, present, and future / Alfred W. Crosby.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822972778

0822972778

OCLC:

893681845