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Book Review
| The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. By John F. Richards. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xiv + 682 pp. Maps, tables, bibliography, index. Cloth $75.00.
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| John Richards has given us an ample and well-conceived world environmental history of the period between 1500 and 1800. As the title suggests, he emphasizes frontiers as an environmental theme of the early modern period, and the choice is apposite, since frontiers are the places where environmental changes were occurring most visibly. Richards does not believe that all those changes were environmentally damaging, although he is quite clear about the ones that were. For him, the story of the early modern world is in some important respects a story of progress, and he concludes with an optimistic look at the possibilities of the contemporary postfrontier world: "Wise and responsible management from local scale to the global scale is the only possible strategy" (p. 622). |
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In this book, Richards argues that the salient patterns of the world were the expansion of Europeans across much of the rest of the globe and an evolutionary progress in human organization that was characteristic not only of Europe, but also of India and East Asia. In the opening chapter, he uses the Dutch Republic to illustrate the first pattern and Mughal, India, on which he is a recognized authority, for the second. A chapter discussing the state of our knowledge of climatic history follows; the Little Ice Age made its appearance during this time and its possible effects cannot be ignored. |
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Richards then turns to Eurasia and Africa, elucidating the environmental history of several well-chosen exemplary areas in this period: Taiwan, China, Tokugawa, Japan, the British Isles, Russia, and South Africa. In each case the environmental setting is described, the course of population changes and settlements and the political economy traced, and finally the effects on the landscape noted. The accounts have a crystalline clarity, conveying the essentials of each national or regional history and inviting genuine comparisons. |
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