TY - BOOK ID - 77904424 TI - The unending frontier PY - 2003 SN - 0520900952 0520939352 1597349720 9780520939356 0585468524 9780585468525 9780520900950 0520230752 9780520230750 0520246780 9780520246782 PB - Berkeley University of California Press DB - UniCat KW - Human ecology KW - Nature KW - Environmental history KW - History. KW - Effect of human beings on KW - Human ecology - History KW - Nature - Effect of human beings on - History KW - age of exploration. KW - case studies. KW - china. KW - commercial hunting. KW - conquest. KW - deforestation. KW - early modern period. KW - england. KW - environmental change. KW - environmental history. KW - environmental impact. KW - frontier life. KW - fur trade. KW - global history. KW - global perspective. KW - historical processes. KW - human impact. KW - imperialism. KW - japan. KW - natural environment. KW - natural historians. KW - natural history. KW - natural world. KW - north america. KW - reshaping landscapes. KW - russia. KW - settlement frontiers. KW - wetland ecology. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:77904424 AB - 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. ER -