Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global CrisisSince humans first appeared on the earth, we've been cutting down trees for fuel and shelter. Indeed, the thinning, changing, and wholesale clearing of forests are among the most important ways humans have transformed the global environment. With the onset of industrialization and colonization the process has accelerated, as agriculture, metal smelting, trade, war, territorial expansion, and even cultural aversion to forests have all taken their toll. Michael Williams surveys ten thousand years of history to trace how, why, and when human-induced deforestation has shaped economies, societies, and landscapes around the world. Beginning with the return of the forests to Europe, North America, and the tropics after the Ice Ages, Williams traces the impact of human-set fires for gathering and hunting, land clearing for agriculture, and other activities from the Paleolithic through the classical world and the Middle Ages. He then continues the story from the 1500s to the early 1900s, focusing on forest clearing both within Europe and by European imperialists and industrialists abroad, in such places as the New World and India, China, Japan, and Latin America. Finally, he covers the present-day and alarming escalation of deforestation, with the ever-increasing human population placing a possibly unsupportable burden on the world's forests. Accessible and nonsensationalist, Deforesting the Earth provides the historical and geographical background we need for a deeper understanding of deforestation's tremendous impact on the environment and the people who inhabit it. |
Contents
REACHING OUT EUROPE AND THE WIDER WORLD | 143 |
THE GLOBAL FOREST | 381 |
Backward and Forward Glances | 494 |
Notes | 503 |
| 579 | |
| 663 | |
Common terms and phrases
acres Africa agricultural Amazon Amazon Basin areas Baltic became biodiversity Brazil British burning caused charcoal China circa climate colonization consumption crops cultivation cultural deforestation destruction domestic early eastern ecological economic eighteenth century England environment environmental erosion Europe European European Miracle evidence example expansion exploitation extensive farmers farming Figure fire foraging forest clearing Forestry forêts France frontier fuel fuelwood George Perkins Marsh global grassland growth History human impact increase India Indian industry iron km² land landscape later log drive logging lowlands lumber medieval Mediterranean Mesolithic million nature Neolithic Norman Myers North America northern peasant percent pine plant plantations pollen population production quotation railways rain forest region rivers Rondônia São Paulo savanna settlement shifting shifting cultivation shipbuilding society soil Source South Southeast Asia southern supplies timber tion trade trees tropical forest United vegetation Western William wood woodland