Overview
Deforestation, soil runoff, salination, pollution. While recurrent themes of the contemporary world, they are not new to us. In this broad sweeping review of the environmental impacts of human settlement and development worldwide over the past 5,000 years, Sing C. Chew shows that these processes are as old as civilization itself. With examples ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia to Malaya, Mycenaean Greece to Ming China, Chew shows that the processes of population growth, intensive resource accumulation, and urbanization in ancient and modern societies almost universally bring on ecological disaster, which often contributes to the decline and fall of that society. He then turns his eye to the development of the modern European world-system and its impact on the environment. Challenging us to change these long-term trends, Chew also traces the existence of environmental conservation ideas and movements over the span of 5,000 years. Can we do it? Look at Chew's evidence of the past five millennia and decide. Ideal for courses in environmental history, anthropology, and sociology, and world-systems theory.
Editorials
Choice
Chew demonstrates that ecological crises caused by accumulation, urbanization, and deforestation inevitably have caused the collapse of many ancient civilizations and more recent socioeconomic transformations... His ecocentric, or 'ecology in command' approach, rather than the traditional anthropocentric, or 'economy in command' approach, opens a new dimension in studying human history at a broader temporal scale.— P.P. Mou, (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Environmental History
Of the attempts in the past fifteen years to offer a synthetic, global history of environmental degradation, Sing C. Chew's book is not only the most ambitious but also perhaps the most successful to date.... It is a pleasure to note that despite his concise format, Chew's work may be the first to satisfy the demands for documentation that historians typically make of the books they use.— Michael Kucher, University of Washington, Tacoma
History
Chew offers a cogent overview of deforestation over the past five thousand years. In so doing, not only does he link his work to the recent studies in world system theory, but he also dispels much of the romanticism that often lurks in environmental studies by showing that forest loss was widespread even among nonmodern societies. Such factors should make World Ecological Degradation a provocative read for upper-level students in history and environmental studies.— Karl Jacoby, (Brown University)