Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia
Experts in history, history of science, archaeology, geography, and environmental studies examine the history of the region.
colonialism
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
An interdisciplinary explanation of why Europeans and people of European descent have come to control so much of the world’s wealth.
Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West
Rothman considers how the negative consequences of tourism development in the American West potentially outweigh the economic prosperity it brings to communities.
"Fighting With a Weed: Water Hyacinth and the State in Colonial Bengal, c. 1910–1947"
This essay explores the dynamics of failure to strike a solution to the problem of invasive species in the form of water hyacinth through an examination of the competing domains of bureaucracy, science and private commercial interests in a colonial context.
Completion of the Aswan Dam
The completion of the original Aswan Dam fundamentally changes Egypt’s irrigation system.
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Opening of the Suez Canal
The Suez Canal is completed under French supervision and becomes one of the world’s most important waterways.
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Guano war on Peru's Chincha Islands
Guano, one of the main export goods in South America in the mid-nineteenth century, becomes a central cause of the Chincha Islands War.
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First Forest Reserves in Colonial Cochinchina
Following the emergence of its colonial forest service, France establishes the first forest reserves to manage the precious tropical rain forests in Cochinchina (present-day Vietnam).
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Bengal Famine of 1943
More than three million Bengali perish in a famine that remains one of the worst catastrophes in the history of modern India.
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