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2 - Humans and the environment: tension and co-evolution

from Part I - Global developments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Joachim Radkau
Edited by
Benjamin Z. Kedar  and
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Benjamin Z. Kedar
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Summary

According to Fernand Braudel, the entire civilized world divides into three realms: one governed by wheat, one by rice, and one by corn (maize). It is only in the Middle Millennium that the origins take on sharper contours for the historian, contours that shed greater light on the dynamic of the relationship between humans and nature. This chapter explores the great irrigation systems, nomadic realms, and combination of rainfed agriculture and animal husbandry that became characteristic for broad regions of Europe. The chapter explains three chief approaches to a master story of human-nature interaction that stretches across the millennia: the anthropological approach, the religious-philosophical approach, and the climatological approach. It also describes the scenarios for the environmental history of the Middle Millennium, namely collapse, crisis, resilience, and sustainability, and cyclical elements in the history of the relationship between humans and the environment.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 43 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Further reading

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