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Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment, by Joachim Radkau

The View from Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Anne E. C. McCants
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Extract

As is perhaps suggested by its very title, Nature and Power, Joachim Radkau's important contribution to “a global history of the environment” takes as its primary axis of analysis the impact of the exercise of political authority by states on the natural world as constituted by plants, animals, soil, water, and air. The economy makes very few appearances as such. Indeed, the only index reference to things economic is a lone entry for Max Weber's Economy and Society (1922), and even there the economy is not the point of the citation. Yet economic history and environmental history share a great many common concerns, not least of which is what we might broadly call “human welfare.” My comments will explore the possible connections between Radkau's reading of our global environmental past and the broad narratives developed by economic historians to tell their version of global history.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 37 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Global Environmental History , Fall 2013 , pp. 407 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2013 

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