Economic Development and Environmental History in the Anthropocene: perspectives on Asia and Africa ed. by Gareth Austin (review)

The proposal to name the present, human-dominated, geological epoch the ‘Anthropocene’ has provoked fervent debate. Discussions about its naming and start date (whether it was during the Industrial Revolution or only after the ‘Great Acceleration’ since 1945 that human activities left an indelible mark on the earth) have brought the humanities and natural sciences into closer dialogue. This volume foregrounds perspectives from Africa and Asia in an otherwise Western-centred debate. A group of excellent historians argue for the importance of studying environmental and economic history in tandem. This endeavour is long overdue, Austin rightly asserts, as the lack of conversation between environmental and economic historians impedes a proper understanding of historical dynamics. Concepts such as capitalism cannot be studied without referring to a resource base, for example. The methodological contribution of the book is therefore pertinent.

The book provides a wide range of approaches, topics and scales through which to study the Anthropocene. Amélia Polónia and Jorge M. Pacheco examine the environmental impacts of colonial dynamics during the First Global Age from 1400 to 1800. Using examples of rice cultivation along the Upper Guinea Coast and terracing in Southern Africa, Mats Widgren asks what triggered agricultural intensification in a context of land abundance and labour scarcity. Widgren highlights ‘the possibilities for the development of a more productive agriculture in Africa … regardless of the environmental constraints that in some analyses have been used to explain Africa’s lack of development’ (p. 62). Emily Lynn Osborn’s analysis of containers in West Africa is thought-provoking, as it approaches materiality, mobility and value through baskets, plastic buckets and cars. Austin astutely connects labour scarcity and land abundance in African economic development to industrialization, agricultural intensification and the environment. By cautioning against the constraints of global warming on continued resource exploitation, his chapter anchors economic development in its environmental dynamics. In both Africa and Asia, demographic pressure on natural resources is central to economic and environmental history.

Does the Anthropocene produce universally detrimental results, or should regional specificities be highlighted? Corey Ross remarks that ‘some groups have driven these changes much more than others’ (p. 199), but the varied causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change on a local, regional and global level merit more attention. The chapters bring out parallels and differences between Africa and Asia, but these could have been analysed more systematically. Prasannan Parthasarathi and Peter Boomgaard, for example, discuss the trends of deforestation and (re)afforestation in Asia without mentioning cognate studies on Kenya and West Africa. Considering land quality, carrying capacity and agricultural change in India, Tirthankar Roy asks when and why sustainable, resource-intensive economic growth can occur. Questions of agricultural intensification are also raised in Widgren’s and Austin’s chapters from an African perspective. A closer dialogue between India and Ghana would have provided an opportunity to reflect on the (dis)similar causes and effects of environmental and economic change. Furthermore, Kenneth Pomeranz’s chapter places China’s recent economic growth in an environmental perspective. He asserts that water (not energy) is the limiting factor on China’s continued population and economic growth, yet the water problem is extremely difficult to engineer away. As the Anthropocene is a global phenomenon, the next step in the academic debate will doubtlessly be to go beyond case studies and to compare the water problem in Cape Town with that in Western China.

The conclusion by Julia Adeney Thomas focuses on the historiographical divide between nature and history, through the assumption that ‘natural resources are infinitely abundant given the right technologies and therefore external to the linear development of humankind’ (p. 296). Yet reincorporating nature does not produce a single, unified history. Issues of scale and agency crop up. What has driven environmental change? Has change been a singular global process, or do...