Description
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS An Environmental History Of Latin America by Shawn William Miller
A narration of the mutually mortal historical contest between humans and nature in Latin America. Covering a period that begins with Amerindian civilizations and concludes in the regions present urban agglomerations, the work offers an original synthesis of the current scholarship on Latin Americas environmental history and argues that tropical nature played a central role in shaping the regions historical development. Human attitudes, populations, and appetites, from Aztec cannibalism to more contemporary forms of conspicuous consumption, figure prominently in the story. However, characters such as hookworms, whales, hurricanes, bananas, dirt, butterflies, guano, and fungi make more than cameo appearances. Recent scholarship has overturned many of our egocentric assumptions about humanitys role in history. Seeing Latin Americas environmental past from the perspective of many centuries illustrates that human civilizations, ancient and modern, have been simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable than previously thought.show more