Skip to main content
Browse by:
GROUP

Global Environmental History and the Industrial Revolution, ca. 1780-????

J.R. McNeill's image, time location and title of the event.
Thursday, January 26, 2023
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
J.R. McNeill

In this talk, McNeill will discuss a work in (slow) progress concerning the environmental consequences of industrialization for landscapes and seascapes around the world. Factory-scale production required mounting quantities of ores, fibers, lubricants, and other ingredients of industrialization, all of which came from somewhere. Much of it came from afar, in South America, Southeast Asia, East Africa and elsewhere. Mobilizing these ingredients of industrialization reshuffled ecologies on land and and at sea in complex ways that helped to shape the biosphere in the 21st century and beyond.

J.R. McNeill, University Professor at Georgetown University, has authored or edited more than 20 books, including Something New Under the Sun, listed by the London Times among the 10 best science books ever written (despite being a history book); and Mosquito Empires, which won the Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association; and most recently The Webs of Humankind. He has served as president of both the American Society for Environmental History and the American Historical Association, and is an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Europaea. In 2018 he received the Heineken Award for History from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Watch Dr. J.R. McNeill's interview conducted by Dr.Yuan Chen, Postdoctoral Associate, Franklin Humanities Institute & Global Asia Initiative, Duke University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U536arxxtS8

Contact: Rohini Thakkar