The unending frontier an environmental history of the early modern world - Richards, John F. (University of California Press, 2003)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 623-659) and index
The Global Context -- The Early Modern World -- Climate and Early Modern World Environmental History -- Eurasia and Africa -- Pioneer Settlement on Taiwan -- Internal Frontiers and Intensified Land Use in China -- Ecological Strategies in Tokugawa Japan -- Landscape Change and Energy Transformation in the British Isles -- Frontier Settlement in Russia -- Wildlife and Livestock in South Africa -- The Americas -- The Columbian Exchange: The West Indies -- Ranching, Mining, and Settlement Frontiers in Colonial Mexico -- Sugar and Cattle in Portuguese Brazil -- Landscapes of Sugar in the Antilles -- The World Hunt -- Furs and Deerskins in Eastern North America -- The Hunt for Furs in Siberia -- Cod and the New World Fisheries -- Whales and Walruses in the Northern Oceans -- Conclusion
It was the age of exploration, the age of empire and conquest, and human beings were extending their reach--and their numbers--as never before. In the process, they were intervening in the world's natural environment in equally unprecedented and dramatic ways