eBook

Water on sand : environmental histories of the Middle East and North Africa

Mikhail, Alan

2013,2012

Overview

This book is a holistic environmental history of the Middle East and North Africa over the last half millennium. It shows how the intimate connections between peoples and environments shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and often unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book demonstrate the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of historical research and understanding. The book furthermore traces how the Middle East and North Africa deeply affected the global histories of climate, disease, trade, energy, environmental politics, ecological manipulation, and much more. At the intersection of three continents and as many seas, the Middle East and North Africa have been central to world history for millennia. Studying the ecological implications of these global connections, both for the region itself and for the rest of the world, helps bring the Middle East and North Africa into global history and shows how the region must be an essential part of any understanding of the environments of Eurasia over the last five hundred years.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press,Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Subject: Africa, North / Africa, North -- Environmental conditions / African History / Environmental conditions / Environmental History / History / Human ecology / Human ecology -- Africa, North -- History / Human ecology -- Middle East -- History / Middle East / Middle East -- Environmental conditions.i / Middle Eastern History
• ISBN: 9780199768677, 9780199768660, 0199768668, 0199768676