The Burning Earth; A History

Title of the book: The Burning Earth; A history 

Author: Sunil Amrith 

Publisher: W.W. Norton 

Publishing Date: 2024 

ISBN: 978-1-324-00718-0

Summary:

A brilliant, paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, over the last 500 years.

Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of food, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have allowed billions of humans to exist and thrive. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered us to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality. In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, genocide and eco-cide, human freedom and planetary costs. His environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding war as massive reshaping of the earth through global mobilizations of natural resources, including humans; and explains patterns of migration as a consequence of environmental harm. Amrith relates in gorgeous prose, and on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic—vibrant with stories, characters, and vivid images and rich archival resources.

Author Info:
(From goodreads) 

Sunil Amrith is Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History, and a Director of the Joint Center for History and Economics.

Sunil Amrith grew up in Singapore, and received a B.A. (2000) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Cambridge. He was a research fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (2004–2006) and taught modern Asian history at Birkbeck College of the University of London (2006–2014) prior to joining the faculty of Harvard University, where he is currently Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and a professor of history. He is also a director of the Harvard Center for History and Economics. His additional publications include Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (2006) and Sites of Asian Interaction: Ideas, Networks and Mobility (co-editor, 2014).

His research is on the trans-regional movement of people, ideas, and institutions, and has focused most recently on the Bay of Bengal as a region connecting South and Southeast Asia. Amrith's areas of particular interest include the history of migration, environmental history, and the history of public health. He is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, and received the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities.

Sunil Amrith is a historian exploring migration in South and Southeast Asia and its role in shaping present-day social and cultural dynamics. His focus on migration, rather than political forces such as colonial empires and the formation of modern nations, demonstrates that South Asia (primarily India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) and Southeast Asia (including Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore) are tied by centuries of movement of people and goods around and across the Bay of Bengal.

In Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (2011) and Crossing the Bay of Bengal (2013), Amrith combines the theoretical frameworks of oceanic and environmental history with archival, ethnographic, and visual research to chart how migration transformed individuals, families, and communities. Using narratives and records left by coastal traders, merchants, and migrants, he evokes the lives of ordinary Indians who made homes in new lands across the bay. Amrith's examination of the emergence of diverse, multiethnic coastal communities sheds new light on the social and political consequences of colonization. Colonialism diminished some of the intimate cultural, social, and economic connections among the peoples of coastal areas while enabling new ones. Many bonds finally snapped during decolonization, however, when defining national boundaries and national identity became the priority.

Amrith's analysis of the forces driving migration in Crossing the Bay of Bengal takes into account the ways in which climatic patterns around the bay defined the lives of migrants and coastal residents. He will expand on this work in his current project on the history of environmental change in Asia, focusing particularly on the monsoon in the context of a changing climate. Amrith is leading a reorientation of South and Southeast Asian history and opening new avenues for understanding the region's place in global history.

Amrith's most recent book is Unruly Waters (Basic Books and Penguin UK), a history of the struggle to understand and control water in modern South Asia. His previous book, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Harvard University Press, 2013) was awarded the American Historical Association's John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History in 2014. He is also the author of Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Decolonizing International Health: South and Southeast Asia, 1930-1965 (Palgrave, 2006), as well as articles in journals including the American Historical Review, Past and Present, and Economic and Political Weekly.

Amrith sits on the editorial boards of Modern Asian Studies and is one of the series editors of the Cambr

Personal Opinion:

With endless plethora of tragic and alarmist news regarding the state of the world, I often think that the biggest question in the minds of people is: How did we get here? How is something that's supposed to be good for us is bad for environment? In this nonfiction, the author explores human and environmental history from 1200s up until beginning of 2000s, and there is a lot to unpack is all I can say. First of all the argument does match up to the main paragraph of the book. " Once upon a time all history was environmental history... and then things changed. The most privileged people in the world began to think that the human battle against nature could be won." (5) thus humans began to divest themselves from nature, both animal and plant, and one was greater than the other. For those who are hoping there will be mention of Christian bible and references regarding nature, there will be disappointment regarding that particular wish. But for those who are hoping for a lot of fascinating history, especially how colonialist nations affected non colonialist, then there should be excitement about that, for the author focuses quite a bit on history of Americas, South and southeast Asia, Europe and some parts of Africa. A lot of things will not be learned at school, which makes this book a special treat all the way. 

This was given for review 

4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)