In this magisterial book historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire
of genocide and eco-cide of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary
costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources he reckons with the
ruins of Portuguese silver mining in Peru British gold mining in South Africa and oil
extraction in Central Asia. He explores the railroads and highways that brought humans to new
terrains of battle against each other and against stubborn nature. Amrith's account of the ways
in which the First and Second World Wars involved the massive mobilization not only of men but
of other natural resources from around the globe provides an essential new way of
understanding war as an irreversible reshaping of the planet. So too does this book reveal the
reality of migration as consequence of environmental harm. The imperial globe-spanning
pursuit of profit joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger
and discomfort freedom to move and explore has brought change to every inch of the Earth.
Amrith relates in gorgeous prose and on the largest canvas a mind-altering epic-vibrant with
stories characters and vivid images-in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to
save itself.
