Global Environmental History, 1500-2000

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY (2020) UNIVERSITY OF DELHI Vipul Singh

MA Semester II: GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY, 1500-2000

Course Requirements:

Attendance and class participation in the form of ONE Assignment, ONE Presentation and ONE Class Test (10+10+10 = 30 marks); 70 marks for Semester Exam.
Assignment would be from topics discussed in the Class, and Presentation would be in the form of a “Book Report” on a prescribed book (to be announced later).

Assignment ONE (10 marks): Last date of submission 12/13 February 2020.
Presentation (10 marks): To be held in last week of February.[9-15 March: Mid-semester break]

Lecture Plan:

Unit1: (Week 1): Emerging field of Global Environmental History

Unit 2: (Week 2-3): Pre-Industrialised World

a. Climate Change and the Medieval Age

b. Little Ice Age

Unit 3: (Week 4): Industrialisation, Technology and Population Growth

a. Perspectives and debates

b. Cities

Unit 4: (Week 5-6): Columbian Exchange

a. Plants, Animals and Disease b. Ecological Imperialism
c. Colonialism

Unit 5: (Week 7-8): Transformation of Landscapes

a. Culture of Capitalism
b. Non-human Agents
c. Migration of Communities

Unit 6: (Week 9-10): Transforming Rivers:

a. Water governance

b. Large scale Hydraulic Engineering
c. British colonial projects in Egypt and South Asia d. TVA model

Unit 7: (Week 11): Agricultural transformations
a. Colonial science and agronomy in Asia and Africa

b. Coming of the Green Revolution
c. Slow violence of agricultural progress in Australia

Unit 8: (Week 12-13): State for nature conservation
a. Soviet science and conservation in the Stalin era and after

b. Chinese case under Mao

Unit 9: (Week 14): Anthropocene

a. Dating Anthropocene

b. Climate Change