Table of Contents
Cover
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Notes
Part 1 History of Matter
Note
1 Cry Fire
Not slash, but burn
Roman fires
Ships
Deforestation of Europe
Notes
2 Grain’s Way
The bog civilisation
The grain hypothesis
Crop rotation
Improvements and indolence
Supplying the capitals
War and potatoes
Space and power
Notes
3 The Remains of Foreign Bodies
Meat
Vegetarianism
Fish
Fur
Squirrel
Sable
Beaver
The sea otter
Notes
4 Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice
Salt
Sugar
Islands in the ocean
Aftertaste
Opium
Colonies and calories
Notes
5 Fibres
Silk
Hemp and flax
Hemp and the Oprichnina
Hemp and Napoleon
Wool and the Mesta
Leviathan in sheep’s clothing
Cotton
Proto-industry
The birth of the proletariat
Uzbek cotton, Russian textiles
Notes
6 Metals
Bronze
Iron
Fugger
Luther
America
Alchemy
Cameralism
The Demidovs
Notes
Part 2 History of Ideas
Notes
7 Resources and Commodities
Natura vastata
The light, the rare and the dry
Sweet refinement
Mono-resource as an economic platform
The gold standard
Notes
8 Resource Projects
Robinson Crusoe on the British Isles
Darien
The regent and coffee
John Law
Cantillon
Notes
9 Labour and the Mercantile Pump
The benefit of colonies
Two monopolies
Undivided labour
A live monster
Two pumps
Notes
10 The Resources that Failed
Anti-imperial France
Post-colonial America
Malthus
Jevons
Keynes
Notes
Part 3 History of Energy
11 Peat
Notes
12 Coal
Water power
Ghost acres
Strikes
The Mitchell thesis
Notes
13 Oil
Fountains and pipes
Farflung corners
The blood of nations
The petrostate
The science of curses
Carbon and gender
The oil standard
The Russian disease
The carbon standard
Oil into food
Destroying society
Notes
Conclusion: Leviathan or Gaia
The Gaia hypothesis
The parasitic state
Progress and the katechon
Four justices
Notes
References and Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
Series Title
New Russian Thought
The publication of this series was made possible with the support of the Zimin Foundation
Vladimir Bibikhin, The Woods
Alexander Etkind, Nature’s Evil
Boris Kolonitskii, Comrade Kerensky
Sergei Medvedev, The Return of the Russian Leviathan
Maxim Trudolyubov, The Tragedy of Property
NATURE’S EVIL
A Cultural History of Natural Resources
Alexander Etkind
Translated by Sara Jolly
polity
Copyright Page
First published in Russian as Природа зла: Сырье и государство by New Literary Review.
Copyright Alexander Etkind © 2021
This English translation © Polity Press, 2021
This book was published with the support of the Zimin Foundation.
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