Almost anything can be transformed into a commodity, and between 1800 and 1945 – with the aid of scientific advances and technological innovation – merchants, miners, loggers, industrialists, and others treated the Earth as an inexhaustible store of resources and revenue. An increasingly urban way of life raised living standards and triggered an insatiable demand for foods and goods from faraway places. Free trade policies, imperial expansion, and new communications infrastructure underpinned a globalizing economy that mainly served Western consumers. Their choices were to have enduring environmental consequences worldwide. Further, the Age of Commodities saw a “great divergence” between the West and the rest of the world, creating social and economic inequalities that persist to this day.

This volume examines the environmental degradation that resulted from free market capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from polluted skies and rivers to disappearing forests and wildlife. It also explores responses to this degradation, such as anti-pollution activism and the rise of scientific forestry – important precursors of modern environmentalism.

Drawing upon both visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of the Environment in the Age of Commodities presents an overview of the period and examines key cultural case studies on the themes of earth; skies, climate, and the atmosphere; work, energy, and power; water; forests; animals; cities and settlements; war; and disasters and resilience.