The period from 1550 to 1800 marks a turning point in the environmental history of the Earth. It was a time of expansion, intensification, and integration-expansion of agrarian frontiers and empires, intensification of agricultural production and trade, and integration of ecosystems into emerging global systems of value. These transformations were not driven by fossil fuels or industrial technologies but by organic societies-by people, plants, and animals operating within the ecological and energy constraints of solar-based economies. And yet their impact was anything but modest: forests were cleared, wetlands drained, soils reworked, and species redistributed on a global scale. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations began to rise and the world's climate shifted-subtly, unevenly, but measurably.

This volume examines the transformation of ecosystems in the period of the Little Ice Age against the backdrop of Enlightenment belief that reason, science, and collective will would not only assist nature but perfect it.

Drawing upon both visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of the Environment in the Little Ice Age 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.