Course Description

This course seeks to introduce students to the study of history through an examination of the different and changing ways humans have defined their relationship with the natural environment.

地球史的な観点から世界における環境の歴史について考察する。

Dec 07 Introduction: What is Environmental History

Dec 10 Do Rocks Have History? The History of the Tama River

Dec 14 Do Wolves Have History? The Lost Wolves of Japan

Dec 17 The Environment in the News: Discussion Class

Dec 21 No Class Have a Merry Christmas Holidays

Jan 07 The Agrarian Revolution (Rice and Japanese Culture)

Jan 11 Holiday

Jan 14 Ecological Imperialism

Jan 18 The Origins of the Industrial Revolution

Jan 21 The Origins of Pollution

Bibliography

Ponting, “The Second Great Transition” — the Industrial Revolution

Related Links
Industrial Revolution (Wiki)
The Kinben Kakumei 勤勉革命　(wiki)
BBC Video on the Industrial Revolution (long version)
David Landis: The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present
Big Sugar: Sweet, White, and Deadly (video)
Wolfgang Schimmelbusch, Tastes of Paradise (Amazon)
Puffing Billy (locomotive)
Guide to the history of Manchester
On the history of pollution
Water and Air Pollution (History Channel)
Air Pollution in Historial Perspective (Video)
Shock figures to reveal deadly toll of global air pollution (the guardian)
Ando Shoeki (wiki)

Jan 25 Tanaka Shozo and the Ashio Copper Mine

Jan 28 Living in Tokyo, the World Largest City

Feb 01 What’s the Connection between Minamata and Fukushima?

Feb 04 New Ideas, New Technologies, New Affluence

Feb 08 Re-Viewing Al Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth”

Feb 11 Bicycles and Pollution

Feb 15 Dealing with the Consequences of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and Radiation Disaster

Feb 18 Japan and the Global Environment: Is Japan Doing Enough?

Feb 22 Lessons from 3/11: Are We Learning from History?