Fundamentals of Environmental History
Hegel, Marx, and Friends
Living Things, Dying Things
Books, Readings, and Handouts
Places and People
100

An approach to understanding history that emphasizes environmental factors to the exclusion of all others.

What is environmental determinism? 

100

Developed the concept of Asiatic mode of production.

Who is Karl Marx?

100

This is the primary staple crop that originated in the Americas.

What is Maize?

100

Jared Diamond notes that this region in the modern Middle East was rich in easily domesticated plants and animals.

What is the fertile crescent? 

100

Author of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Who is Jared Diamond?

200

An approach to history that emphasizes Europe to the exclusion of other regions.

What is Eurocentrism?

200

Deeply associated with a dialectical and teleological view of history.

Who is Hegel?

200

This animal shaped the Comanche and Mongol Empires?

What is the horse?

200

The species of rice domesticated in West Africa.

What is oryza glaberrima?

200

Author of Black Rice.

Who is Judith Carney?

300

This is the term for the study of the writing of history.

What is historiography? 

300

Deeply influenced by Marx and Max Weber, this scholar wrote a book about water and authoritarianism.

Who is Karl Wittfogel?

300

Great debate exists as to whether this event was caused by climate change or over-hunting.

What are the Late-Pleistocene extinctions?

300

The book Why Nations Fail proposes this alternative to environmental determinism.

What is institutional determinism?

300

This volcano's eruption approximately 75,000 years ago nearly ended human life.

What is Mt. Toba?

400

Author of the essay "The Trouble With Wilderness".

Who is Cronin?

400

This is composed of the relations of production and the forces of production.

What is mode of production?

400

Associated with the industrial revolution, Haiti suffered a severe outbreak of this disease in the 2010s.

What is Cholera?

400

Karl Wittfogel wrote this book about the relationship between state, society, and water.

What is Oriental Despotism?

400

Mansa Musa was the ruler of this major West African polity.

What is the Mali Empire?

500

Emphasizes that "nature" is constantly in a state of flux rather than stasis.

Who is Botkin?

500

Author of the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, this writer drew on Marx to discuss global inequalities.

Who is Walter Rodney?

500

Canonical text by Thomas Malthus on food and population.

What is An Essay on the Principle of Population?

500

Ryan Tucker discussed how sea mammals shaped Russia's Pacific empire in this article.

What is "Running With Whales"?

500

A Russian politician recently demanded the return of this US location as compensation for sanctions.

What is Fort Ross?