The Contamination of the Earth A History of Pollutions in the Industrial Age

The trajectories of pollution in global capitalism, from the toxic waste of early tanneries to the poisonous effects of pesticides in the twentieth century.

Through the centuries, the march of economic progress has been accompanied by the spread of industrial pollution. As our capacities for production and our aptitude for consumption have increased, so have their byproducts--chemical contamination from fertilizers and pesticides, diesel emissions, oil spills, a vast "plastic continent" found floating in the ocean. The Contamination of the Earth offers a social and political history of industrial pollution, mapping its trajectories over three centuries, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century.

François Jarrige is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Burgundy's Georges Chevrier Centre. Thomas Le Roux is a tenured Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), based at the Centre for Historical Research in the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (CRH-EHESS) in Paris.

Series Foreword vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
I The Industrialization and Liberalization of Environments (1700–1830) 11
1 Sketches: An Ancien Régime of Pollution 17
2 New Polluting Alchemies 39
3 The Regulatory Revolution 63
II Naturalizing Pollutions in the Age of Progress (1830–1914) 87
4 The Dark Side of Progress 91
5 Expertise in the Face of Denial and Alarm 116
6 Regulating and Governing Pollution 144
III New and Massive Scales of Pollution: The Toxic Age (1914–1973) 177
7 Industrial Wars and Pollution 183
8 A High Energy-Consuming World 205
9 Mass Consumption, Mass Contamination 231
10 The Politics of Pollution 260
Epilogue: Charging Headlong into the Abyss 294
Notes 333
Index 419