The Contamination of the Earth

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.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 419Choice 2021 Outstanding Academic Title


"The Contamination of the Earth is not a balanced view of technological progress; that is not its purpose. It is a clear and relentless exposure of the forces that have converged to ravage our environment. And it should prompt scientists and citizens to ask: am I complicit in this system? Or will I try to stand against it?"
–Nature

"Scholarly rather than polemical and of interest to students of environmental and economic history."
– Kirkus Reviews

"The result [of the study] is impressive: a high level of information, extensive analyses with a wide scope, original propositions, and a new, historical picture of global pollution. The book will become a standard work in environmental history."
—Harry Lintsen, Technology & Culture

“How well do we need to understand industrial pollution and the public health sacrifices that are made by allowing it to continue before we stop it? Francois Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux broach that question in this superb history. With Contamination of the Earth  they challenge once again the Faustian bargain humanity is making with ‘progress.’”
—Mark Dowie, investigative historian and Lecturer Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century
 
“Jarrige and Le Roux’s magisterial global history of pollutions delivers on its promise. Spanning time, geography, and industry, their account synthesizes a vast historical archive with a sharp focus on the political and economic factors that explain how, why, and where global environmental contamination developed.”
—Julie Sze, University of California, Davis, and author of Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger
 
“The Contamination of the Earth is an essential corrective to how pollution(s)—fittingly pluralized—have been studied age by age, case by case, sector by sector. Few have attempted such a sweeping synthesis of pollutions’ myriad drivers and consequences.”
—Rebecca Gasior Altman, writer and environmental sociologistFrançois 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.