Unconventional times call for unconventional history, so here we are. This week\u2019s readings featured an ever-fascinating combination of environmental histories, discussions on the Capitalocene, and much volcano talk. As someone who loves intertwined histories and new perspectives, I was intrigued by how these authors integrated and (often toyed with) concepts of \u2018nature,\u2019 \u2018humans,\u2019 \u2018capitalism,\u2019 and \u2018power.\u2019 Taking an environmental or nature-considerate approach, in a sense, feels like adding a missing puzzle piece to the larger picture. As products and inhabitants of Earth, it seems long overdue to analyze our relation to and effect on it over time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting with Malm and Moore, I deeply enjoyed their discussions on the historian’s role in environmental and climate change histories. Malm\u2019s Who Lit This Fire?<\/em> analyzes the history of the damaging fossil economy, providing examples of the British Empire and its exploitation of colonial spaces and their natural resources and tracing its roots to capitalist motivations, i.e. \u2018fossil capital.\u2019 In doing so, Malm calls for historians to investigate the \u2018archives of the fossil economy\u2019 to better understand climate changes and environmental responsibility brought upon by fossil capital within the Capitalocene. Similarly, Moore\u2019s two-part article on the Capitalocene presents the intertwinement of capital, power, and nature. Here he argues against an Anthropocene categorization, as it overlooks capitalist environmental exploitation before the Industrial Revolution, and discusses how a radical politics of sustainability must reform the capitalist model. Apparent in both works are urgent calls to action for historians to fully integrate climate concerns and environmentalism into the field rather than focusing solely on social or human-related histories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding the \u2018Laki\u2019 chapter, I found this the most interesting yet most challenging reading. I enjoyed reading about the transnational aspects of climate events, like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Novel to me were the passages on how Icelandic volcanic debris or ash affected populations as far as Egypt or impacted publications in mainland Europe. Still, I found it difficult to alternate between some sections without the proper background or context. I don\u2019t believe, as the end of the chapter suggests, this attempt was a failure as it presents unique and thought-provoking analyses on transnational climate events and their global effects. With that in mind, I look forward to seeing it develop further into its final published form!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unconventional times call for unconventional history, so here we are. This week\u2019s readings featured an ever-fascinating combination of environmental histories, discussions on the Capitalocene, and much volcano talk. As someone who loves intertwined histories and new perspectives, I was intrigued<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-Gq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2631,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}