Sunil Amrith in Conversation - The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years

Please join the South Asian Studies Council and Yale Environmental History for a conversation with Professor Sunil Amrith on his latest book, The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years.

Copies of the book will be for sale by Atticus Bookstore Cafe at the event.

In this paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of Portuguese silver mining in Peru, British gold mining in South Africa, and oil extraction in Central Asia. He explores the railways and highways that brought humans to new terrains of battle against each other and against nature. Amrith’s account of the ways in which the First and Second World Wars involved the massive mobilization not only of men, but of other natural resources from around the globe, provides an essential new way of understanding war as an irreversible reshaping of the planet. He also reveals the reality of migration as consequence of environmental harm.

The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. Amrith relates, on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic – vibrant with stories, characters, and vivid images – in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself.

PANELISTS

Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History and professor in the School of the Environment at Yale University, where he is also currently Chair of the South Asian Studies Council. He is the author of four books, and a recipient of multiple awards including a MacArthur “Genius” fellowship and the 2024 Fukuoka Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of Asian studies.

Xinyue Zhang is a Ph.D. student in History at Yale University. Her research focuses on environmental history and the history of science in modern China and East Asia. Currently, her work explores the intersection of disasters, wars, and climate knowledge between the 1930s and the 1950s in China and transnationally in Asia. She is particularly interested in exploring the role of transnational knowledge networks, as well as how non-expert actors understood and mitigated weather-related risks during and after the Second World War. She is involved in the Environmental Humanities program at Yale and is currently a co-convener of the Asia History Working Group. Xinyue received a B.A. in History and College of Social Studies from Wesleyan University and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale.

Henry Jacob is a Ph.D. student in History at Yale at Yale University. His research compares attempts to forge interoceanic shortcuts in the Americas. In particular, Henry traces the complex consequences of these efforts to control tropical and polar environments. Most recently, Henry was a Fulbright scholar in Panama. He also earned an M.Phil. in World History at the University of Cambridge as a Henry Fellow. Before that, he received his B.A. in History from Yale.