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Justin Mathew, Mark Stoll. Profit: An Environmental History., The American Historical Review, Volume 130, Issue 1, March 2025, Pages 446–447, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae587
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Extract
For those who are interested in developing a historical perspective on the interconnected stories of capitalism and environmental transformations, Mark Stoll’s Profit: An Environmental History provides a broad overview. Through nine chronologically arranged chapters, the study covers a long history of human-nature interactions starting with the early Holocene human adaptation to contemporary consumer capitalism. The author employs the environment as a lens to reread the long history of humanity. The narrative spans from the beginning of agriculture, the emergence of mining, trade and urbanization, through the expansion of agriculture and trade in Roman and medieval societies, to the growth of overseas colonies for resources and the subsequent growth of plantation capitalism. It continues with a detailed narrative on the growth of industrial and consumer capitalism that is intimately connected to the use of fossil energy sources and the subsequent urban explosions and the rise of consumer cultures. Scholars working on environmental history will be familiar with the explanations of the book on the environmental outcomes of industrialization, urbanization, and the massive development of fossil energy infrastructures. However, Stoll’s narrative has a brilliant clarity that makes this study a reference book on the environmental history of capitalism.
