Nature's Evil

Table of Contents

Cover

Series Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Notes

Part 1 History of Matter

Note

1 Cry Fire

Not slash, but burn

Roman fires

Ships

Deforestation of Europe

Notes

2 Grain’s Way

The bog civilisation

The grain hypothesis

Crop rotation

Improvements and indolence

Supplying the capitals

War and potatoes

Space and power

Notes

3 The Remains of Foreign Bodies

Meat

Vegetarianism

Fish

Fur

Squirrel

Sable

Beaver

The sea otter

Notes

4 Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice

Salt

Sugar

Islands in the ocean

Aftertaste

Opium

Colonies and calories

Notes

5 Fibres

Silk

Hemp and flax

Hemp and the Oprichnina

Hemp and Napoleon

Wool and the Mesta

Leviathan in sheep’s clothing

Cotton

Proto-industry

The birth of the proletariat

Uzbek cotton, Russian textiles

Notes

6 Metals

Bronze

Iron

Fugger

Luther

America

Alchemy

Cameralism

The Demidovs

Notes

Part 2 History of Ideas

Notes

7 Resources and Commodities

Natura vastata

The light, the rare and the dry

Sweet refinement

Mono-resource as an economic platform

The gold standard

Notes

8 Resource Projects

Robinson Crusoe on the British Isles

Darien

The regent and coffee

John Law

Cantillon

Notes

9 Labour and the Mercantile Pump

The benefit of colonies

Two monopolies

Undivided labour

A live monster

Two pumps

Notes

10 The Resources that Failed

Anti-imperial France

Post-colonial America

Malthus

Jevons

Keynes

Notes

Part 3 History of Energy

11 Peat

Notes

12 Coal

Water power

Ghost acres

Strikes

The Mitchell thesis

Notes

13 Oil

Fountains and pipes

Farflung corners

The blood of nations

The petrostate

The science of curses

Carbon and gender

The oil standard

The Russian disease

The carbon standard

Oil into food

Destroying society

Notes

Conclusion: Leviathan or Gaia

The Gaia hypothesis

The parasitic state

Progress and the katechon

Four justices

Notes

References and Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

Series Title

New Russian Thought

The publication of this series was made possible with the support of the Zimin Foundation

Vladimir Bibikhin, The Woods

Alexander Etkind, Nature’s Evil

Boris Kolonitskii, Comrade Kerensky

Sergei Medvedev, The Return of the Russian Leviathan

Maxim Trudolyubov, The Tragedy of Property

NATURE’S EVIL

A Cultural History of Natural Resources

Alexander Etkind

Translated by Sara Jolly

polity

Copyright Page

First published in Russian as Природа зла: Сырье и государство by New Literary Review.

Copyright Alexander Etkind © 2021

This English translation © Polity Press, 2021

This book was published with the support of the Zimin Foundation.

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4758-6 – hardback

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ėtkind, Aleksandr, 1955- author. | Jolly, Sara, translator.

Title: Nature’s evil : a cultural history of natural resources / Alexander Etkind ; translated by Sara Jolly.

Other titles: Природа зла. English