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Nature in the History of Economic Thought: How Natural Resources Became an Economic Concept book cover

1st Edition

Nature in the History of Economic Thought How Natural Resources Became an Economic Concept

By Nathaniel Wolloch Copyright 2017
286 Pages
by Routledge

286 Pages
by Routledge

286 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
From antiquity to our own time those interested in political economy have with almost no exceptions regarded the natural physical environment as a resource meant for human use. Focusing on the period 1600-1850, and paying particular attention to major figures including Adam Smith, T.R. Malthus, David Ricardo and J.S. Mill, this book provides a detailed overview of the intellectual history of the... Read more

Preface

List of Abbreviations

PART I ATTITUDES TOWARD NATURE

FROM ANTIQUITY TO MERCANTILISM

1 From Antiquity to the Renaissance

2 Mercantilism and Natural Resources

PART II THE ENLIGHTENMENT ROOTS

OF CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

3 Pre-Classical Enlightenment Developments

4 The Physiocrats and the Bread Riots

5 From Adam Smith to Classical Political Economy

6 John Stuart Mill and the Idea of Progress

PART III MANAGING THE USE OF NATURE

7 Managing Nature in the Enlightenment

8 Ricardo and Malthus on the Utilization of Nature

9 Jean-Baptiste Say and Other Contemporaries

10 John Stuart Mill’s Attitude toward Nature

Epilogue: From Socialism to Modernity

Biography

Nathaniel Wolloch is an independent scholar from Israel, specializing in European intellectual history. He is the author of Subjugated Animals: Animals and Anthropocentrism in Early Modern European Culture (2006), and History and Nature in the Enlightenment: Praise of the Mastery of Nature in Eighteenth-Century Historical Literature (2011).

 

'Clearly written and carefully organized, this book restores the subject of nature to the history of economics. It demonstrates in rich detail that economists may not have given much weight to nature as an independent source of wealth, but from the Greeks to the modern era they have been profoundly important in shaping our use of the natural world.'

Donald Worster, University of Kansas, USA

Author of "Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance"

 

'Wolloch provides a clear and judicious account of the role of land in the thinking of some of the leading classical and Enlightenment economic writers, and demonstrates clearly that their major preoccupation was under-, not over-exploitation of that resource.'

Paul Warde, University of Cambridge, UK

 

'Wolloch’s main trope is that western economics has always treated nature as a dumping ground with little regard to questions of sustainability... his account serves to provoke further debate and invite the careful reader to revisit earlier economic discourse as a means to reflect on the human condition.'

Margaret Schabas, Journal of Modern History

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