Fetch Your Copy Guano And The Opening Of The Pacific World: A Global Ecological History Imagined By Gregory T. Cushman Available As Pamphlet

his claims for guano are grandiose and he often overstates his case, Cushman's tour through the increasingly connected Pacific World, side trips and all, is fascinating.
Another book I'd love to figure out how to teach, The argument of this book is excellent, Cushman makes a persuasive case for understanding the importance of guano and the Pacific world in the nineteenth century for the overall development of the modern world.
He sums it up nicely in the conclusion: “The conquest and colonization of the Pacific Ocean was far more central to the development of industrial capitalism, geopolitical conflict, and international law than historians typically recognize, from whaling to the Law of the Sea, to an extent comparable to African slavery in the early modern Atlantic.
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At the same time, Ill admit to getting lost in some of the minutiae of farmers, technocrats, and governmental agencies that fill the pages of the book.
This a a book for professors, grad students, and teachers, I wouldnt assign it to students unless you want them to throw a shit fit, . Greg Cushman is a very capable young historian, His book taught me a lot about global connections between natural resources, political struggles, economic and agricultural cycles of boom and bust, and the reasons why Malthus' dire predictions of hunger and suffering were temporarily staved off for some populations at least during theth andth centuries.
How does bird poop on seemingly tiny islands engulfed in Earths largest ocean contribute to the development of the modern, global world Gregory Cushman answers this question in his work Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History.
The work excels in explaining the “importance of shit to history,”by reframing guano as a commodity that not only attracted Europe and the United States to the Pacific islands furthering what appears to be an inevitable outcome for the global, transcontinental world but also revolutionized farming practices for both better and worse, and changed understandings of conservation, warfare, imperialism, minerals, and more.
In Guano, Cushman gives guano producing birds, guano islands, and guano itself historical agency by explaining the ecological, natural, geopolitical, and cultural significance of their respective existences since, leading to the commodification of nitrates, phosphates, coconuts, and fishmeal.
Fundamentally, this book reframes shit as a historical agent, and challenges readers to think from an environmental lens birds existing in their natural state: living, reproducing, and pooping: and humans responding in various ways: greedy and capitalistic by exploiting this natural state, caring and thoughtful by the push for conservation, and awareness and unawareness of what was happening in the Pacific.
Cushman effectively explains the importance of guano and provides an answer to how seemingly minuscule dots of land in the Earths largest ocean inspired such intense interest and struggle.


The only setback to this book is it simply is doing too much, While Cushmans following approach for sources makes sense given that is a commodity history, it gets lost in his “sevenfold argument”because the book is trying to answer to many questions: geographical parameters of the Pacific World, agency of nature, conservation efforts, capitalism, overuse, cultural influence, ecological imperialism, link the Pacific World to the industrial revolution, etc.
Nonetheless, the book is fascinating and particularly successful because it is a global commodity history that doesnt feel like a commodity history, He doesnt overemphasize the role his commodity played exp: clarifying in Chapterhow onlyof farms in England used guano and also being realistic about the setbacks of his commodity: increasing a boost in reliance to sugar and meat, furthering class divides, the rushed export of it damaging one of the most ancient landscapes on Earth, and its rise to imperialism in the central pacific.
Further, Cushman raises vital historical points for instance, when he says that historians “cannot fully decide whether an individuals subjective ethical decisions lead to just results without taking in larger systematic forces operating over vast geographic and temporal distances” pg.
and ends with a call to actionremembering our past, present, and future connections to remote, exploited places before it is too late to save them and ourselves.

Cushman, Gregory T. Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History, Cambridge University Press,.
Topic: Gregory Cushman observes the importance of guano to the development of modern Peru, its complicated bird conservation ordinances, and the global economic market in Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World.
The pervasiveness of guano as a commodity is given testament through its delineate natureXII, the global economy that developed around it, and its usage in aspects related to agricultural management of nitrogen, phosphate, and other soil nutrients.
The industry of guano is detailed the migration of marine birds, their poop, and the people that cared about these factors, These factors reflect the development of imperial societies they transcends countries and biospheres, lending credence to the idea that harvesting bird excrement maintained a vital action/reaction relationship with globalization paralleling the importance of influential factors like the Black Death, the African Slave Trade, and the World Wars XIV.

Scope: Cushman provides a broad overview of the geopolitical, ecological, and cultural significance of the guano islands and guano producing birds in thes.
The global relationship of guano and its market is narrowed to observe its influences on the Latin American Pacific world, taking into account conservation efforts of countries like Peru.
Latin America, the United States, and Europe are observed as actors on the geopolitical stage in their relationships to the agency of guano as a commodity, the microbes and nutrients that affect cultivation/lifeprocesses, and other agricultural influences of climate.
Soil and the ocean are observed in their molding of the Pacific world as ecological diversity is noted to affect societal development, Also, the influences of globalization, technocratic governance, neoMalthusianism, and neoEuropean agroecological ambitions are acquainted

to ecological imperialism,
Historical Questions: The observance of international networking related to the guano trade and the Pacific world in Cushmans work leads to various historical questions.
These questions include the following: how did the guano industry and conservation affect guano birds, what effect did the ecology of the Pacific ocean and soil have on the cultural development of Latin America, what is the actuality of importance of the guano trade in globalization, and how did the guano trade incorporate and modernize the Pacific world predominately Latin America into the global market The transnational social, political, and environmental consequences of the guano industry as they relate to Malthusianism and Eurocentric ideals of ecology are also questioned.

Thesises: The primary thesis is that marine birds and their excrement are the roots of modern existence and fundamental incorporation of the Pacific world into global history, opening it to economic, cultural, and geopolitical influences XIII.
Other noteworthy theses include the following: that the Pacific Ocean is the worlds most important topographical feature in how it defines and is defined by the cultures it surrounds, that the Pacific world came into fruition from the pursuits of guano, nitrates, phosphates, and workers to exploit, that nature has agency and its implications are required to understand historical phenomenon, that the development of the Pacific world was thoroughly tied to the industrial revolution and agricultural practices, and that Malthusian ideals were heavily dependent on the guano islands.

Sources: Cushman uses a wide variety of primary, secondary, and reference sources obtained from archives, databases, and journals, Many are derived from Latin American countries and are translated to depict the cultural relationship between the Pacific world and the global market for guano trade.
Native legend, folklore, and primary accounts are utilized to give the Latin American world agency in its own right, Sources like Steven Strolls Larding the Lean Earth are utilized to depict the ecological consequences of globalization and cultivation,.
It is hard to say I really liked it even though I found it terribly informational and wellresearched,
I think theshould mean something like good instead of "really liked it, "
It was a slow read with little enjoyable digs at folks like Jared Diamond,
I would highly recommend it to many looking to expand their understanding of events during the Industrial Revolution and beyond,
I also enjoyed the connections of Peru to the global economy, A tour de force of excrement, and other sources of nitrogen and phosphorus, For centuries, bird guano has played a pivotal role in the agricultural and economic development of Latin America, East Asia, and Oceania, As their populations ballooned during the Industrial Revolution, North American and European powers came to depend on this unique resource as well, helping them meet their everincreasing farming needs.
This book explores how the production and commodification of guano has shaped the modern Pacific Basin and the world's relationship to the region,

Marrying traditional methods of historical analysis with a broad interdisciplinary approach, Gregory T, Cushman casts this once littleknown commodity as an engine of Western industrialization, offering new insight into uniquely modern developments such as environmental consciousness and conservation movements the ascendance of science, technology, and expertise international relations and world war.
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