Wedderburn’s final pamphlet, Address to the Lord Brougham and Vaux, contributed to the early nineteenth-century political “war of representation” about whether Black people in the West Indies would be willing to work for wages after emancipation. Although seeming to reiterate the proslavery claim that enslaved people in the West Indies had better living conditions than European wage laborers, Wedderburn’s vision of dwelling on the land outlined a nuanced, speculative decolonial future. The Conclusion finally argues that narratives of the Romantic revolutionary age should include Black abolitionist geographies, a revolution cultivated on common land with pigs, pumpkins, and yams.

This chapter moves backward in time to trace the Maroons’ decolonial relationship with the environment, starting with Queen Nanny, a leader in the First Maroon War and a present-day National Hero of Jamaica. Narratives of Nanny’s warfare against the British noted that her fight included growing pumpkins in the rugged Blue Mountains. The chapter then turns to a critically neglected Romantic-era text, R. C. Dallas’s History of the Maroons. Although primarily a military history, Dallas repeatedly admired the Maroons’ communal “superabundance.” Similarly, J. G. Stedman’s Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition, accompanied by William Blake’s illustrations, described Maroon settlements as viable, sustainable societies that were notable alternatives to plantation capitalism. The Maroons’ agricultural and culinary “superabundance,” documented by Dallas, Stedman, and Blake alike, suggests a Romantic-era ecological critique rooted in communal decolonial practices, which supplements the Romantic figure of the solitary walker who critiques society by communing with nature.

Robert Wedderburn was deeply influenced by his enslaved mother and grandmother, who raised him in Jamaica. After migrating to London, he became a key figure in ultraradical circles and was prosecuted by the British government for blasphemous libel. Wedderburn’s vision for abolition from below sought to forge a transatlantic alliance between English agrarian radicals and enslaved people in the Caribbean. Wedderburn’s influence was documented in Robert Cruikshank’s caricature, A Peep in the London Tavern, which depicted him challenging the proto-socialist Robert Owen. After a review of existing scholarship that places Wedderburn within ultraradical circles or focuses on his mixed-race identity, the Introduction argues that understanding Wedderburn’s advocacy for land-based insurrection requires dialogue with scholarship in Black geographies. Wedderburn’s insights about place-based resistance to slavery are then illustrated in a reading of James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica.

The economy of later Roman Britain, as seen through the archaeological evidence, shows a series of differences from the earlier system. In summary, the pattern shows first an increasing regionalization of exchange at the expense of the inter-provincial trade dominant in the early Empire, and this greater emphasis on trade within Britain is accompanied by a change in industrial location, as rurally located production centres expand at the expense of those productive units near the civitas centres which had been most significant in the early Empire.

Chapter 4 demonstrates the gradual entrenchment of the Pisani family in the Bassa Padovana region of Venice’s mainland territories, showing that Villa Pisani formed part of a long-term strategy of estate building. Francesco Pisani’s construction in 1553–54 of his Palladian villa outside Montagnana culminated a multi-generational process of developing the family’s agricultural possessions.

Chapter 3 uses a rich array of archival evidence to reconstruct the lived experience of Francesco Pisani, his family, and his household at Villa Pisani. The architecture and decoration of Villa Pisani framed agricultural business, sociability, and even religious devotion, not only during the traditional season of villeggiatura (country living) but throughout the year.

In contrast to anthropocentric readings of the Georgics, chapter 3 argues that Vergil is interested in farming as a way of considering the entangled lives of humans and nonhumans. The chapter contextualizes Vergil’s ecological thinking – highlighting influences from ancient philosophy, ethnography, Hesiod, and Roman agricultural treatises – and differentiates this reading from interpretations that shoehorn the relations of humans and nonhumans into a nature–culture binary. The chapter examines how the poem discloses agriculture as a practice of managing ecological relations. The second half of the chapter then queries the status of the human within its ecologies. While much of the poem denies human exceptionality, it does recognize ways in which humans stand out from the rest of the world, above all in their unparalleled ability to transform their environments – epitomized by the world-altering activities of Rome and Caesar. Ultimately, the chapter connects the peculiar status of the human to the didactic aims of the poem. By relaying and explaining the signa of the world, the Georgics offers the fantasy of an expertise that can better embed humans in their environments.

Indian Economics’ short-term development plan aimed to harness progress in the two main sectors of the economy – industry and agriculture. The peasants, factory workers and merchants needed specific policies to aid them in growing their crops, manufacturing their products and selling their goods, respectively. India needed agricultural production of raw materials, industrial production using raw materials, and distribution of the finished manufactured products. Indian Economics prescribed a balanced growth strategy, seen later in India’s post-independence five-year plans, the first of which was implemented by Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) from 1951 to 1956.

This chapter analyses the structures of society through the changing faces of estate management, agricultural production, and long-distance trade. It reframes Merovingian society as one radically altered by new landholding patterns, resource utilisation, and tastes in consumption, rather than one trapped passively in post-Roman economic decline. The period still had its challenges, including poverty, pandemic, and environmental change. Our interpretation of the fragmentary and inconsistent evidence very much depends on the areas we choose to prioritise.

By examining transportation, agriculture, animal husbandry, industry, and commerce, this chapter explores the regional division of labor among residents of the landscape trilogy.

One of the primary ways we encounter animals is as a food source. The dominant system of animal agriculture is “factory farming,” which is designed to produce the greatest amount of meat at the lowest possible cost. Factory farming is grossly inefficient from an ecological point of view, imposes enormous suffering on animals, and damages both humans and the environment. “Conscientious omnivores” reject factory farming but defend painlessly killing animals for food. Some defend hunting because they think it promotes other important values as well. These arguments are rejected by vegetarians and vegans, but they remind us that concerns about animals exist against the background of other values, including those that relate to the broader value of nature.

This chapter examines Sweden’s emissions trends and the evolution of climate policy in an international perspective by focusing on its role and interdependent relationship with climate action in the EU and with international climate coalitions. The chapter examines the assumption that Sweden is a front-runner and role model in setting and implementing ambitious climate policy. The emission trends across sectors suggest that Sweden has been able to swiftly reduce its emissions, in particular from industry and energy conversion, but that current reduction rates are insufficient to reach its decarbonization target. Reducing emissions in agriculture and transport poses perhaps the greatest challenges for the Swedish state. The chapter also discusses the limits and possibilities for the State to implement its decarbonization target while being dependent on the climate policies in the EU, notably the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). It also looks at Sweden’s role in international climate governance by zooming in on its role in international climate collaborations and clubs. Finally, the chapter provides three reasons for caution when it comes to Sweden’s reputation as a role model. First, that the rate of GHG reduction has declined significantly. Second, that consumption-based approaches to counting GHG emissions demonstrates that Sweden remains a high-emitting country. Third, that Sweden’s consumption-levels are far above the global average and its current consumption patterns should not be emulated by other countries.

This chapter discusses Clare’s nature poetry, in the contexts of the politics of land use, then and now. It reads the verse against issues including the introduction of capitalist forms of agriculture and their effects, including the dispossession and pauperization of agricultural labourers and the degradation of ecosystems. It also considers the politics of language and memory in Clare’s poetry, in relation to changes in the agricultural economy.

The trade that destroys forests is worth a hundred times the money that is spent on protecting them. This will only change if the top producer and consumer countries of forest-risk commodities agree steps to shift global markets towards sustainability. We brought these countries together for the first time, to see if it could be done.