Humans and the Environment, 1750-1900

Question 1

~Little Ice Age

Answer 1

● Persisted since around 1500
● Steady cooling trend
● Finally ended during the mid-1800s

Question 2

~Population growth and urbanization

Answer 2

● Caused by industrialization
● Placed greater strains on laocal ecosystems
● Higher concentration of human beings in a given area leads to greater resource consumption and worsening environmental stress

Question 3

~Deforestation

Answer 3

● Arose as a growing problem in many parts of the work during this era
● Forests were cleared to make room for farms, factories, and settlements
● Timble became a much-needed commodity for fuel, construction, and the manufacture of paper

Question 4

~Earth-shaping capacity

Answer 4

● Technology multiplied it of industrialized societies

Question 5

~Road networks and railroads

Answer 5

● Quickly expanded over great distances during the industrial era

Question 6

~Growig cities

Answer 6

● Along with the ever-larger buildings that appeared in them–such as factories and skyscrapers–spread across more of hte landscpe

Question 7

~Large-scale agricultural enterprises

Answer 7

● In the form of plantations and similarly sized farming units
● Allowed major manipulations of the environment

Question 8

~Construction of dams and canals

Answer 8

● Wished to facilitate shipping and transport
● Erie Canal (1825) in the US
● Suez Canal (1869) in Egypt which linked the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean basin via the Red Sea
● Panama Canal (1914)

Question 9

~Panama Canal

Answer 9

● A project pursued by several nations since the late 1800s

● Was completed in 1914 by the US and revolutionized global shipping by connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

Question 10

~Resource extraction

Answer 10

● Dramatically increased during the industrial era

● Severely depleting resoruces and cuasing higher levels of environemntal damage than ever before

Question 11

~Cash-crop monoculture

Answer 11

● Intensified both in colonies governed by Western nations and in countries where Western nations and corporations invested heavily
● Crops included cotton, silk (China), coffee (Latin America, Africa, South Asia), tea (China and India), fruit (Africa and Latin America), and rubber (extracted from tress in Africa and Southeast Asia)

Question 12

~Cotton

Answer 12

● As textile industries expanded during the era, growing and harvesting cotton in US South, Egypt, Central Asia and India expanded

Question 13

~Coerced/semi-coerced labor practices

Answer 13

● Including the wrost forms of slavery

● Caused by cash-crop and plantation monoculture

Question 14

~Mining

Answer 14

● Industrializing nations developed a voracious appetite for coal and iron, and a host of other metals besides iron because crucial as well
● Gold and diamonds were considered precious for luxury purposes, but also because of their industrial uses, and they were avidly sought wherever possible, from Africa to Arctic regions like the Yukon, Alaska, and northeastern Siberia

Question 15

~Fossil-fuel extraction

Answer 15

● Already in the late 1800s, and definitely after 1900, the quest for petholeum began, both as a manufacturing lubricant and increasingly as a source of energy
● Dposits were discovered initially in the Americas and in the Middle East and also in parts of Southeast Asia

Question 16

~Pollution

Answer 16

● Of skies and waters
● Reached unrpecedneted levels
● Few laws to combat pollution

Question 17

~Human-cuased climate change/global warming

Answer 17

● Thought by most scientists to have begun with the carbon-based, fossil-fuel emissions of the early industrial era

Question 18

~Endangerment/extinction of species

Answer 18

● Due to overhunting and the destruction of habitats became more common
● Population of fur-bearing creatures like sables, otters, and fur seals dwindled dangerously, as did North America’s once-massive herds of bison
● Oil from whales and certain species of seals served as lamp fuel and as lubricants for industrial production until the shift to petroleum and they hovered perilously close to extinction, as did walruses who were hutned for ivory
● Extinctions includd great auk, the Carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon, and in the North pacific, the Steller’s sea cow

Question 19

~Migration

Answer 19

● Fueled my imperialism and industrialization, both permanent and seasonal
● Had the long-term environmental effect of transferring large numbers of people to regions that had previously been sparsely populated
● New arrival stypically brought with them industrial-era economic practices that burdened local ecosystems far more heavily than the pre-industrial modes of production pursued by indigenous peoples

Question 20

~Vaccination

Answer 20

● Experiments during the late 1700s proved effective in the treatment and prevention of smallpox
● The practice spread during the 1800s and 1900s, slowly but eventually leading to the complete eradication fo many diseases

Question 21

~Germn theory and medical sterilization

Answer 21

● Achieved in Europe and North America during the mid- to late 1800s
● Aided not just medical procedure but the handling of processing of food
● By Louis Pasteur

Question 22

~Tropical disease

Answer 22

● Also by the mid-1800s, European and Americans grew adept at developing cures or symptom-relieving treatments for tropical diseases
● Malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping sickness
● Enabled the exploration and colonization of previously difficult-to-access parts of Africa and Asia

Question 23

~What largely resulted in population growth int eh era?

Answer 23

● Improvments in medical technology

Question 24

~Why was disease not entirely conquereed?

Answer 24

● Certain illnesses proved resistant to vaccines or adaptable to them
● Where treatment was lacking or too expensive to afford, disease continued to kill large numbers of people

Question 25

~How did industrializtaion help prevent disease and also create disease?

Answer 25

● Industrial-era science helped medical advancements
● Industrial-era living conditions, overcrrowding, air pollutiona nd protected water supplies, helped to worsen the severity of certian diseases
● Smallpox, wehre untreated, remained deadly, but the infamous of the industrial-era maladies were cholera and tuberculosis