Book Review

       The book attempts to interpret the history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the last half millennium from an environmental perspective. The authors all agree that humans and environment have been reshaping each other in their long-term and intimate relation, while such relation further shapes the social, political and economic histories of the region and even the global history. Environmental resources, water in particular, play a crucial role in the rise and fall of empires and nation states, as well as in the building and transformation of Middle Eastern societies.
Respectively, the book first discusses three eccentricities of the MENA: water, grass, and energy. The scarcity and uneven distribution of fresh water made this region sensitive to climate changes, and the interpenetration of land and sea gave rise to commercialism and piracy; grassland and arable land intersected largely, which increased the interactions between pastoral and agrarian communities, and shaped the distinctive characteristics of the MENA in politics and economy; the MENA had long relied on biomass for energy supplies until the twentieth century, when oil industry reverberated throughout the region and revolutionized people’s life.
      In chapter three, Sam White emphasizes the role of Little Ice Age in understanding the Ottoman Empire’s crisis in the seventeenth century. Vulnerable to climate shifts, the empire’s stability was threatened by widespread local resistance against drought, famine and social injustice caused by the natural disasters. In the following chapter, the book examines the development of fisheries in Ottoman Istanbul. The fishing technology did not experience a substantial change from the sixteenth century to early twentieth century, albeit there has been a growing demand of different social classes for fish consumption. Chapter five, eight and eleven address the environmental and sociopolitical impacts of the 1791 plague, the Aswan Dam and land reclamation in Egypt. According to the authors, the plague and the subsequent famine functioned as regular parts of the Egyptian environment at the end of the eighteenth century. The human-manipulated projects and landscapes, the Aswan Dam and cultivated lands for example, have proved to be questionable in maintaining environmental sustainability and making the Nile’s watershed prosperous.
         Further analyses of the environmental histories are incorporated in the cases of Eurasia, North Africa, and Saudi Arabia. In the “middle ground” of the Eurasia Steppe, nomadism and agriculture were interdependent, which together shaped the nature of imperial frontier. Moreover, the national parks of North Africa could possibly lead to further social inequality and greater ecological damage if the Westerners in pursuit of wealth continue to enclose the grazing lands without concerning local interests. For Saudi Arabia, establishing and strengthening control over natural resources, water and oil in particular, is crucial to ensure state authority and institutional capacity.