David Moon. The Plough That Broke the Steppes

David Moon's remarkable book examines Russian efforts to understand and alter the deterioration of the Eurasian steppe grasslands during the Russian Empire's agricultural assimilation of them in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It analyzes Russian research and debates on the character, problems, and prospects of this region based on contemporary publications, sources from central and regional archives, and Moon's own visits to the region. It explicitly presents this history as the Russian counterpart to the environmental awakening that imperial expansion brought to Western Europe. Moon shows that Russians autonomously developed environmental awareness and scientific approaches at the same time as the British and other Europeans during their imperial expansion and as Americans during the expansion into the Great Plains. In particular, it highlights the work of Vasilii Dokuchaev, who introduced the theory that the soil is the product of its whole environmental context, and who anticipated modern conceptions of sustainable development.

Agriculture · Ancient history · Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Economic history · Economy · Empire · Environmental history · Geography · Political science · Steppe · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies