Ryan Tucker Jones. Empire of Extinction

In Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741–1867, Ryan Tucker Jones mines known accounts of late-Enlightenment figures involved in Northern Pacific exploration to produce a fresh interpretation of Russia’s empire building in the North Pacific that sits at the intersection of imperial and environmental history. Jones argues that exploration in the North Pacific marks an important moment in the development of environmental history because it led to one of the first known species extinctions—Steller’s sea cow—in the 1760s. By extending eastward the concept of a late Enlightenment “republic of letters” (although Jones does not use this term) and incorporating Russian discoveries into cutting-edge knowledge about the natural world in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Empire of Extinction integrates the Russian Empire into a larger global context. Further, the book is a stimulating foray into the connections among geopolitics, resource exploitation, scientific advancement, and the evolution of an environmental ethos.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Economic history · Empire · Enlightenment · Environmental history · Extinction (optical mineralogy) · Geography · World history · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Geology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Paleontology · Philosophy