220113 Energy History of the Americas: 1492 to the ‘Great Acceleration’ (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

This course serves as a contextualization of the Seminar „Anthropocene History? Perspectives from the Global South and North". In a mix of reading and research-based classes we will work towards an overview of the evolution of energy use in both North and Latin America from European contact to the present. On the macro-level, this includes looking at the shift from a solar to a fossil energy regime and how this, on the meso-level changed (forced) labor regimes, transport, and communication. We will retrace the ruptures and continuities in this process that lead up to our present, troubled age of global climate change and the ‘Anthropocene’. The course is based on environmental, social, and economic history approaches. Expect a mix of empirical research studies and theory texts.

Requirements for participation, required level

As this course is taught entirely in English, students should be ready and able to read and discuss research literature in English. It is always possible to ask questions or get explanations in German, Spanish or French, however.

Bibliography

Bebbington, Anthony, and Jeffrey Bury. Subterranean struggles. New Dynamics of Mining, Oil, and Gas in Latin America. Peter T Flawn series in natural resources. First edition ed. 2013.
Burke, Edmund. "The Big Story: Human History, Energy Regimes, and the Environment." In The Environment and World History, edited by Edmund Burke and Kenneth Pomeranz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, 33-53.
McNeill, John Robert, and George Vrtis. Mining North America: An environmental history since 1522. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2017.
McNeill, John Robert, and William Hardy McNeill. The human web: A bird's-eye view of world history. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.
Smil, Vaclav. Energy Transitions. History, Requirements, Prospects. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010, 17-25, 48-61.
Vasquez, Patricia I. Oil Sparks in the Amazon. Local Conflicts, Indigenous Populations, and Natural Resources. Studies in security and international affairs. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014.