Book contents
- Burning Swamps
- Studies in Environment and History
- Burning Swamps
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Usage
- Maps
- Introduction
- Part I Promising Environments: Material Premises of Growth and Power
- Part II Working Environments: Extraction and the Making of Place
- Part III Unsettling Environments: Threat, Loss, and Precarity in Russia’s Peatlands
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Environment and History
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2025
Book contents
- Burning Swamps
- Studies in Environment and History
- Burning Swamps
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Usage
- Maps
- Introduction
- Part I Promising Environments: Material Premises of Growth and Power
- Part II Working Environments: Extraction and the Making of Place
- Part III Unsettling Environments: Threat, Loss, and Precarity in Russia’s Peatlands
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Environment and History
Summary
Why do peat and peatlands matter in modern Russian history? The introduction highlights peatlands as a prominent feature of Russia’s physical environment and reflects on their forgotten role as providers of fuel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It discusses the invisibility of peat and peatlands in most existing historical narratives of the fossil fuel age and identifies peat as a lens to reflect upon Russia’s place within global histories of economic growth and associated resource-use. Situating the book at the intersection of modern Russian, energy, and environmental history, the introduction underscores why the planetary predicament makes the seemingly marginal history of peat extraction a topic of global significance.
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- Burning SwampsPeat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia's Fossil Economy, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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