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A revealing and authoritative history that shows how Soviet whalers
secretly helped nearly destroy endangered whale populations, while
also contributing to the scientific understanding necessary for
these creatures' salvation. The Soviet Union killed over 600,000
whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and
secretly. That catch helped bring many whale species to near
extinction by the 1970s, and the impacts of this loss of life still
ripple through today's oceans. In this new account, based on
formerly secret Soviet archives and interviews with ex-whalers,
environmental historian Ryan Tucker Jones offers a complete history
of the role the Soviet Union played in the whales' destruction. As
other countries-especially the United States, Great Britain, Japan,
and Norway-expanded their pursuit of whales to all corners of the
globe, Stalin determined that the Soviet Union needed to join the
hunt. What followed was a spectacularly prodigious, and often
wasteful, destruction of humpback, fin, sei, right, and sperm
whales in the Antarctic and the North Pacific, done in knowing
violation of the International Whaling Commission's rules. Cold War
intrigue encouraged this destruction, but, as Jones shows, there is
a more complex history behind this tragic Soviet experiment. Jones
compellingly describes the ultimate scientific irony: today's
cetacean studies benefitted from Soviet whaling, as Russian
scientists on whaling vessels made key breakthroughs in
understanding whale natural history and behavior. And in a final
twist, Red Leviathan reveals how the Soviet public began turning
against their own country's whaling industry, working in parallel
with Western environmental organizations like Greenpeace to help
end industrial whaling-not long before the world's whales might
have disappeared altogether.
More than any other locale, the Pacific Ocean has been the meeting
place between humans and whales. From Indigenous Pacific peoples
who built lives and cosmologies around whales, to Euro-American
whalers who descended upon the Pacific during the nineteenth
century, and to the new forms of human-cetacean partnerships that
have emerged from the late twentieth century, the relationship
between these two species has been central to the ocean’s
history. Across Species and Cultures: Whales, Humans, and Pacific
Worlds offers for the first time a critical, wide-ranging
geographical and temporal look at the varieties of whale histories
in the Pacific. The essay contributors, hailing from around the
Pacific, present a wealth of fascinating stories while breaking new
methodological ground in environmental history, women’s history,
animal studies, and Indigenous ontologies. In the process they
reveal previously hidden aspects of the story of Pacific whaling,
including the contributions of Indigenous people to capitalist
whaling, the industry’s exceptionally far-reaching spread, and
its overlooked second life as a global, industrial slaughter in the
twentieth century. While pointing to striking continuities in
whaling histories around the Pacific, Across Species and Cultures
also reveals deep tensions: between environmentalists and
Indigenous peoples, between ideas and realities, and between the
North and South Pacific. The book delves in unprecedented ways into
the lives and histories of whales themselves. Despite the worst
ravages of commercial and industrial whaling, whales survived two
centuries of mass killing in the Pacific. Their perseverance
continues to nourish many human communities around and in the
Pacific Ocean where they are hunted as commodities, regarded as
signs of wealth and power, act as providers and protectors, but are
also ancestors, providing a bridge between human and nonhuman
worlds.
These volumes present a comprehensive survey of the history of the
Pacific Ocean, an area making up around one third of the Earth's
surface, from initial human colonization to the present day.
Reflecting a wide range of cultural and disciplinary perspectives,
this two-volume work details different ways of telling and viewing
history in a Pacific world of exceptionally diverse cultural
traditions, over time spans that require multidisciplinary and
multicultural collaborative perspectives. The central importance of
nations touched by the Pacific in contemporary world affairs cannot
be understood without recourse to the deep history of interactions
on and across the Pacific. In reflecting the diversity and dynamism
of the societies of this blue hemisphere, these volumes seek to
enhance world histories and broaden readers' perspectives on forms
of historical knowledge and expression. Volume I explores the
history of the Pacific Ocean pre-1800 and Volume II examines the
period from 1800 to the present day.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Russian
Empire-already the largest on earth-expanded its dominion onto the
ocean. Through a series of government-sponsored voyages of
discovery and the establishment of a private fur trade, Russians
crossed and re-crossed the Bering Strait and the North Pacific
Ocean, establishing colonies in Kamchatka and Alaska and exporting
marine mammal furs to Europe and China. In the process they
radically transformed the North Pacific, causing environmental
catastrophe. In one of the most hotly-contested imperial arenas of
the day, the Russian empire organized a host of Siberian and
Alaskan native peoples to rapaciously hunt for fur seals, sea
otters, and other fur-bearing animals. The animals declined
precipitously, and Steller's sea cow went extinct. This destruction
captured the attention of natural historians who for the first time
began to recognize the threat of species extinction. These experts
drew upon Enlightenment and Romantic-era ideas about nature and
imperialism but their ideas were refracted through Russian
scientific culture and influenced by the region's unique ecology.
Cosmopolitan scientific networks ensured the spread of their ideas
throughout Europe. Heeding the advice of these scientific experts,
Russian colonial governors began long-term management of marine
mammal stocks and instituted some of the colonial world's most
forward-thinking conservationist policies. Highlighting the
importance of the North Pacific in Russian imperial and global
environmental history, Empire of Extinction focuses on the
development of ideas about the natural world in a crucial location
far from what has been considered the center of progressive
environmental attitudes.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Russian
Empire-already the largest on earth-expanded its dominion onto the
ocean. Through a series of government-sponsored voyages of
discovery and the establishment of a private fur trade, Russians
crossed and re-crossed the Bering Strait and the North Pacific
Ocean, establishing colonies in Kamchatka and Alaska and exporting
marine mammal furs to Europe and China. In the process they
radically transformed the North Pacific, causing environmental
catastrophe. In one of the most hotly-contested imperial arenas of
the day, the Russian empire organized a host of Siberian and
Alaskan native peoples to rapaciously hunt for fur seals, sea
otters, and other fur-bearing animals. The animals declined
precipitously, and Steller's sea cow went extinct. This destruction
captured the attention of natural historians who for the first time
began to recognize the threat of species extinction. These experts
drew upon Enlightenment and Romantic-era ideas about nature and
imperialism but their ideas were refracted through Russian
scientific culture and influenced by the region's unique ecology.
Cosmopolitan scientific networks ensured the spread of their ideas
throughout Europe. Heeding the advice of these scientific experts,
Russian colonial governors began long-term management of marine
mammal stocks and instituted some of the colonial world's most
forward-thinking conservationist policies. Highlighting the
importance of the North Pacific in Russian imperial and global
environmental history, Empire of Extinction focuses on the
development of ideas about the natural world in a crucial location
far from what has been considered the center of progressive
environmental attitudes.
Migrant Ecologies: Environmental Histories of the Pacific World is
the first volume explicitly dedicated to the environmental history
of Earth’s largest ocean. Covering nearly one-third of the
planet, the Pacific Ocean is remarkable for its diverse human and
non-human inhabitants, their astounding long-distance migrations
over time, and their profound influences on other parts of the
world. This book creates an understanding of the past, present, and
futures of the lands, seas, peoples, practices, microbes, animals,
plants, and other natural forces that shape the Pacific. It
effectively argues for the existence of an interconnected Pacific
World environmental history, as well as for the Pacific Ocean as a
necessary framework for understanding that history. The fifteen
chapters in this comprehensive collection, written by leading
experts from across the globe, span a vast array of topics, from
disease ecology and coffee cultivation to nuclear testing and
whaling practices. They explore regions stretching from the Tuamotu
Archipelago in the south Pacific to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the
far north, resisting the depiction of the Pacific as isolated and
uninhabited. What unites these diverse contributions is a concern
for how the people, places, and non-human beings of the Pacific
World have been shaped by, and have in turn modified, their oceanic
realm. Building on a recent renaissance in Pacific history, these
chapters make a powerful argument for the importance of the Pacific
World as a coherent unit of analysis and a valuable lens through
which to examine past, ongoing, and emerging environmental issues.
By showcasing surprising and innovative perspectives on the
environmental histories of the peoples and ecosystems in and around
the Pacific Ocean, this work adds to current conversations and
debates about the Pacific World and offers myriad opportunities for
further discussions, both inside and outside of the classroom.
Migrant Ecologies: Environmental Histories of the Pacific World is
the first volume explicitly dedicated to the environmental history
of Earth’s largest ocean. Covering nearly one-third of the
planet, the Pacific Ocean is remarkable for its diverse human and
non-human inhabitants, their astounding long-distance migrations
over time, and their profound influences on other parts of the
world. This book creates an understanding of the past, present, and
futures of the lands, seas, peoples, practices, microbes, animals,
plants, and other natural forces that shape the Pacific. It
effectively argues for the existence of an interconnected Pacific
World environmental history, as well as for the Pacific Ocean as a
necessary framework for understanding that history. The fifteen
chapters in this comprehensive collection, written by leading
experts from across the globe, span a vast array of topics, from
disease ecology and coffee cultivation to nuclear testing and
whaling practices. They explore regions stretching from the Tuamotu
Archipelago in the south Pacific to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the
far north, resisting the depiction of the Pacific as isolated and
uninhabited. What unites these diverse contributions is a concern
for how the people, places, and non-human beings of the Pacific
World have been shaped by, and have in turn modified, their oceanic
realm. Building on a recent renaissance in Pacific history, these
chapters make a powerful argument for the importance of the Pacific
World as a coherent unit of analysis and a valuable lens through
which to examine past, ongoing, and emerging environmental issues.
By showcasing surprising and innovative perspectives on the
environmental histories of the peoples and ecosystems in and around
the Pacific Ocean, this work adds to current conversations and
debates about the Pacific World and offers myriad opportunities for
further discussions, both inside and outside of the classroom.
More than any other locale, the Pacific Ocean has been the meeting
place between humans and whales. From Indigenous Pacific peoples
who built lives and cosmologies around whales, to Euro-American
whalers who descended upon the Pacific during the nineteenth
century, and to the new forms of human-cetacean partnerships that
have emerged from the late twentieth century, the relationship
between these two species has been central to the ocean's history.
Across Species and Cultures: New Histories of Pacific Whaling
offers for the first time a critical, wide-ranging geographical and
temporal look at the varieties of whale histories in the Pacific.
The essay contributors, hailing from around the Pacific, present a
wealth of fascinating stories while breaking new methodological
ground in environmental history, women's history, animal studies,
and Indigenous ontologies. In the process they reveal previously
hidden aspects of the story of Pacific whaling, including the
contributions of Indigenous people to capitalist whaling, the
industry's exceptionally far-reaching spread, and its overlooked
second life as a global, industrial slaughter in the twentieth
century. While pointing to striking continuities in whaling
histories around the Pacific, Across Species and Cultures also
reveals deep tensions: between environmentalists and Indigenous
peoples, between ideas and realities, and between the North and
South Pacific. The book delves in unprecedented ways into the lives
and histories of whales themselves. Despite the worst ravages of
commercial and industrial whaling, whales survived two centuries of
mass killing in the Pacific. Their perseverance continues to
nourish many human communities around and in the Pacific Ocean
where they are hunted as commodities, regarded as signs of wealth
and power, act as providers and protectors, but are also ancestors,
providing a bridge between human and nonhuman worlds.
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