Wow! eBook
Toward a Global History of Soil: Sciences, Practices, and Materialities, 1300–1750
Author(s): Justin Niermeier-Dohoney (Editor), Aleksandar Shopov
- Publisher: Brill
- Publication Date: December 18, 2025
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 294 pages
- ISBN-10: 9004727485
- ISBN-13: 9789004727489
Book Description
Toward a Global History of Soil unearths material expertise about soil in the early modern world that has remained largely unexamined outside of the study of agricultural history. Its eleven chapters reveal how experimental investigations transformed the economics of land administration, the treatment of disease, and hydraulic engineering. New methodologies to evaluate the productive qualities of soil led to radical changes in medicine, chemistry, botany, and household management. This book is the first to examine how the emergence of practical, systematic attempts to understand the nature of soil contributed to the development of early modern sciences.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Justin Niermeier-Dohoney, Ph.D. (2018), University of Chicago, is an Assistant Professor of History at the Florida Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the history of early modern science with concentration on alchemy, agriculture, climate, and the environment.
Aleksandar Shopov, Ph.D. (2016), Harvard University, is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Binghamton University. He works on early modern Ottoman knowledge and practices related to plants, including such topics as flower breeding, grafting, urban farming, and riziculture.
