Global histories of empire and climate in the Anthropocene

The scientific consensus on the causes of climate change has galvanised global history in Anthropocene. Within this expanding subfield, however, many historians have afforded imperialism too little explanatory power. This reticence is partly attributable to intellectual formation discipline itself, which long severed human from natural history. It also due paleo-biological scale and related propagation ‘species history’ by Dipesh Chakrabarty. Obscuring asymmetries responsibility for change, approach deflected attention intersections environmental degradation. article surveys historiography methodological challenges Chakrabarty's influence Anthropocene scholarship, critical responses historians. summarises recent histories closely analysed interconnections between empire indicating a tipping point historiography. These studies reveal intimate, necessarily longue durée linkages industrialisation, fossil-fuel combustion, exploitative socio-political structures underpinning both change.