BLAZING EARTH: Wars and Murders Devastate Landscapes Worldwide
Sunil Amrith is a professor at Yale University. His research focuses on transnational migration in South and Southeast Asia / history.yale.edu
Throughout human history, economic expansion has been accompanied by the seizure of new lands. This has not only been accompanied by bloody massacres but has also ravaged landscapes across the globe. This topic is the focus of an epic study by the distinguished historian, PhD, and Yale professor Sunil Amrith.
In his new book, Blazing Earth: A History, he argues that the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources leads to severe conflicts that devastate the diversity of cultural worlds and ecosystems.
«EMPTY» LANDS WERE NOT EMPTY
Sunil Amrith begins his chronicle Blazing Earth in 1620s England. During this time, King Charles I commissioned Dutch hydraulic engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to drain the marshes of East Anglia.
His Majesty and his advisors considered these lands to be lifeless and useless wastelands. If so, bringing prosperity and progress to them was a noble mission! However, these lands were far from empty — they were inhabited, and not only by people.
The marshes teemed with life in all its natural diversity, which was essential for the locals’ survival. Thousands of farmers relied on harvesting reeds, livestock fodder, turf, and other «wetland products». Draining the marshes meant destroying their world! Naturally, the locals were outraged and stood up to defend their native lands.
«FEN TIGERS»
The resistance movement against the king’s plans in East Anglia became known as the «Fen Tigers». Well-versed in the local terrain, the «tigers» launched an actual guerrilla campaign. They systematically destroyed everything the engineers from London built, demolishing dams, dikes, and sluices meant to divert rivers.
However, England’s political elite was determined to use unclaimed nature for state purposes. In the end, the «tigers’» resistance was crushed, and the marshes were drained. The reclaimed lands were repurposed for agriculture.
Previously, the biologically diverse wetlands had supported thousands of people. The beneficiaries of the new «civilized» landscape, however, were a few wealthy landowners. Today, these lands are known as Britain’s breadbasket, though they remain under constant threat of flooding.
DEADLY «CONTROL OVER NATURE»
This ecosystem-destroying model, which also disrupts traditional ways of life, is not an isolated case. It has repeated itself countless times throughout human history. The splendid diversity of wild nature was often sacrificed for control over it through technology and deadly weapons. This led to endless conquests and massacres: the rich were pitted against the poor, colonizers against indigenous people.
The marsh dwellers of East Anglia are just one example in an endless series of those who resisted the loss of «wild» lands that provided their livelihoods. Surprisingly, the poor and weak have not surrendered, continuing to oppose those with power and privilege.
Just as the «Fen Tigers» once fought for their wetlands, the indigenous peoples of Brazil, Indonesia, and India are now fiercely resisting corporations to protect their «unclaimed» and «worthless» rainforests.
THE DEADLY PURSUIT OF LUXURY
Most astonishingly, for over 600 years, many of these conflicts have been driven not by necessity but by the Europeans’ pursuit of luxury. All revolved around the civilizers’ relentless quest for excess.
When Portuguese ships reached the North Atlantic island of Madeira in 1426, they established colonies. The settlers quickly «liberated» the island of most of its forests. They then enslaved and forced the Guanches, inhabitants of the nearby Canary Islands, to work on plantations.
By 1600, the Guanches had been wholly exterminated — all in the name of producing a single commodity: sugar. In the 1470s, the Portuguese reached the coast of Ghana. In Elmina, they built a fortress that initially extracted gold, ivory, and spices from the African continent, later becoming a center of the brutal Atlantic slave trade.
«DRAGON’S BLOOD» THAT DESTROYED ALL LIFE
At every stage, European colonization brought death and destruction worldwide. In the 16th century in Peru, the Spanish raided Indigenous settlements, capturing the natives and forcing them to work in mines that produced cinnabar — a mineral source of mercury.
Since ancient times, this blood-red mineral has been highly valued; its mercury was used to extract silver from ore and treat syphilis. Cinnabar was also used as a dye to make jewelry and icon paints. However, cinnabar is highly toxic.
The fumes from its processing killed not only the enslaved workers shackled in chains in the Peruvian mines. The poisonous vapors contaminated water, soil, animals, and fish. A contemporary of those events wrote that before the Spaniards arrived, herds of deer roamed everywhere, but now not even grass grows. The effects of that ancient catastrophe can still be felt today.
THE REPUBLIC OF RUNAWAY SLAVES
But the enslavement of people and nature did not go unanswered. A notable example is the quilombo. These were large settlements founded in the late 16th century in Brazil’s forests by runaway slaves from Angola and Congo. They also included Indigenous Brazilians, Jews, and Muslims.
The settlements had a developed system of self-governance, religion, and socio-economic organization. Resembling ancient republics, they engaged in subsistence farming, trade among themselves, and warfare against European colonists and government troops.
In northeastern Brazil, the quilombos united in 1630 to form an actual state — Palmares, which was home to up to 20,000 people. It successfully repelled 58 punitive expeditions until it fell to Dutch and Portuguese forces in 1694.
UPRISINGS AND MURDERS
For centuries, Indigenous peoples lived in harmony with nature. They exploited its resources but constantly moved to new areas, allowing forests to recover. Industrial deforestation has nothing in common with such a strategy.
By the 1980s, tropical forests in the Amazon and Southeast Asia had disappeared across an area equivalent to half the size of India. In Brazil, this catastrophe spurred a movement led by environmentalist Chico Mendes.
In 1990, the state of Acre established the first forest reserve, covering 500,000 hectares, inhabited and managed by locals. But Mendes paid for this with his life — he was shot in 1988, likely by assassins hired by local ranch owners.
An equally tragic story unfolded in Nigeria with environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. In 1993, he led a 300,000-strong protest against Shell, which was turning oil extraction sites into lifeless black landscapes. Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders were arrested and hanged by the Nigerian government in 1995.
A CHALLENGE TO SUICIDAL FOLLY
Of course, civilization has brought many benefits. Since the 20th century, antibiotics and vaccines have reduced mortality from infectious diseases. Advances in agricultural technology have led to a massive increase in crop production. However, these successes have had unintended consequences: agrochemicals contaminated the soil, and groundwater used for irrigation was rapidly depleted.
In India, progress perpetuated inequality among farmers. Amid rising debt, severe drought, lacking access to transportation, water, and money, thousands of farmers commit suicide each year. But hope comes from those who continue to resist. Since the late 1990s in Bogotá, Colombia, 44,000 square meters of roads have been converted into pedestrian areas, with 500 km of bike lanes and a network of electric public transportation.
In 2006, in West Timor, Indonesia, 150 women succeeded in shutting down a marble mine, protesting against the destruction of eucalyptus forests and waterways. Amrith notes that «more and more people are challenging the suicidal folly that has gripped the imagination of the powerful and privileged for 200 years».
In the past decade, nearly 2,000 environmental activists have been killed worldwide. One-third of them were Indigenous community members. We must be grateful to these brave and steadfast individuals.
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