Since the 1960s, new perspectives—ranging from social history to the gender, post-colonial and linguistic turns—have reshaped the writing of history. The environmental turn, however, has failed to have a similar impact. This lecture explores why and argues for an approach that puts nature at the heart of our historical narratives.

Prasannan Parthasarathi is a Professor of Modern South Asian History at Boston College. He is the author of The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720-1800 (Cambridge, 2001), The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles (Oxford, 2009), and Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence 1600-1850 (Cambridge, 2011), which received the Jerry Bentley Book Prize of the World History Association and was named a Choice magazine outstanding academic title. He is now working on a study of agriculture, environment, and labor in nineteenth-century Tamilnad. His articles have appeared in Past and Present, the Journal of Social History, International Labor and Working-Class History, and Modern Asian Studies. He serves on the editorial boards of International Labor and Working-Class History the Journal of Social History, the Journal of World History, Textile History, and the Medieval History Journal. His research has been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology.