In a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven
centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes--from the
devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of
2050--has produced a relentless succession of rising empires and fading
world orders.
During the long centuries of Iberian and British imperial rule, the
quest for new forms of energy led to the development of the colonial
sugar plantation as a uniquely profitable kind of commerce. In a time
when issues of race and social justice have arisen with pressing
urgency, the book explains how the plantation's extraordinary
profitability relied on a production system that literally worked the
slaves to death, creating an insatiable appetite for new captives that
made the African slave trade a central feature of modern capitalism for
over four centuries.
After surveying past centuries roiled by imperial wars, national
revolutions, and the struggle for human rights, the closing chapters use
those hard-won insights to peer through the present and into the future.
By rendering often-opaque environmental science in lucid prose, the book
explains how climate change and changing world orders will shape the
life opportunities for younger generations, born at the start of this
century, during the coming decades that will serve as the signposts of
their lives--2030, 2050, 2070, and beyond.
