How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia's History

Unruly Waters

'An enthralling, elegantly written and, ultimately, profoundly alarming history' Economist 
 
A bold new perspective on the history of South Asia, telling its story through its climate, and the long quest to tame its waters 
 
South Asia's history has been shaped by its waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines this history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, rivers and seas - and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. He shows how fears and dreams of water have, throughout South Asia, shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations. 
 
Every year humans have watched with overwhelming anxiety for the nature of that year's monsoon to be revealed, with entire populations living or dying on the outcome. From the first small weather-reporting stations to today's satellites, the modern battle both to understand and manage water has literally been a matter of life or death. 
 
Today, Asian nations are racing to construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas, with dire environmental impacts; hundreds of millions crowd into coastal cities threatened by cyclones and storm surges. In an age of climate change, this highly original work of history is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not only Asia's past but its future.

Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History and professor in the School of the Environment at Yale University. He is the author of four books, and a recipient of multiple awards including a MacArthur “Genius” fellowship and the 2024 Fukuoka Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of Asian studies. He grew up in Singapore and lives in Connecticut.

Asia's history has been shaped by its waters. In Unruly Waters, historian Sunil Amrith reimagines Asia's history through the stories of its rains, rivers, coasts, and seas - and of the weather-watchers and engineers, mapmakers and farmers who have sought to control them. Looking out from India, he shows how dreams and fears of water shaped visions of political independence and economic development, provoked efforts to reshape nature through dams and pumps, and unleashed powerful tensions within and between nations. 
 
Today, Asian nations are racing to construct hundreds of dams in the Himalayas, with dire environmental impacts; hundreds of millions crowd into coastal cities threatened by cyclones and storm surges. In an age of climate change, Unruly Waters is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not only Asia's past and its future.

Sunil Amrith

Tom Gatti, The Observer 25 Best Books of the Century

This bleak, stunningly written book shows that the other side of the coin called progress is destruction. Amrith writes like the finest novelist, and his grasp of a mind-boggling expanse of material is deeply impressive

Ranging from the Mongol expansion to contemporary climate change, Amrith has given us the most readable global environmental history yet.  With an eye for the telling detail combined with a sense of the big picture, this book brings environmental perspectives together with such major world historical themes as empire, freedom and energy.  A towering achievement and a joy to read

The Burning Earth, which is nothing short of a history of the world, is as beautiful as it is indispensable, as breathtaking as it is devastating. It answers questions most of us have been too daft even to ask. It will set you on fire

Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

The Burning Earth is a marvelously erudite and wide-ranging account of the steadily accelerating ecological transformation of the planet since the twelfth century. An indispensable contribution to both environmental and global history

Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement

A devastating panorama of human folly, a poetic meditation on how the search for freedom from nature undermined the very conditions for life on earth. Beautifully written, Sunil Amrith’s global and long-term view is crucial to understanding the environmental predicaments we are in, and, perhaps, to restore a distraught world. A must read for anyone concerned with the state of the planet

A wrenching, clear-eyed reckoning with humanity’s extractive relationship to the natural world that plants seeds of insight on how we can shift to an ethos of regeneration and repair. Every page challenges us to conceive the future we want for the planet...and ourselves

Kate Orff, author of Toward an Urban Ecology

Memorable and mesmerizing. Sunil Amrith has gifted us a page-turner of a book, written with passionate lucidity. Historically deep and geographically generous, The Burning Earth dramatizes human freedom’s profound dependence on the health and integrity of our environments. Amrith’s capacious insights and his worldly perspective make this a standout title for anyone interested in the long arc of environmental justice

Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

An epic exploration of human innovation and destruction [which] examines how the poor and powerless have fought back — time and again — against those seeking to profit from the planet’s natural resources

Sunil Amrith’s The Burning Earth bristles with indignation... The history that Amrith covers is uncompromising, and he places the sins of environmental change on the insatiable greed of Europeans... [Amrith] is a scholar who writes with conviction

[A] magisterial historical review [....] Amrith writes from an environmental history perspective, and with an impassioned sense of social justice, about a wide range of subjects, including agriculture, assassination, colonialization, disease, freedom, hunger, politics, pollution, slavery, urbanization, and war

[The Burning Earth] is an environmentally focused chronicle of the eras of colonization and industrialization that probes the dual natures of war and resource extraction, ecological degradation and human mass migration, and technological improvement and planetary devastation

A far-reaching survey of the central role played by human needs and desires in the destruction of Earth

Both dizzying and deracinating, but also, even in its grimness, quite thrilling… What sets Amrith’s history apart is that he gives himself no fixed place to stand. He refuses to occupy a Eurocentric viewpoint, or any other developing instead a planetary awareness… Amrith’s panopticon-like vision is one we need to adopt as we must assume responsibility for the health of the planet… [his] reading is astonishing

A must-read history of our environmental crisis... [Amrith is an] engaging guide, with a lyrical style and a talent for storytelling... It is beautifully and clearly written, well-researched and finds new perspectives on much-discussed issues. Strongly recommended

[An] expansive book... Amrith recognizes the inseparability of environmental distress and political, economic, and social factors

Written with passion and insight, [The Burning Earth] is a highly readable grand narrative illustrated by vignettes from across the globe.

This year hasn’t been a great one for the environment, so a book about the long history of environmental damage may be a hard sell. However, this isn’t just a litany of woe. It unpicks the ways environmental harms have been driven by social systems and individual mentalities. In doing so, it points the way to a better society: one that no longer wages war on nature

[A] magisterial historical review… Amrith writes from an environmental history perspective, and with an impassioned sense of social justice, about a wide range of subjects, including agriculture, assassination, colonialization, disease, freedom, hunger, politics, pollution, slavery, urbanization, and war

Devastating and essential… In Amrith’s telling, human and environmental consequences are inseparable

[A] thorough and accessible survey… The Burning Earth is a welcome complement to important historical critiques of social injustice and inequality by authors like Howard Zinn and Eduardo Galeano

As a historian, Sunil Amrith provides readers with a narrative that spans continents and centuries, calling out exploiters with compassion for the exploited. And if all history is environmental history, we all are authors of this next critical chapter

Beautifully written… Sunil Amrith’s The Burning Earth takes us on a gloomy and bleak tour of how, in the name of progress, Western empires made a mess of everything

The Burning Earth is a global history of the human destruction of the Earth in the pursuit of profit, as well as a sweeping account of how major technological advances have both improved and decimated human life. It’s a richly detailed story that tries to explain how we got to where we are today, so imperiled by the impacts of climate change, while also offering the possibility of new ways of flourishing on the planet

In this expansive book, a historian places the earth’s ecological plight in the context of human exploitation

An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years

In this paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of Spanish silver mining in Peru, British gold mining in South Africa, and oil extraction in Central Asia. He explores the railways and highways that brought humans to new terrains of battle against each other and against nature. Amrith’s account of the ways in which the First and Second World Wars involved the massive mobilization not only of men, but of other natural resources from around the globe, provides an essential new way of understanding war as an irreversible reshaping of the planet. He also reveals the reality of migration as consequence of environmental harm.The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. Amrith relates, on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic – vibrant with stories, characters, and vivid images – in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself.

Sunil Amrith

Praise for The Burning Earth

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Masterful, readable, far-reaching

Books by Sunil Amrith

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter