J. R. McNeill

John Robert McNeill is an American environmental historian whose work examines global environmental change and the environmental history of the modern world.

William H. McNeill: An American historian known for broad accounts of world history and the spread of disease. His father’s world-historical approach helped shape the scale of McNeill’s historical questions.
Mosquito Empires: A history of how mosquito-borne disease shaped politics and settlement in the Greater Caribbean from 1620 to 1914. This book traces McNeill’s account of disease ecology shaping imperial power and warfare.
Environmental history: The study of how human societies and the natural world have shaped one another over time. It is the field in which McNeill’s historical investigations are situated.
Global environmental change: Large-scale changes in Earth’s climate, ecosystems, and biogeochemical systems, driven by natural and human causes. McNeill’s histories explain how human activities accumulated into planetary-scale environmental transformations.
Alfred W. Crosby: An American historian who developed influential accounts of ecological exchange and biological imperialism. Crosby’s work helped establish environmental history as a field McNeill would extend.
Something New Under the Sun: A global environmental history of the twentieth century, published by J. R. McNeill in 2000. It is McNeill’s best-known synthesis of modern environmental change.
Anthropocene: A proposed geological epoch in which human activity has become a major force shaping Earth systems. McNeill’s histories document the long rise of human influence on global environments.
Climate change: Long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, caused by natural processes and human activities. Historical context helps distinguish recent human-driven warming from earlier climate variability.
Paul W. Gates: An American historian of land policy and agriculture in the United States. Gates supervised McNeill’s doctoral work in American history at the University of Colorado.
The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: A history of human-environment relations in Mediterranean mountain regions, published by J. R. McNeill in 1992. The book shows how McNeill’s regional research connects land use, ecology, and social change.

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Jared DiamondRelated: McNeill’s review of Diamond’s work highlights the difference between environmental history and its broad causal claims.