Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (102 page)

est farmlands (see the two books written or edited by Charles Redman, and cited
under Further Readings for the Prologue, for discussion and references).

The most famous monumental ruins in Africa south of the equator are those of Great Zimbabwe, consisting of a center with large stone structures in what is now
the country of Zimbabwe. Great Zimbabwe thrived in the 11th to 15th centuries,
controlling trade between Africa's interior and its east coast. Its decline may have involved a combination of deforestation and a shift of trade routes. See David
Phillipson,
African Archaeology,
2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993); Christopher Ehret,
The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800
(Char
lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002).

The earliest cities and large states of the Indian subcontinent arose in the third
millennium
b.c.
in the Indus Valley of what is now Pakistan. Those Indus Valley
cities belong to what is known as Harappan civilization, whose writing remains un-
deciphered. It used to be thought that Harappan civilization was terminated by in
vasions of Indo-European-speaking Aryans from the northwest, but it now appears
that the cities were in decline before those invasions (Plate 41). Droughts, and shifts
of the course of the Indus River, may have played a role. See Gregory Possehl,
Harappan Civilization
(Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1982); Michael
Jansen, Maire Mulloy, and Giinter Urban, eds.,
Forgotten Cities of the Indus
(Mainz,
Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 1991); and Jonathan Kenoyer,
Ancient Cities of the
Indus Valley Civilization
(Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Finally, the enormous temple complexes and reservoirs of Angkor Wat, former
capital of the Khmer Empire, constitute the most famous ruins and archaeological
"mystery" of Southeast Asia, within modern Cambodia (Plate 42). The Khmer de
cline may have involved the silting up of reservoirs that supplied water for intensive irrigated rice agriculture. As the Khmer Empire grew weak, it proved unable to hold
off its chronic enemies the Thais, whom the Khmer Empire had been able to resist
while at full strength. See Michael Coe,
Angkor and the Khmer Civilization
(London:
Thames and Hudson, 2003), and the papers and books by Bernard-Philippe Groslier cited by Coe.

Chapter 10

If you decide to consult these primary sources on the Rwandan genocide and its an
tecedents, brace yourself for some painful reading.

Catharine Newbury,
The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in
Rwanda, 1860-1960
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) describes how
Rwandan society became transformed, and how the roles of the Hutu and the Tutsi
became polarized, from precolonial times to the eve of independence.

Human Rights Watch,
Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda
(New
York: Human Rights Watch, 1999) presents in mind-numbing detail the immediate

background to the events of 1994, then a 414-page account of the killings them
selves, and finally their aftermath.

Philip Gourevitch,
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with
Our Families
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998) is an account of the genocide by a journalist who interviewed many survivors, and who depicts as well
the failure of other countries and of the United Nations to prevent the killings.

My chapter includes several quotations from Gerard Prunier,
The Rwanda Cri
sis: History of Genocide
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), a book by a French specialist on East Africa who wrote in the immediate aftermath of the
genocide, and who vividly reconstructs the motives of participants and of the
French government's intervention. My account of the Hutu-versus-Hutu killings in
Kanama commune is based on the analysis in Catherine Andre: and Jean-Philippe Platteau's paper "Land relations under unbearable stress: Rwanda caught in the
Malthusian trap"
(Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
34:1-47 (1998)).

Chapter 11

Two books comparing the histories of the two countries sharing the island of His-
paniola are a lively account in English by Michele Wecker,
Why the Cocks Fight: Do
minicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
(New York: Hill and Wang,
1999), and a geographic and social comparison in Spanish by Rafael Emilio Yunen Z.,
La Isla Como Es
(Santiago, Republica Dominicana: Universidad Catolica Madre
yMaestra, 1985).

Three books by Mats Lundahl will serve as an introduction into the literature
on Haiti:
Peasants and Poverty: A Study of Haiti
(London: Croom Helm, 1979);
The Haitian Economy: Man, Land, and Markets
(London: Croom Helm, 1983); and
Poli
tics or Markets? Essays on Haitian Undervelopment
(London: Routledge, 1992). The
classic study of the Haitian revolution of 1781-1803 is C.L.R. James,
The Black Ja
cobins,
2nd ed. (London: Vintage, 1963).

The standard English-language history of the Dominican Republic is Frank
Moya Pons,
The Dominican Republic: A National History
(Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 1998). The same author wrote a different text in Spanish:
Manual de Histo-ria Dominicana,
9th ed. (Santiago, Republica Dominicana, 1999). Also in Spanish is
a two-volume history by Roberto Cassa,
Historia Social y Economica de la Republica
Dominicana
(Santo Domingo: Editora Alfa y Omega, 1998 and 2001). Marlin
Clausner's history focuses on rural areas:
Rural Santo Domingo: Settled, Unsettled,
Resettled
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973). Harry Hoetink,
The Do
minican People, 1850-1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology
(Baltimore: Johns Hop
kins University Press, 1982) deals with the late 19th century. Claudio Vedovato,
Politics, Foreign Trade and Economic Development: A Study of the Dominican Repub
lic
(London: Croom Helm, 1986) focuses on the Trujillo and post-Trujillo eras. Two
books providing an entry into the Trujillo era are Howard Wiarda,
Dictatorship and

Development: The Methods of Control in Trujillo's Dominican Republic
(Gainesville,
University of Florida Press, 1968) and the more recent Richard Lee Turits,
Founda
tions of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican His
tory
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002).

A manuscript tracing the history of environmental policies in the Dominican
Republic, hence especially relevant to this chapter, is Walter Cordero, "Introduction: bibliografia sobre medio ambiente y recursos naturales en la Republica Do-
minicana" (2003).

Chapter 12

Most of the up-to-date primary literature on China's environmental and popula
tion issues is in Chinese, or on the Web, or both. References will be found in an ar
ticle by Jianguo Liu and me, "China's environment in a globalizing world" (in
preparation). As for English-language sources in books or journals, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (e-mail address
[email protected]

), pub
lishes a series of annual volumes entitled the China Environment Series. World
Bank publications include
China: Air, Land, and Water
(Washington, D.C: The
World Bank, 2001), available either as a book or as a CD-ROM. Some other books
are L. R. Brown,
Who Will Feed China?
(New York: Norton, 1995); M. B. McElroy,
C. P. Nielson, and P. Lydon, eds.,
Energizing China: Reconciling Environmental Pro
tection and Economic Growth
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998);
J. Shapiro,
Mao's War Against Nature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001); D. Zweig,
Internationalizing China: Domestic Interests and Global Linkages
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002); and Mark Elvin,
The Retreat of the
Elephants: An Environmental History of China
(New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004). For an English-language translation of a book originally published in Chi
nese, see Qu Geping and Li Jinchang,
Population and Environment in China
(Boul
der, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994).

Chapter 13

A deservedly acclaimed account of the early history of the British colonies in
Australia from their origins in 1788 into the 19th century is Robert Hughes,
The
Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding
(New York: Knopf, 1987). Tim Flan-
nery,
The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People
(Chatsworth, New South Wales: Reed, 1994) begins instead with the arrival of Aborigines over 40,000 years ago and traces their impact and that of Europeans on the
Australian environment. David Horton,
The Pure State of Nature: Sacred Cows, Destructive Myths and the Environment
(St. Leonards, New South Wales: Allen & Un-
win, 2000) offers a perspective different from Flannery's.

Three government sources provide encyclopedic accounts of Australia's envi-

; its predecessor State of the Environment Advisory Committee 1996,
Australia: State of the Environment 1996
(Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing, 1996); and Dennis Trewin,
2001 Year Book Australia
(Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics,
2001), a Centenary of Australia's Federation celebratory edition of a yearbook pub
lished annually since 1908.

Two well-illustrated books by Mary E. White provide overviews of Australian
environmental problems:
Listen ... Our Land Is Crying
(East Roseville, New South
Wales: Kangaroo Press, 1997) and
Running Down: Water in a Changing Land
(East Roseville, New South Wales: Kangaroo Press, 2000). Tim Flannery's "Beautiful lies:
population and environment in Australia"
(Quarterly Essay
no. 9, 2003) is a
provocative shorter overview. Salinization's history and impacts in Australia are
covered by Quentin Beresford, Hugo Bekle, Harry Phillips, and Jane Mulcock,
The
Salinity Crisis: Landscapes, Communities and Politics
(Crawley, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press, 2001). Andrew Campbell,
Landcare: Commu
nities Shaping the Land and the Future
(St. Leonards, New South Wales: Allen & Un-
win, 1994) describes an important grassroots movement to improve land management in rural Australia.

Chapter 14

Along with questions by my UCLA students, Joseph Tainter's book
The Collapses of
Complex Societies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) provided a start
ing point for this chapter, by stating clearly why a society's failure to solve its envi
ronmental problems poses a puzzle crying out for explanation. Thomas McGovern
et al. "Northern islands, human error, and environmental degradation: a view of
social and ecological change in the medieval North Atlantic"
{Human Ecology
16:225-270 (1988)) traces a sequence of reasons why the Greenland Norse failed to perceive or solve their own environmental problems. The sequence of reasons that I
propose in this chapter overlaps partly with that of McGovern et al., whose model should be consulted by anyone interested in pursuing this puzzle.

Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues have studied the tragedy of the commons
(alias common-pool resources), using both comparative surveys and experimental games to identify the conditions under which consumers are most likely to recog
nize their common interests and to implement an effective quota system them
selves. Ostrom's books include Elinor Ostrom,
Governing the Commons: The
Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990) and Elinor Ostrom, Roy Gardner, and James Walker,
Rules, Games, and
Common-Pool Resources
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). Her
more recent articles include Elinor Ostrom, "Coping with tragedies of the com-