Toward a Global History of Soil: Sciences, Practices, and Materialities, 1300–1750

Toward a Global History of Soil unearths material expertise about soil in the early modern world that has remained largely unexamined outside of the study of agricultural history. Its eleven chapters reveal how experimental investigations transformed the economics of land administration, the treatment of disease, and hydraulic engineering. New methodologies to evaluate the productive qualities of soil led to radical changes in medicine, chemistry, botany, and household management. This book is the first to examine how the emergence of practical, systematic attempts to understand the nature of soil contributed to the development of early modern sciences.