In a world where academic publications often descend into the microscopic world of nuance, there is a detectable trend towards volumes with the laudable objective of providing the aspiring amateur with an introductory overview of a subject. The author of Profit has undoubtedly taken this path and pitched for the macro-view: we find ultimately that that the intention of the book is to trace ‘the environmental aspects of capitalism’s germination and growth through human history’ (page 253).

We’re inducted into the argument via the ubiquitous ‘palm-sized technological marvel’ which is simultaneously the ‘environmental crime that is the Smartphone’ (page 2). At the outset, Stoll proposes to resolve this paradox by allowing the reader to judge where responsibility lies between humanity or that subset of guilty humans comprising the ‘capitalists and corporations’ who define the ‘Capitalocene’ (page 3). The verdict turns upon what the author calls ‘profit’. However, while from the outset it is clear that ‘profit’ is not to be equated with a synonym for capitalism, no more precise explanation is forthcoming and in that void, greater experience with the text encourages the reader towards a tentative definition of ‘cui bono?’.

Arranged in chronological order from the dawn of humanity, each chapter seeks to illustrate (if not fully illuminate) typical characteristics of the relationship between human activity driven by ‘profit’ and the natural resources involved. The deliberate choice to define ‘profit’ ambiguously ensures that any – indeed all – human activity becomes material for this study. While this may in itself appear ambitious, the decision to cover the entirety of human existence, from the first dawn of the Hominim, cannot help but have an echo of Shakespeare’s ‘vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself’. To navigate this scope would seem to necessitate a rigorous approach with a solid ‘backbone’ argument across the work upon which can hang the various elements of the narrative. Instead, the author has chosen to use a join-the-dots approach supported by potted biographies of a handful of individuals or publications which are used across the ages in a manner similar to posts carrying a string of lamps.

The opening chapter covers the first few hundred thousand years of Hominim activity and is naturally lacking in data points. Stoll runs this period of study up to the fifteenth century AD/CE; when the second chapter switches the focus to ‘Trade and Empire’. This division is a missed opportunity to explore the substantial trading empires of Greece and Rome; instead, with Columbus as the locus for the second period of study this enables the introduction of ‘America’, but brings in its wake an atypical focus on the development of the Genoese Republic, which is subsequently proposed as an exemplar. Chapter Three concerns ‘Coal and Machines’ – although first through the experience of the fifteenth century Dutch, introducing the first of many (ultimately disconcerting) chronological hops back and forth, and odd since the author suggests a reliance of the Dutch empire on wind-power, before moving onto the English, ‘Plantation Capitalism’, sugar and (unusually, perhaps) the contributions of the Scottish Presbyterians who, we are informed, ‘disproportionally administered the British Empire … and dominated shipping and trade’ (page 71). Chapter Four is formed around ‘Steam and Steel’, which acts as the bridge to introduce Andrew Carnegie, whose early life coincided with the Bessemer Process, but more fortuitously was of Scottish decent, which facilitated his career in an age of imperialism and industrial capitalism, soon to become a global phenomenon.

Chapter Five adds environmentalism to the narrative – in the last half of the nineteenth century and exactly halfway through the work. The topic is introduced through two works which Stoll considers pivotal: George Marsh’s Man and Nature and William Jevons’ The Coal Question. Stoll makes the claim that these are ‘books that shook the confidence of a complacent public’ (page116), which appears bold given their subsequent descent into obscurity – almost immediately, in Jevons’ case. While Marsh did later privately republish his text under a fresh title, neither of these prolific authors considered their topic of sufficient importance to engage with it again, and indeed the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy manages to devote over six thousand words to Jevons without a mention of his pamphlet.

The focus moves through the twentieth century on the back of what Stoll terms ‘consumer capitalism’ – the origins of which are ascribed to (consecutively) the availability of mass finance, petroleum, electricity, plastic, disposable products and finally, advertising. Although this caused an increase in ‘waste’ and had a brief pause in the United States (the Wall Street crash, here described as a product of capitalism rather than speculation), this continues through the twentieth century (global conflicts are not discussed) until the rise of the bright and buoyant era known to historians as the Cold War, in which the motor car and electronics drove postwar prosperity hand in hand with central ‘government activism’, until this was attacked by ‘alarmed … wealthy corporate leaders’ who created ‘a propaganda network to promote weak government and low taxes’ (page 176).

Post-1970, the narrative in the chapter ‘Selling Everything’ leaps to hyper-market operations – exampled by Walmart and the web giant Amazon – both of which enjoyed unique success and so would be candidates for the atypical rather than the representative. Their success is set against the stagnation and decline in the US economy, a claim illuminated by the notion that more people entered the service sector in the eight years from 1973 to 1981 than the auto and steel industries combined. However, the author had already flagged the death of nineteenth century ‘industrial capitalism’ before the Second World War, so the shift towards ‘consumer capitalism’ would seem to be entirely in line with expectations, given the central notion of this volume that all and any economic activity is ‘capitalism’. Once again, a handful examples from across the globe are collated to suggest negative consequences from various categories of causes – coal and petroleum are singled out, which seems odd since coal would have presumably featured in the ‘industrial capitalist’ period (however ill-defined) – rather than that of the consumer or late consumer capitalist periods.

It is only at the end of Chapter Eight that we finally begin to see an attempt to discuss ‘Pollution, Air and Climate’; CFCs, Ozone depletion, permafrost methane, and oceanic acidification are introduced and concluded in rather less than one page (pages 223-224).

The last chapter is devoted to the formation of the Global Environmental movement, again through exploring the impact of two publications. The first, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, is widely acknowledged as perhaps the most important environmental book of the twentieth century. The second, Only One Earth, is Barbara Ward’s influential contribution to sustainable development; both Carson’s lapsed Reformed Protestant heritage and Ward’s hybrid Quaker-Catholicism are given an airing: notwithstanding these volumes remain edifying to all readers. A summary of American developments post-World War II is joined to the rise of the West German Green Party in the 197Os, and the impact of the Seveso, Bhopal and Chernobyl accidents in contributing to a wider spread of environmental concern and the European rise of support for anti-nuclear groups. Half of the very short summary of the ‘Rise of the Greens’ is once again devoted to the influence of a (northern, Reformed) Protestant heritage, while in Catholic countries environmentalism becomes a ‘non-religious, non-moralistic environmental movement’ (page 239): some examples would help forward this claim, not least as it is contradicted by Stoll’s conclusion that in 2015 (and more than forty years after publication) Ward’s work influenced the pronouncements of Pope Francis (page 241).

Stoll’s concluding chapter states that the key question is: ‘does it profit us when someone else makes a profit?’ (page 251). He suggests – perhaps unsurprisingly – that the answer is unclear. However, what is missing here – as in the entire work – is a decomposition of what is meant by the question. Instead, what is presented – as in the entire work – merely adds fog to the lens. Stoll makes the claim that ‘in the pre-Modern Christian West profit entailed a moral calculus’ (page 251). This is both bold and belated: if the purpose of Profit was intended to be an exploration of this theme, it would have gained some coherence – but would have lost any right to be considered ‘An Environmental History’.

Stoll’s summary conclusion is disappointingly (but perhaps not surprisingly) a mirror of the introduction: capitalism (whatever the form in which it is labelled) is rooted in human nature, and the outcomes – including ‘profit’ – have always (historically) been realised ‘at nature’s expense’ (page 252). After 250 pages, the author’s final warning is both stark and something of a surprise: ‘we stop the machinery of consumer capitalism at our peril’ (page 254). Hope is at hand, however, evidenced by an increasing appetite for ‘experiences’ rather than ‘stuff’, with the implication that cruises, travel to foreign countries, climbing mountains, and diving coral reefs will prove less of an environmental issue. There is even a thumbs up for games on Smartphones. It is unfortunate that at the last, the focus falls entirely upon the consumption habits not of the globe, but on one segment of the American population.

Almost inevitably the overall tone of the work feels rushed – indeed superficial. Arguments do not have the space to be outlined, let alone developed, and thus the whistle-stop tour becomes a giddy and frustrating experience. Indeed, the major weakness arises from the absence of any sustained, central argument. Instead, often poorly constructed polemic is substituted. Possibly the strangest statement occurs in the conclusion, where the reader is invited to contemplate how very different ‘Modern consumer capitalism’ might have been ‘had the Genoese prevailed at the War of Chioggia’ (page 252): it is not easy to imagine a reversal of historic events which would have made less of a ripple beyond the late fourteenth century Adriatic. In the haste to apply the broad brush, some odd images appear: the period noted by historians for its tranquillity and known as the Belle Epoque is described as ‘the tumultuous era between the 1880s and the mid-1910s’ (page 137).

The stated focus on Western Europe and the United States of America is inconsistent. Many examples are typical of the USA but not Europe, while China and Lake Nasser are the examples chosen to illustrate the possible negative effects of a building dams – irrespective of the atypical nature of both Chinese construction techniques, the Sahara sun and the relationship between Egypt and the Nile (page191).

Another oddity is the frequent intrusion of a religious (specifically Christian Presbyterian) theme. Many of the individuals featured are sprinkled with a reference to a ‘Puritan heritage which shaped their analysis and solutions’, even if the author immediately acknowledges that (as in the case of Jevons) he ‘neither embraced nor disavowed the religion of his forefathers’ or the ‘quite religious’ Marsh ‘who rarely attended’ (page 121). As Dr Stoll has previous published a book entitled Protestantism, Capitalism and Nature in America this may perhaps be inevitable, but it is ultimately regrettable since a more general discussion of the nature of profit fragmented through the lens of world religions – or even that of Christianity through the ages – is entirely missing.

Perhaps more importantly for ‘An Environmental History’, there is also very little history of the environment – rather, a small list of negative consequences of human existence are regularly recycled (forests denuded, rivers silted, air polluted) as the consequences of a wide range of activities. While the telegraph, mining, smelting, manufacturing, shipbuilding and consumerism are singled out for particular approbation at various points, the conclusions are largely homogenous: mining makes as mess; processing (from refining sugar to forging metal) burns wood; some people in various places used slave or indentured labour, while others traded or purchased the outputs, and both sea and air quality have got worse as both populations and the reach of advertising have grown.

However unremarkable these conclusions, it may be that there exists an audience for whom it needs re-stating. Given the almost hubristic scope and ambition, to note a lack of supporting data might appear to miss the point. But while the book scatters dates in profusion, there are no data points at all, nor graphs nor tables to illustrate any point. The illustrations are therefore all not only biographical but somewhat anecdotal, while the photograph illustrating Brazilians waving placards including ‘Pray for Amazon’ (page 241) sits somewhat uncomfortably with the earlier profile of Jeff Bezos.

Curiously, the author always falls short of a polemic against capitalism – and in the absence of supporting data it is hard to come to any other conclusion. The central, if missing, element in this work was fully identified in Ward’s work – engagement with the question: what is the mechanism by which we balance the (inner) individual’s right to an adequate standard of living with the (outer) limit of what the Earth can sustain?

An experienced academic editor was wont to point out to aspiring authors that it is ‘always easier to write a book than a paper’. The message was that, while structure – founded on a clear purpose and supported by evidenced argument – remains essential to both, the longer format can withstand a greater burden. Dr Stoll would appear not to have received this advice, and while possibly a good man with good intentions, unfortunately ‘An Environmental History’ was never a very good idea, and it has not resulted in a good book.

‘Profit: An Environmental History’ by Mark Stoll was published in 2024 by Polity (ISBN 978-1-50-953324-4). 280pp.

 

Dr Andrew Fincham is an early-modern socio-economic historian affiliated to Woodbrooke College, University of Birmingham, UK. His research is concerned with understanding the links between religious values, ethical business, and commercial success; and the implications for responsible corporate governance. His current areas of interest include a revision of Quaker historiography and an exploration of the underlying issues in Max Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.