VANISHED: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY OF EXTINCTION (HB)

Extinction is a surprisingly modern concept. In Europe until the late eighteenth century, species were considered perfect and unchanging creations of God. In the age of revolutions, the accumulation of fossil evidence led to extinction changing from theological threat to natural process. And from there, it would be used to justify persecution and genocide: Newfoundland’s Beothuk and Aboriginal Australians were doomed to die out. Weaving together pioneering original research and narrative storytelling, this book explores the tangled and unnatural histories of extinction and empire.