ABSTRACT
When fossils became fuels, the path towards the current crisis of climate change might seem to have been set. However, their use as energy sources and the unfolding of the current climate crisis was neither inevitable nor predetermined, but rather the result of complex historical processes and decisions. To truly understand the all-encompassing position fossil fuels have come to take in modern societies, we must understand their entire lifecycle from extraction to emission and how these processes engendered dynamics of dependency and domination on our way into the Anthropocene. By approaching this topic from diverse perspectives located within the Global South, this chapter highlights the global and interconnected character of this phenomenon. In re-mapping the historical structures underlying fossil fuel expansion, the chapter shows that they paradoxically centre both on processes of empire making and unmaking and in patterns of colonial resource exploitation continuing in altered forms in the construction of postcolonial developmental regimes. In this way the aim is not only to tease out the genealogy of the climate crisis, but also to demonstrate the importance and utility of history as a discipline within environmental debates, helping understand our current situation and our future still unknown.
