This course is an introduction to the growing field of environmental history and explores how human society and culture, non-human actors, natural elements, and medicine, science and technology shaped the European past in its broader global context. We will look at how human societies, animals, micro-organisms and food plants have acted as agents in the past, from the local to the transnational level, over a broad time span, 1500-1850. The course is organised into three main sections, focusing on: 1) epidemic disease, 2) the Columbian exchange and its consequences, and 3) water provision/management and sanitation.