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Long at the margins of global affairs, the Arctic now finds itself at the frontline of issues which will challenge and define our world in the twenty-first century: climate change, energy security and the struggle for the world's resources, the return of great power competition and the remaking of global trade patterns.
In The Future History of the Arctic, geopolitics expert Charles Emmerson weaves together the history of the region with reportage and reflection, revealing a vast and complex area, loaded with opportunity and rich in challenges. Travelling from the oil-fields of Prudhoe Bay and the Russian port of Murmansk to the shores of Greenland and the militarised borderlands of northern Norway, he brings the contemporary Arctic to life and explains why what happens there matters to the world.
Charles Emmerson has suffered from a life-long addiction to maps, geopolitics and the power of history to illuminate the future. Born in Australia, Charles grew up and was educated in London. After graduating top of his class from Oxford University in modern history, he was awarded an Entente Cordiale scholarship to study politics and law in Paris. Since then he has worked for a variety of international organisations focusing on global issues, including the International Crisis Group and, latterly, as Associate Director of the World Economic Forum and head of their Global Risks' team. He now lives in London where he works as a writer and adviser on international affairs.
"As reviving as a blast of polar air, bringing the Arctic into wonderfully clear focus; one of the most impressive accounts of the contemporary Arctic I've read"
– Joanna Kavenna, Spectator
"An excellent primer to the economic issues of a region so recently and rudely thrust into the geopolitical limelight"
– Sara Wheeler, Financial Times
"It's rare to find books that treat [the Arctic] as something other than a chilly adventure playground or an excuse for reams of purple prose. Thank goodness, then, for Charles Emmerson [...] Ruthlessly efficient"
– Scotland on Sunday
"A fascinating, personal and visionary book. Splendid"
– Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, author of A Blueprint for a Safer Planet
"An expert on geopolitics, he writes with insight and authority"
– Independent on Sunday
