"Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 1"

Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 1.” Environment and History 12, no. 1 (Feb., 2006): 31–64. doi:10.3197/096734006776026809. This paper examines the origins, spread, and practices of professional forestry in Southeast Asia, focusing on key sites in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Here, Part One challenges popular and scholarly accounts of colonial forestry as a set of simplifying practices exported from Europe and applied in the European colonies. The authors show that professional forestry empires were constituted under colonialism through local politics that were specific to particular colonies and technically uncolonised regions. Local economic and ecological conditions constrained the forms and practices of colonial forestry. Professional forestry became strongly established in some colonies but not others. Part Two, in Environment and History 12, no. 4 (Nov. 2006), will look at the influence on forestry of knowledge and management practices exchanged through professional-scientific networks. All rights reserved. © 2006 The White Horse Press