There seems little doubt that many environmental historians, this editor included, have tended to fall into a veritable elephant trap of simplistic polarities when they deal, as they increasingly are doing, with the unwieldy but vital subject of the colonial impact on the tropical environment and its people…
Professional German foresters played an important role in shaping the course of forest management in India during the last century. It is to Sir Dietrich Brandis that the credit for the introduction of scientific methods of management is given…
This paper contends that recent scholarly interest in systems of colonising knowledge, whether called ‘scientific forestry,’ or ‘development,’ has paid inadequate attention to the historical processes shaping such knowledge production in specific colonial locations.
Two broad themes taken up in the literature will be the focus of this essay: how far colonialism was an ecological watershed, and how producers responded to new pressures. The third issue is of what we can or should learn (or unlearn) from the colonial experience.
Introduction to a special issue that reflects the rapid growth of research in environmental history now apparent throughout the South Asian region.
It was not solely the natural environment that determined which areas large countries and colonial powers of the 18th century used for the purposes of tar making, but also other aspects: political, military, economic and colonial.
This paper is based on the case study from the Honde Valley in eastern Zimbabwe on the border with Mozambique and, more specifically, of two tea estates which were established in the rainforest.
Focusing first on official discourse and the conflict which accompanied the passage of early conservation legislation, this article then looks at the different interpretations of the effects of implementation in Shurugwi communal area.
The majority of articles in this issue of Environment and History shed some light on the relationship between colonialism and the environment and on colonial constructions of nature.
The British were not the only foreign rulers to bring ecological catastrophe to India. Large areas of forest had been destroyed under the Moguls in the 17th century…
