Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism

Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism

Author: Gregory Allen Barton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-10-17

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1139434608

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What we now know of as environmentalism began with the establishment of the first empire forest in 1855 in British India, and during the second half of the nineteenth century, over ten per cent of the land surface of the earth became protected as a public trust. Sprawling forest reservations, many of them larger than modern nations, became revenue-producing forests that protected the whole 'household of nature', and Rudyard Kipling and Theodore Roosevelt were among those who celebrated a new class of government foresters as public heroes. Imperial foresters warned of impending catastrophe, desertification and global climate change if the reverse process of deforestation continued. The empire forestry movement spread through India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and then the United States to other parts of the globe, and Gregory Barton's study looks at the origins of environmentalism in a global perspective.


Environment and Empire

Environment and Empire

Author: William Beinart

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-10-11

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0191566284

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European imperialism was extraordinarily far-reaching: a key global historical process of the last 500 years. It locked disparate human societies together over a wider area than any previous imperial expansion; it underpinned the repopulation of the Americas and Australasia; it was the precursor of globalization as we now understand it. Imperialism was inseparable from the history of global environmental change. Metropolitan countries sought raw materials of all kinds, from timber and furs to rubber and oil. They established sugar plantations that transformed island ecologies. Settlers introduced new methods of farming and displaced indigenous peoples. Colonial cities, many of which became great conurbations, fundamentally changed relationships between people and nature. Consumer cultures, the internal combustion engine, and pollution are now ubiquitous. Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world, and this book illustrates the diverse environmental themes in the history of empire. Initially concentrating on the material factors that shaped empire and environmental change, Environment and Empire discusses the way in which British consumers and manufacturers sucked in resources that were gathered, hunted, fished, mined, and farmed. Yet it is also clear that British settler and colonial states sought to regulate the use of natural resources as well as commodify them. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, and to guarantee efficient use of soil and water. Exploring these linked themes of exploitation and conservation, this study concludes with a focus on political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources. In a post-imperial age, they have found a new voice, reformulating ideas about nature, landscape, and heritage and challenging, at a local and global level, views of who has the right to regulate nature.


Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History

Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History

Author: Vinita Damodaran

Publisher: Primus Books

Published: 2020-11-13

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 9789389850185

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Contemporary anxieties about global warming and climate change impacts have unsettled the ways in which we think about environmental politics and human history. Intense discussions have already begun over whether we need to reconsider what we understand by the term 'environmental change' and if humans have truly become a 'geo-physical' force. Put differently, how should we recast our understanding of the planet's varied environmental pasts in order to make sense of the Anthropocene present? This collection of 19 essays on forestry and environmental change in the erstwhile colonies of the British Empire builds on Richard Grove's quest for achieving a 'global synthesis' as efforts towards writing environmental histories on a planetary scale. The Commonwealth of Nations as a single environmental bloc for study, enquiry and historical scrutiny, explores connected environmental histories, compares dissimilar ecological regions and debates ideologies for environmental management.


Nature and Nation

Nature and Nation

Author: Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2005-10-31

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9780824828639

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Nature and Nation explores the relations between people and forests in Peninsular Malaysia where the planet's richest terrestrial eco-system met head-on with the fastest pace of economic transformation experienced in the tropical world. It engages the interplay of history, culture, science, economics and politics to provide a holistic interpretation of the continuing relevance of forests to state and society in the moist tropics. Malaysia has long been singled out for emulation by developing nations, an accolade contradicted in recent years by concerns over its capital-, rather than poverty-driven forest depletion. The Malaysian case supports the call for re-appraisal of entrenched prescriptions for development that go beyond material needs. -- Book cover.


An Environmental History of India

An Environmental History of India

Author: Michael H. Fisher

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1107111625

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This longue durée survey of the Indian subcontinent's environmental history reveals the complex interactions among its people and the natural world.


The Earth's Blanket

The Earth's Blanket

Author: Nancy J. Turner

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2015-08-03

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0295997869

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This is a thought-provoking look at Native American stories, cultural institutions, and ways of knowing, and what they can teach us about living sustainably.


Unruly Hills

Unruly Hills

Author: Bengt G. Karlsson

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0857451057

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The questions that inspired this study are central to contemporary research within environmental anthropology, political ecology, and environmental history: How does the introduction of a modern, capitalist, resource regime affect the livelihood of indigenous peoples? Can sustainable resource management be achieved in a situation of radical commodification> of land and other aspects of nature? Focusing on conflicts relating to forest management, mining, and land rights, the author offers an insightful account of present-day challenges for indigenous people to accommodate aspirations for ethnic sovereignty and development.


Beyond Territory and Scarcity

Beyond Territory and Scarcity

Author: Quentin Gausset

Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9789171065407

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In this volume, ten anthropologists and geographers critically address traditional Mathusian discourses in essays that attempt to move 'beyond territory and scarcity'.


Wildland Fire Management Handbook for Sub-Sahara Africa

Wildland Fire Management Handbook for Sub-Sahara Africa

Author: Johann Georg Goldammer

Publisher: African Minds

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 191983365X

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Africa is a fire continent. Since the early evolution of humanity, fire has been harnessed as a land-use tool. Many ecosystems of Sub-Sahara Africa that have been shaped by fire over millennia provide a high carrying capacity for human populations.


Amazonian Geographies

Amazonian Geographies

Author: Jacqueline M. Vadjunec

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-16

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1317982967

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Amazonia exists in our imagination as well as on the ground. It is a mysterious and powerful construct in our psyches yet shares multiple (trans)national borders and diverse ecological and cultural landscapes. It is often presented as a seemingly homogeneous place: a lush tropical jungle teeming with exotic wildlife and plant diversity, as well as the various indigenous populations that inhabit the region. Yet, since Conquest, Amazonia has been linked to the global market and, after a long and varied history of colonization and development projects, Amazonia is peopled by many distinct cultural groups who remain largely invisible to the outside world despite their increasing integration into global markets and global politics. Millions of rubber tappers, neo-native groups, peasants, river dwellers, and urban residents continue to shape and re-shape the cultural landscape as they adapt their livelihood practices and political strategies in response to changing markets and shifting linkages with political and economic actors at local, regional, national, and international levels. This book explores the diversity of changing identities and cultural landscapes emerging in different corners of this rapidly changing region. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Geography.