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Environment and Empire
William Beinart and Lotte Hughes
410 pages
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13 in-text halftones and maps
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234x156mm
978-0-19-956251-0
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Paperback
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02 April 2009
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This item is printed to order. Items which are printed to order are normally despatched and charged within 5-10 days.
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- A unique overview of environmental themes in the history of the British empire
- Looks at the social and political issues related to environmental change
- Accessible, engaging, and highly topical
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.Readership: Scholars and students of environmental history; the British Empire; post-colonialism; historical geography, political ecology and environmental studies, general readers with an interest in environmental themes.
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William Beinart, Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, and Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and Lotte Hughes, Lecturer in African Arts and Cultures, The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies, The Open University
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"...compelling...the book is written clearly and with a lively prose...If you are a British imperial historian , or someone who works in an area of the former British Empire, you need to read this book. Few books are as clearly written, have as broad of a scope, or are as successful at imparting the views of past scholars while also articulating the authors' own version of history. Most importantly, perhaps, not only will you learn from this book, you will also enjoy it." - Brett Bennett British Scholar "This is an impressive book both for its sweep across continents and themes, and equally so for its lucid and flowing prose. The authors have woven together a complex tapestry of the currents that linked ecological change to the
fortunes of the British Empire. It also brings the story up to the present and will be indispensable for historians, ecologists, and lay persons alike." - Mahesh Rangarajan, Professor in Modern Indian History, University of Delhi
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1: Introduction
2: Environmental Aspects of the Atlantic Slave Trade and CaribbeanPlantations
3: The Fur Trade in Canada
4: Hunting, Wildlife, and Imperialism in Southern Africa
5: Imperial Travellers
6: Sheep, Pastures, and Demography in Australia
7: Forests and Forestry in India
8: Water, Irrigation, and Agrarian Society in India and Egypt
9: Colonial Cities: Environment, Space, and Race
10: Plague and Urban Environments
11: Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis in East and Central Africa
12: Imperial Scientists, Ecology, and Conservation
13: Empire and the Visual Representation of Nature
14: Rubber and the Environment in Malaysia
15: Oil Extraction in the Middle East: the Kuwait Experience
16: Resistance to Colonial Conservation and Resource Management
17: National Parks and the Growth of Tourism
18: The Post-Imperial Urban Environment
19: Reassertion of Indigenous Environmental Rights and Knowledge
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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