Cover of Environment and empire

Environment and empire

"Environmental history deals with the reciprocal interaction between people and other elements in the natural world. This study illustrates diverse environmental themes in the history of the British empire. It concentrates initially on the material factors that shaped patterns of extraction and environmental change. But a core theme throughout is the tension between exploitation and conservation. India needed forests for its railways; Australia required pastures for its sheep. Soil erosion was seen to threaten African agriculture. Conservation aimed to preserve resources by exclusion, as in wildlife parks and forests, or to guarantee efficient use of soil and water."

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"This study concludes by describing political reassertions by colonized 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 local and global level - views about who has the right to regulate nature. Environment and Empire is an innovative synthesis, exploring environmental change, conservationist ideas, environmentally related diseases, visual images of nature, and political ecology over the long term."—Jacket.

Audience
adult
Length
long · 416 pages

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Liked Environment and empire? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Environment and empire. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. A Not-So-New World Shares imperialism, colonies, ecology
  2. Time's Monster Shares imperialism, colonies, England
  3. Britain's Declining Empire Shares imperialism, colonies, England
  4. The Ecology of Java & Bali Shares history general history, human ecology, ecology

“If you want more of the same (history about environment), start with these.”

  1. The Glorious Revolution: 1688: Britain's Fight for Liberty
  2. Major Problems in American Environmental History (Major Problems in American History
  3. Human development in the twenty-first century
  4. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World

“If it was the imperialism that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Ecology, Climate and Empire
  2. The Idea of Greater Britain
  3. Decolonisation and the British Empire, 1775-1997
  4. The British Empire as a world power

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Northern Europe
  2. Ecology, colonialism, and cattle
  3. Natural Resource Conservation
  4. Nature's New Deal