Environment and Empire uncovers the fascinating interaction between people and the elements in very different British colonies throughout the world. Providing a rich overview of socio-environmental change, driven by imperial forces, this fascinating new study examines a key global historical process of the last 500 years. British imperial authorities were concerned about overexploitation and the potential risks to nature and material production, and this book examines the rise of conservation as a result. It also looks at political reassertions by colonised peoples over natural resources, who in a post-imperial age have found a new voice, expressing ideas about landscape and heritage, and challenging views of who 'owns', and may regulate, nature.

• 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