Tropical Nature Colonial and Post-Colonial Conservation in Africa and Asia

About this book

Across Africa and South-East Asia, the impulse to protect nature often dovetails with the domination of local people. From mass displacement to severe restrictions on land use and daily acts of violence, conservation work risks reproducing Eurocentric modes of colonialism and worsening the effects of the climate crisis. In this insightful and wide-ranging study of the colonial history of conservation, Tropical Nature seeks to provide a much-needed history of the Global South from its own perspective. Comparing case studies ranging from Ali Bongo's Gabon to the postcolonial African itinerary of the agronomist Arthur Bunting, this volume advances a "small-scale global history" that deciphers the relations binding human societies to the non-human world.

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction: Protecting Nature in Africa and Asia. Towards a Small-Scale Global History / Guillaume Blanc
Chapter 1. Laissez-Faire Conservation. Nature Protection in Colonial Vietnam / Pamela McElwee
Chapter 2. Setting up a Wildlife Department. Kenyan Expertise in Malaya / Mathieu Guerin
Chapter 3. Imperial Forests and Nature Reserves in Singapore, 1883-1959 / Timothy P. Barnard
Chapter 4. Rambouillet, Agricultural Stations, and French Colonial Africa. Conserving and Improving Nature (1900-1930) / Raphael Devred
Chapter 5. Missing Conservation? On the Puzzling Dearth of Nature Conservation in Mandate Syria and Lebanon / Diana K. Davis
Chapter 6. Between Empire and Development. The Ubiquitous Life and Career of Arthur Hugh Bunting / Joseph M. Hodge
Chapter 7. The Adamsons, Born Free, and the Late Colonial Era. Images That Helped to Change the Animal World / William Beinart
Chapter 8.Conservation in the Days of Independence. the Case of the Seychelles, 1968-1974 / Gregory Quenet
Chapter 9. Tracking Wildebeests. the Technological Mediation of Spaces for Humans and Wildlife in the Serengeti since 1950 / Simone Schleper
Chapter 10. Conserving Nature in Mozambique. Relaying Conservation Practices and Imaginaries since Colonial Days / Rozenn Nakanabo Diallo
Chapter 11. Catfights and Crocodile Tears. Conflict, Charismatic Species, and Nature Professionals in India's Conservation History / Meera Anna Oommen
Chapter 12. Representing Space to Structure Time. Tropical Deforestation Fronts in the Light of Human-Territory Relations / Johan Oszwald
Conclusion: Studying Nature, Networks, and Power. What Next? / Guillaume Blanc

Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Guillaume Blanc is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Rennes 2 and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2021-2026). His work focuses on the global governance of nature, with a particular concentration on Ethiopia and East Africa. He has recently published La Nature des Hommes (La Découverte, 2024) and The Invention of Green Colonialism (Polity, 2022).

Mathieu Guérin is Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO). His research specialises in the social and economic history of Cambodia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing especially on the history of wildlife conservation since the colonial era.

Grégory Quenet is Professor of Environmental History at UVSQ-Paris-Saclay University and holder of the Laudato Si’ Chair Pour une nouvelle exploration de la Terre at the Collège des Bernadins. A specialist in environmental history, he has worked on natural disasters in the modern era, written an intellectual history of environmentalism, and helped ecologize the Château de Versailles.