Forthcoming

The British Empire and the Natural World - Environmental Encounters in Africa, Australia and the Caribbean. Forthcoming.

Beyond mega on a mega continent: Grand Inga on Central Africa's Congo River, in Stanley D. Brunn (ed) Engineering the earth: The impacts of megaengineering projects. Forthcoming.

'Crop or Forest? Missionary, Basotho and Government Tree planting in Lesotho', presented at 'Travel, Situated Knowledge, and Environment', Cadbury Fellows Workshop, Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, 18-19 May 2007. Included in edited volume in process by the Center: Reginald Kline-Cole and David O'Kane (eds) Making and Re-making Africa: Travel, environment and local knowledge in a continent of movement'. In progress.

2012

Personifying Humanitarianism: George Arthur and the Transition from Humanitarian to Development Discourse
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2012, published online Dec 2011
Alan Lester

'British India on Trial': Brighton Military Hospitals and the Politics of Empire in World War I
Journal of Historical Geography,38, 2012, 18-34
Samuel Hyson and Alan Lester,

Humanism, Race and the Colonial Frontier
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37, 2012, 132-48
Alan Lester

Bird hunting in Mishmi Hills of Arunachal Pradesh, north-eastern India [PDF 1.17MB]
Indian Birds Vol. 7 No. 5 134 (Publ. 1 February 2012)
Ambika Aiyadurai

Environmental History of Africa
Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) 2012
Vimbai C. Kwashirai

2011

Empire and Environmental Anxiety
Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800-1920

James Beattie
Series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series
Palgrave Macmillan

A fascinating new interpretation of imperialism and environmental change, revealing the anxieties imperialism generated through environmental transformation and interaction with unknown landscapes. Demonstrating that systematic deforestation accompanied anxieties about human-induced climate change, soil erosion, and a looming timber famine, the book illuminates colonial fears about the power of environments – and environmental change – to affect health. It looks at concerns at the ugliness of urban environments and attempts at improving their appearance, but it also argues that some of the conservation policies and bureaucracies that resulted from expressions of environmental anxiety represented a form of imperial control designed to generate revenue and to enable the more efficient exploitation of resources. Environmental anxiety tied together parts of South Asia and Australasia. Policies, people, plants and ideas were exchanged between these areas, but adapted in light of colonies' particular political, economic and environmental circumstances and problems.

Asoka Kumar Sen
Concept Publishing, 2011

Contemporary indigenous identity assertion contests denial both material as well as epistemic and claims rightful space in the mainstream episteme. Intervening in the debate Representing Tribe seeks to understand in the context of the Ho of Singhbhum why they still continue to remain the most epistemically benighted. The book argues that the over-dependence of researchers on the statist sources preserved at the national and state capitals have more or less committed colonial and post-colonial writings to the colonial imaging of tribe. This work puts this representation under scanner by questioning the broad and unscientific generalizations this rested on and by deploying besides the oft-used statist sources, the untapped village and district-level papers, seeks to remantle the very notion of indigeneity as shaped by the intervention of historical forces. The work in a way initiates the reconstruction of Ho history by underlining new issues which were critical for Ho, rather tribal life in general. Thus Representing Tribe may perhaps lay claim to tread newer furrows by strategising the reinterpretation of colonial rule at work among the tribe and adding substance to socio-economic history by studying such relevant issues as social stratification, gender empowerment and labour migration.

Also in 2011

Beyond Mega on a Mega Continent: Grand Inga on Central Africa’s Congo River
Engineering Earth, Part II, pp.1651-1679
Kate B. Showers

Electrifying Africa: An environmental history with policy implications
Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography, 2011, 93(3): 193-221
Kate B. Showers

Prehistory of Southern African forestry: from vegetable garden to tree plantation
Environment and History, 2011 16(3):295-322
Kate Showers
also in Johnson (ed) Bioinvaders: Themes in Environmental History

The Meyor: A least studied frontier tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, north-east India [PDF 1.89MB]
The Eastern Anthropologist 64:4 (2011)
Ambika Aiyadurai 

Zimbabwe’s Chinhoyi Caves: 1845-1945
Global Environment Journal of History and Natural and Social Sciences, 2011, 71-100
Vimbai C. Kwashirai

2010

The British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia

Edited by: Deepak Kumar, Vinita Damodaran, Rohan D’Souza
Oxford University Press, December 2010

The British empire marked an exceptional ecological moment in world history. Between1600 and 1960, through economic expansion, political strategy, military conquest, and territorial control, it held and linked disparate lands and varied peoples. The environmental encounters of the empire, significantly enough, were multidimensional with, many an ecological legacy still infl uencing and shaping the modern world. The British Empire and the Natural World examines concepts of nature and environmental practices in colonial South Asia.

Focusing on the British empire as a scale and unit of analyses, this volume reconsiders
environmental transformations in the nineteenth century and the complex intercolonial exchanges over environmental ideas, techniques and technologies, and the institutionalization of various environmental imaginings. It explores a range of topics
including colonial forestry, plantation economies, irrigation practices, ethnic identities, and environmental strategies of the empire.

This collection underscores the need to debate the British empire as an apt and helpful conceptual template for the writing of global environmental histories. It also reviews several key debates and shifts in recent writings on environmental history in South Asia.

See also: Environmental Encounters in South Asia [PDF 1.27MB]

Out of this earth: East Indian Adivasis and the Aluminium cartel

Felix Padel and Samarendra Das
Blackswan, July 2010

Capping the biggest mountains in south Odisha are some of the world’s best deposits of Bauxite, the ore for aluminium—mineral wealth to bring prosperity to one of India’s poorest states. But for tribal people who have lived around them since history began, these mountains are sacred—not a resource to be exploited, but a source of life itself, through the water they store, and release in perennial streams.

So metal factories, built in tribal areas with a view to mining the mountain summits, are seen as a new colonial invasion, to be resisted. Thousands of Adivasis have already been displaced, in a process of cultural genocide, that involves notorious scams, and corrupts the values of civil society at the same time as wasting irreplaceable resources.

Aluminium is a metal we take for granted in hundreds of artefacts. But what do we understand about its real costs? This book traces a hidden history, coming alive through hundreds of voices and stories, of how one country after another swallowed promises of prosperity, and plunged into a cycle of exploitation and unrepayable debt. What is the link between the massive meltdown of Iceland’s banks, and the promotion of dams and smelters? Between the mafia-style looting of Russia’s assets and the rise to power of a succession of aluminium barons? Why did the US set a limit during the 1950s-60s and start to outsource aluminium factories to other, poorer countries, such as Ghana, Guinea, Jamaica, India?

The answer lies in hidden subsidies and prohibitive ‘externality costs’.

Sacrificing people: invasion of a tribal landscape

Felix Padel,
Orient Blackswan, July 2010

Sacrificing People is a provocative anthropological study of the structures of power and authority which the British rule imposed on a tribal people of Central India, the Konds. The Konds practised human sacrifice and in the pretext of rooting out this ‘barbaric’ ritual, the British waged wars of conquest against them subjecting them to a century of exploitation.

Recalling the violence during the colonial period, this book puts into perspective the violence and ethnic cleansing in the district of Kandhamal (2007–8) when invading forces burnt dozens of Kond villages. It also brings to light how mining companies have invaded the Kond territory due to the rich Bauxite cappings dominating their largest mountains and displaced several million tribal people.

From colonial intrusion to developmental displacement, the author draws attention to how the colonial mindset and system of exploitation continue till date. Who is an innocent victim? When is the taking of life justified? Who claims the right to do so? Who is sacrificing whom? It is through these questions that this book analyses the roots of human violence which sacrifices the essence of being human

Vimbai Chaumba Kwashirai
Nova Science Publishers Inc, March 2010

This book shows that in pre-Rhodes Zimbabwe, Africans suffered many deprivations including survival, economic provisioning, education and health. Colonialism not only accelerated the exploitation and abuse of Africans but it also exacerbated poverty. Ironically, independence in 1980 temporarily ameliorated but nevertheless exacerbated poverty. Where Prime Minister Smith stifled the emergence of a black middle class, President Mugabe promoted one but forced much of it into the diaspora. Smith oppressed black farmers and Mugabe destroyed white commercial agriculture. Both leaders neglected the needs of poor people. Their style of leadership not only courted international sanctions but also destroyed public and investor confidence in the economy. Both leaders used violence, intolerance, death, intimidation, torture and harassment (VIDITH) to suppress dissent and discontent. Smith used VIDITH to sustain UDI while Mugabe deployed it to quash opposition. Economic factors were secondary to illiberal democracy in explaining poverty in Zimbabwe because the first priority of white and black politicians was political survival. A fundamental relationship exists between good governance, foreign investment, economic growth and the eradication of poverty. Over 70 per cent of Zimbabweans were poor during UDI. It was déjà vu for Zimbabweans in the 1990s and 2000s when poverty increased from 62 to over 75 per cent. A minority of Zimbabweans became rich overnight while the majority lived in abject poverty, creating a huge gap between the wealthy and the poor. Zimbabweans found themselves fighting for the same basic rights they had fought for during the liberation struggle.

Also in 2010

The Royal Society and the Commonwealth: old friendships, new frontiers
Roy MacLeod, July 2010

2009

Vimbai Kwashirai
Cambria Press, November 2009

Literature on Zimbabwe’s modern history is influenced by one particular perspective concerning the historical roots of inequitable land distribution choreographed by British colonialism from 1890. This dominant theme is based on the imperatives of redressing a historical injustice where British people alienated prime land from, among others, the indigenous Shona, Ndebele, and Tonga. The key element in this perspective has been the science of land management, particularly the protection of wooded areas, the soil, and wildlife. The discourse of ecological calamity stresses the damaging outcomes from unregulated timber logging, agriculture, mining and hunting, as well as the threats of degradation and the need to control methods of resource exploitation by humans.

This book examines the debates and processes on woodland exploitation in Zimbabwe during the colonial era (1890–1960). It explores the social, economic, and political contexts of perceptions on woodland distribution and management. Much of the period was characterized by both local and global debates about environmental problems, generating in their wake politically charged and emotive language about the consequences––deforestation, soil erosion, and threats to wildlife. This study analyses the history of exploitation and conservation of the Zimbabwean teak (mkusi or Baikiea plurijuga) and its associated species in Northwestern Matabeleland from 1890 to 1960. Timber exploitation was among the top three colonial economic activities in Matabeleland, including ranching and tobacco cultivation. Concessionaire capitalists and forestry officials dominated the exploitation and conservation of the Zambezi teak woodland or gusu, respectively. On one hand, capitalists sought to extract as much commercial hardwood timber as they could while on the other hand, foresters restricted tree felling.

Conservationism in Zimbabwe: 1850-1950

Vimbai Chaumba Kwashirai
Nova Science Publishers Inc, May 2009

African forests provide the focus for a growing body of historical research in Zimbabwe. This book draws on economic and environmental history approaches in exploring the exploitation and conservation of woodland, respectively. The main focus of the investigation is the consumption–conservation relationship between humans and the forest zone. Customary forest practice in the Zambezi teak or Baikiea woodland points towards a better understanding on the subject, informed by a wide range of sources; oral tradition, missionary records, travel accounts and colonial documents. British imperial interest in Zimbabwe accelerated in the mid-1880s motivated and accelerated by speculative mineral discoveries thought to rival the Witwatersrand gold mines in South Africa. The British South Africa Company colonised Zimbabwe in 1890 expecting to finding rich gold deposits and when these hopes were dashed, white settlers turned their interest to other resources, land and forests. The rapidity with which the BSAC surveyed forest resources was testament to their expected commercial value. The mkusi and other commercial species motivated the government to gazette and establish eight state forest reserves in North-Western Matabeleland with a combined total of 1.6 million acres. In the company era, timber merchants exploited gusu with little or no control and their activities resulted in much deforestation.

Also in 2009

Congo River's Grand Inga hydroelectricity scheme: linking environmental history, policy and impact
Kate B Showers, Water History, 2009 1:331-58

Climate Change, Forest Conservation and Science: A Case Study of New Zealand, 1860s-1920 [PDF 163.01KB]
James Beattie
History of Meteorology 5 (2009)

Ecological and Poverty Impacts of Zimbabwe’s Land Struggles 1980-2010
Global Environment Journal of History and Natural and Social Sciences, 2009, 222-253.
Vimbai C. Kwashirai

2008

Framing India's Hydraulic Crises - The Politics of the Modern Large Dam [PDF 93.48KB]
Rohan D'Souza, Monthly Review, July-August 2008

2007

The Anarchist Geographer: An Introduction to the Life of Peter Kropotkin

Brian Morris
Genge Press, June 2007

Prince Peter (Pyotr Alexeivich) Kropotkin was born into the wealthy Russian aristocracy in 1842, but chose to identify himself with the suffering of the workers and peasants. He became a convinced anarchist, opposed to the power of the state, after witnessing the brutality of the Tsarist regime. Imprisoned twice, he spent most of his life in exile. In his writings and speeches, he strove to bring about revolution by the Russian people themselves, hoping that local peasant communes would govern themselves in Russia. The arrival of Bolshevism dashed these hopes, but Kropotkin’s ideas were influential, inside and outside Russia.

A geographer by profession, Kropotkin was also a forerunner of today’s ecologists with his love and understanding of nature. He was one of the first to challenge Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest in evolution, suggesting instead in his influential Mutual Aid (London, 1902) that human beings and other creatures also co-operate to survive.

Also in 2007

Famine in Bengal: a comparison of the 1770 famine in bengal and the 1897 famine in Chotanagpur 
in the Medieval History Journal, 2007, 10, 143
V.Damodaran

The great El nino of 1789 and its global consequences: reconstructing an extreme climate event in world environmental history in the Medieval History Journal, 2007, 10, 75
Richard Grove

Growing Chinese influences in New Zealand: Chinese Gardens, Identity and Meaning [PDF 4.38MB]
James Beattie
New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 9, 1 (June, 2007): 38-61

Introduction: Asian Environments [PDF 133.24KB]
James Beattie
New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 9, 1 (June, 2007): 2-8

2006

Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century

David Lambert and Alan Lester (eds.)
Cambridge University Press, 2006

This volume uses a series of portraits of 'imperial lives' in order to rethink the history of the British Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It tells the stories of men and women who dwelt for extended periods in one colonial space before moving on to dwell in others, developing 'imperial careers'. These men and women consist of four colonial governors, two governors' wives, two missionaries, a nurse/entrepreneur, a poet/civil servant and a mercenary. Leading scholars of colonialism guide the reader through the ways that these individuals made the British Empire, and the ways that the empire made them. Their life histories constituted meaningful connections across the empire that facilitated the continual reformulation of imperial discourses, practices and cultures. Together, their stories help us to re-imagine the geographies of the British Empire and to destabilize the categories of metropole and colony.

Now in paperback format, June 2010

Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision

Brian Morris
Trafford Publishing (Nov 2006)

Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision provides an illuminating account of one of Britain's best-loved nature writers, the incomparable Richard Jefferies. Lucid and comprehensive the book critically explores the diversity of Jefferies' literary talents, for this Wiltshire naturalist was without doubt a many sided and comprehensive genius. As a prose poet of nature Jefferies, like Thoreau, attempted to combine a vivid empirical naturalism with an extraordinary poetic imagination. He was indeed, as Brian Morris demonstrates, a pioneer ecologist.

Although blessed with some insightful early biographers, Jefferies has been very much a neglected figure, and this study attempts to re-affirm his importance and relevence as a literary naturalist.

Given the diversity of the Jefferies talents the structure of the book largely follows, and critically explores, the many different genres that Jefferies expressed in his writing. An initial chapter outlines Jefferies biography the history of a short life, for Jeffries, like Keats, died of tuberculosis and at the early age of thirty-eight.

The History and Conservation of Mammals in Malawi

Brian Morris
Kachere Series (Oct 2006)

This book, the first of its kind to be published in Malawi, considers the role of animals in African human culture and history, taking Malawi as a case study. It examines the relationship between humans and mammals from the time of the first inhabitants of Malawi through to the present day. It explains how game parks and protected species came into existence, the reasons why mammal numbers have dwindled, and provides details of the different mammal species, government and independent data.

The work includes a short history of wildlife preservation in Malawi focusing on the beginnings of the Nyasaland Fauna Preservation Society, the now present Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi. Commissioned by this society, the study is based on ethno-biology/zoological research undertaken in Malawi with support of the Nuffield Foundation and the Centre for Social Research, University of Malawi.

Insects and Human Life

Brian Morris
Berg Publishers; illustrated edition (Jan 2006)

This pioneering book looks at the importance of insects to culture. While in the developed West a good deal of time and money may be spent trying to exterminate insects, in other cultures human-insect relations can be far more subtle and multi-faceted. Like animals, insects may be revered or reviled - and in some tribal communities insects may be the only source of food available. How people respond to, make use of, and relate to insects speaks volumes about their culture.

In an effort to get to the bottom of our vexed relationship with the insect world, Brian Morris spent years in Malawi, a country where insects proliferate and people contend. In Malawi as in many tropical regions, insects have a profound impact on agriculture, the household, disease and medicine, and hence on oral literature, music, art, folklore, recreation and religion. Much of the complexity of human-insect relations rests on paradox: insects may represent the source of contagion, but they are also integral to many folk remedies for a wide range of illnesses. They may be at the root of catastrophic crop failure, but they can also be a form of sustenance.

Weaving science with personal observations, Morris demonstrates a profound and intimate knowledge of virtually every aspect of human-insect relations. Not only is this book extraordinarily useful in terms of the more practical side of entomology, it also provides a wealth of information on the role of insects in cultural production. Malawian proverbs alone provide many such delightful examples - 'Bemberezi adziwa nyumba yake' ('The carpenter bee knows his own home').

This final volume in Morris' trilogy on Malawi's animal and insect worlds is certain to become a classic study of uncharted territory - the insect world that surrounds us and how we relate to it.

Also in 2006

From Forestry to Soil Conservation: British Tree Management in Lesotho's Grassland Ecosystem
Kate B Showers
Conservation and Society, Year 2006, Volume 4, Issue 1

A history of African soil: Perceptions, Use and Abuse
Kate B. Showers
Chapter 6, pg.118-176 in J.R. McNeil and Verena Winiwarter (eds) Soils and Societies: Perspectives
from environmental history. Cambridge: White Horse Press, 2006

Soil erosion and conservation: An international history and a cautionary tale
Kate B. Showers
In  Warkentin, B. (ed.) 2006  Footsteps in the Soil: People and Ideas in Soil History, Elsevier.

Water in British India: The Making of a 'Colonial Hydrology' [PDF 134.85KB]
Rohan D'Souza
History Compass 4/4 (2006): 621-628

Drowned and Dammed. Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India [PDF 47.81KB]
Rohan D'Souza
Oxford 9780195682175 2006

2005

Mapping African Soils
Kate B. Showers
Environmental History, 2005, 10(2):314-317

Imperial Gullies: Soil erosion and conservation in Lesotho
Kate B. Showers
Ohio University Press,Athens, 2005.

2004

Rethinking Science, Religion and Nature in Environmental History: Drought in Early Twentieth-Century New Zealand [PDF 215.46KB]
James Beattie
Historical Social Research, Vol. 29 2004  No. 3, 82-103

2003

Damming the Mahanadi river: The emergence of multi-purpose river valley development in India (1943-46) [PDF 1.56MB]
Rohan D'Souza, Indian Economic Social History Review 2003; 40; 81

Supply-Side Hydrology in India - The Last Gasp [PDF 45.23KB]
Rohan D'Souza, Economic and Political Weekly September 6, 2003

Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand, 1840–1941: Climate Change, Soil Erosion, Sand Drift, Flooding and Forest Conservation [PDF 196.24KB]
James Beattie
Environment and History 9 (2003): 379–92

2002

Crisis before the Fall: Some Speculations on the Decline of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals [PDF 708.78KB]
Rohan D'Souza, Social Scientist, Vol. 30, No. 9/10. (Sep. - Oct., 2002), pp. 3-30

Water scarcity and urban Africa: An overview of urban-rural water linkages
Kate B. Showers
World Development, 2002, 30(4):621-648.

2000

The Power of Animals: An Ethanography

Brian Morris
Berg Publishers; New edition (Nov 2000)

The multiple ways in which people relate to animals provide a revealing window through which to examine a culture. Western cultures tend to view animals either as pets or food, and often overlook the vast number of roles that they may play within a culture and in social life more generally: their use in medicine, folk traditions and rituals. This comprehensive and very readable study focuses on Malawi people and their rich and varied relationship with animals -- from hunting through to their use as medicine. More broadly, through a rigorous and detailed study the author provides insights which show how the people's relationship to their world manifests itself not strictly in social relations, but just as tellingly in their relatioships with animals -- that, in fact, animals constitute a vital role in social relations. While significantly advancing classic African ethnographic studies, this book also incorporates current debates in a wide range of disciplines -- from anthropology through to gender studies and ecology.

Animals and Ancestors: An Ethanography

Brian Morris
Berg Publishers; 2nd edition (Oct 2000)

Ever since the emergence of human culture, people and animals have co-existed in close proximity. Humans have always recognized both their kinship with animals and their fundamental differences, as animals have always been a threat to humans' well-being. The relationship, therefore, has been complex, intimate, reciprocal, personal, and -- crucially -- ambivalent. It is hardly surprising that animals evoke strong emotions in humans, both positive and negative.

This companion volume to Morris' important earlier work, The Power of Animals, is a sustained investigation of the Malawi people's sacramental attitude to animals, particularly the role that animals play in life-cycle rituals, their relationship to the divinity and to spirits of the dead. How people relate to and use animals speaks volumes about their culture and beliefs. This book overturns the ingrained prejudice within much ethnographic work, which has often dismissed the pivotal role animals play in culture, and shows that personhood, religion, and a wide range of rituals are informed by, and even dependent upon, human-animal relations.