Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development 1800-1950

OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS Editors J. HARRIES J . RO B E RT S O N P. A . S L A C K

R . J . W. E VA N S J. R. L. MADDICOT T R . S E RV I C E

B . WA R D - P E R K I N S

This page intentionally left blank

Modernizing Nature Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development 1800–1950 S. RAVI RAJAN

CL ARENDON PRESS OXFORD ●

1

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © S. Ravi Rajan 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–927796–6

978–0–19–927796–4

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To Amma and Appa

Acknowledgements The book you are about to read would never have been possible without the kindness and generosity of scores of critters. Over the next few pages, I would like to acknowledge the wonderful beings that have inspired, enabled me to respire, and often, made me perspire, in the journey to get this manuscript off my desk and into your hands. Point Reyes, where I am writing this, is stunningly beautiful, and its everyday magic serves as a reminder to begin by thanking all the non human entities that have enriched my life and this writing experience. Just this very moment, as I look out of the window, in a house literally at the edge of the earth, I see a fully clothed mountain, with trees swaying to and fro in the breeze, and in the distance, the blue of the mighty Pacific and some of the few remaining secrets that the terra-aqueous globe poses to humanity. I find myself humming what I remember of an old Australian environmental song: ‘Open your eyes to the sights of the forest, Cascades of color and form . . . Every small place you look around you, a new kind of feeling is born . . . See the tall trees reach up to the sky, Seedlings that spring from the earth. You are the one, now must decide. How much is this pretty one?’ Over the years, I have been extremely fortunate to have had many such sublime moments, and to have encountered, experienced, and in some cases, befriended, snakes and kangaroo rats, otters and sea lions, horses and donkeys, tigers and bobcats, dogs and monkeys, hornbills and ravens, and sal, teak, and redwood forests, complete with their sounds, sights and smells. Perhaps more than anyone else, it is the dignity, grace, and sometimes, just the very presence of these friends—for they are friends—that has inspired and nourished, and made it possible to sustain a long-term writing project such as this. Barely a couple of hours ago, for example, as I was wading in the cold blue ocean water, I noticed, quite suddenly, the friendly eyes of a harbour seal, barely a few meters away, its whiskers twitching in an inquisitive and welcoming manner. The seal and I ended up spending the morning together, communicating, without uttering a single spoken word. I am especially grateful to have had the opportunity to get to know and share a bit of my life with a number of specific individuals. They include Maharajah, Jesse, Cho Cho, the one and only Karpa, Chinki, Kutti, Panda, Patch Cat, Snow White, Catomite, Hee Hee, Ayuka, and of course, my two little darlings, Ali and Jo.

Acknowledgements

vii

Having come of age when ecology, rather than terror, was the looming public issue, these seemingly innocent emotive sensibilities evolved, in the company of some truly special people, into a full blown social, political and economic understanding of the character of environmental problems and crises. As a young teenager, I was fortunate to have found an extremely talented group of friends with whom I discovered India by foot, bus, train, and truck top. It is during the years spent with these people, my erstwhile colleagues in the environmental action group, Kalpavriksh, and in forests, dam sites, and vast expanses of beauty and waste, that the sensitivities informing this book took root. I would therefore like to thank everyone in the organization that the historian, Ram Guha, has called the Kalpavriksh school of social ecology. I am especially grateful to Pradeep Malhotra, who taught me to write and edit; Prathiba Pande, Ashish Kothari, Mahesh Rangarajan, Himanshu Malhotra, Jagdish Krishnaswami, Ghazala Shahabuddin, Mahendra Vyas, Seema Bhatt, Sharad Gaur, Himanshu Uberoi, Sunita Narain, Rohan D’Souza, E. Somanathan, Una Mansingh, Priti and Niti Anand, Rahul Ram, and Amita Baviskar. I would also like to acknowledge everyone with whom I spent more than two extremely intense and educative years in and around Bhopal, and in particular, Anil and Mira Sadgopal, Satinath Sarangi, Sadhna Karnik, Vinod Raina, Gautam Bannerji, Shobha Sadagopan, Radha Kumar, Alok Pratap Singh, Sagar Dhara, and Arvind Rajagopal. I am equally indebted to several others who enriched my life in myriad ways during this period and for years afterward—among others, Joy Benjamin, Keith Jordan, Priya Deshingkar, Pallava Bagla, Subadra Menon, Smitu Kothari, Sima Sharma, Harsh Sethi, Kashyap Mankodi, Chattrapati Singh, Claude Alvares, Ranjit Nair, Deepak Kumar, Jayanta Bandhopadhyay, Praful Bidwai, Dharma Kumar, Vandana Shiva, Chandrika Parmar, and Yogam Ram. I am also fortunate to have some extraordinary mentors. I am particularly grateful to Shekhar Singh and Uma, for all their time and generosity, Thomas Matthew, Dunu Roy, Imrana Quadeer, Ashis Nandy and Ravi Chopra for their encouragement and opportunities, Anil Agarwal, for his sheer illuminance, Ruma Ghosh, for whom there aren’t words that do justice, and Shiv Visvanathan, a teacher and a dear friend, without whose provocative presence, I might well have ended up a boring something else. I am also extremely lucky to have found outstanding and dedicated teachers at the University of Delhi, who provided me with an education on par with the best in the world. I am particularly grateful to the philosophical society of St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and to the unparalleled R.K. Gupta, who taught me the virtues of equanimity, rigour and jargon

viii

Acknowledgements

free expression, and Rishi Nanda, Shanker, G.L. Pandit, Nirmalangshu Mukherji, J.P.S. Uberoi, Veena Das, Madhu Sarin and Dilip Simeon, each of whom exposed me to different facets of excellence. I am also grateful to Raka Mukerji, Mrs Gupta, and the incomparable Sheku, the dog that many of us were convinced, understood Aristotle. I am equally indebted to a deeply enriching summer I spent at the Center for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and especially, to Madhav Gadgil, for his guidance. At Oxford, I am extremely lucky to have found Barbara Harriss, who in addition to being a brilliant college adviser, became a confidante and friend; Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, who will always remain an inspiration; Cecilia Dick, who taught me what enlightened administration is about; Michael Adas, who inspired me with his scholarship and modesty; and Robert Fox, who was always a tower of strength. I will forever be indebted to Anna Guagnini who provided advice, encouragement, friendship, and so much else, and to John Darwin, who with his precise erudition inspired and enabled, and without whom this book might not be. Other critically important people are Herminio Martins and William Beinart, who provided me with a tough but fair examination and have been very supportive afterward; Jeff Burley, for always making time for me; his colleagues at the Oxford Forestry Institute, especially, Peter Kanowski, who were invaluable informants; and Michael Shortland, who first encouraged me to shift from philosophy to history of science. I would also like to thank Paul Weindling, David Arnold, Giuliano Pancaldi, Terrence Ranger, Tapan Roy Chowdhury, Judith Brown and Paul Greenough. I am particularly indebted to two extraordinarily generous and big hearted individuals, Ramachandra Guha and Richard Grove, who, in their separate ways, are instrumental for my choice of topic for this book. Both these gentlemen helped in ways that are hard to express in words. I would also like to thank the friends and colleagues at Oxford and its environs who helped in various ways throughout this project. Among the many are Troth Wells, Adam Fox, Anna Bramwell, Anthony Gaston, Cassie Watson, Humera Ahmed, Joanne McGreggor, Ken Wilson, Mark Harrison, Matthew Thompson, Marlene Buchy, Nicky Pound, John Clark, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Philippe Binder, Maartin Hajer, Richard Drayton, Minoti Kaul, Bishnu Mahapatra, Minoti Dash, Maya Unnithan, Ajay Skaria, Vinita Damodaran, Gowher Rizvi, Saam Trivedi, and members of the Wolfson College Cricket and Hockey teams, the Boat Club, and the editorial board of Romulus. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge Norma Neal, Ian Purvis, Graham Payne, Len Bucknell, Pete

Acknowledgements

ix

Warren, Carol Wratten, Greta Selby, Tracy Fuzzard, Janet Walker, Jan Scriven, Angela Moore, and the ‘Coffee Ladies’ of Wolfson College, for their wonderful hospitality. I am also extremely grateful to the scholars and teachers who I had the good fortune to work with at other institutions. At Berkeley, I am deeply indebted to Michael Watts, Richard Norgaard, Lawrence Cohen, Paul Rabinow, Jeff Romm, Richard Walker, Allen Pred, Sharad Lele, Priya Rangan, Eeva Burgland, Mark Poffenberger, Raka and Isha Ray, Iain and Gillian Boal, and Sharad Chari, for their time and many stimulating conversations. At Cornell, I am in debt to Sheila Jasanoff, Trevor Pinch, Ron Kline, Ron Herring, Ann Gold, Peter Dear, Steve Hilgartner, Archana Prasad, Charis Thompson, Adrian Cussins, John Carson, Lillian Issacs, Kavita Philip, Kim and Mike Fortun and particularly, Peter Taylor, who encouraged and helped beyond the call of duty. At Berlin, I am grateful to Lorraine Daston, Simon Schaffer, Everett Mendelson, Skuli Sigurdsson, Elvira Scheich, Libby Schweber, Joachin Radkau, Frank Uekoetter, Franz Brüggemeier, Paul Richards, Peder Anker, Christophe Luthy, Michael Dettelbach, and Christophe Bonneuil. At Santa Cruz, I am extremely fortunate to work amongst a wonderful set of colleagues who informed this book in a multitude of ways. They include Anna Tsing, Hugh Raffles, Nancy Chen, Mark Cioc, Edmund Burke, Shelly Errington, Margaret Fitzsimmons, David Goodman, Daniel Press, Erika Zavaleta, Deborah Letourneau, Steve Gliessman, Greg Gilbert, Dennis Kelso, Donna Haraway, Jim Clifford, Chris Connery, Suresh and Madhu Lodha, Onuttom Narain, Paul Lubeck, Monica Casper, Ronnie Lipshutz, Melanie DuPuis, Manuel Pastor, Jonathan Fox, Ben Crow, Brian Fulfrost, and Loki Pandey. It has also been wonderful to have been associated with the American Society for Environmental History and have found, as colleagues and as friends, three wonderful scholars and people in Douglas Weiner, Colin Duncan and Verena Winiwarter, each of whom has been precious and invaluable during the course of the writing of this book. I am also lucky to have the good fortune of working with or otherwise learning from Lawrence Grossman, Ken Pomeranz, Nancy Jacobs, Richard Tucker, James Webb, James McCann, Stephanie Pincetl, Donald Worster, Carolyn Merchant, Stephen Pyne, Minakshi Menon, Libby Robin, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Vasant Saberwal, Michael Dove, Robert Harms, James Scott, Jane Carruthers, Melissa Leach, James Fairhead, Ian Scoones, Tim Forsyth, Peter Coats, Nancy Peluso, Tom A, Les Levidow, Jerome Ravetz, Steve Anderson, Kären Wigen, Martin Lewis, John Richards,

x

Acknowledgements

Carole Crumley, Michelle Yee, Nandini Sundar, Bina Agarwal, Lata Shankar, Nandini Rao, Anthony Oliver-Smith, Susanna Hoffman, Pia Chatterji, Steve Stoll, Meredith McKittrick, J.R. McNeill, Ian McCarthy, Victor Lal, N.S. Jodha, N.C. Saxena, Arturo Escobar, Yrjö Haila, Malcolm Nicolson, Meeta Sunny, Teddy Goldsmith, Judith Carney, Henry Lowood, Sumit Guha, Greg Mitman, Brian Wynne, Geoff Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, and Steve Fuller. I am also indebted to Oxford University Press for publishing my book in this series, and to Robert Evans, Kay Rogers, and Anne Gelling. I am especially grateful to Jackie Pritchard for her excellent copy-editing. Some of my most inspirational teachers have been my own students. Many of the people mentioned in this paragraph have been my doctoral students; others, good friends and colleagues whom I first got acquainted with either when they took a graduate course with or TA’d for me. They are, in no particular order, Helen Tilley, Beth Drexler, Kristy Bright, Krista Harper, Ethan Stock, Bruce Goldstein, Cori Hayden, Roopali Phadke, Benjamin Weil, Ariane de Bremond, Chris Bacon, Anna Zivian, Eunice Blavascunas, Dustin Mulvaney, Keith Warner, Dorothy Overpeck, Paul Steinberg, and Joy Hagen. I am immensely grateful to Anna Zivian for readily agreeing to index this book. I would next like to thank the librarians of the Indian Institute Library, the Rhodes House Library, the Radcliffe Science Library, the Plant Sciences Library, the Duke Humpheries Library, the staff of the university archives and of the various other libraries at Oxford and especially, Simon Bailey; the staff of the University Library in Cambridge, the staff of the British Library and Public Records Office, London; the librarians and the staff of the libraries and archives at the University of California, Berkeley, Cornell and Berlin, the Rashtriya Foresry Institute in Dehra Dun; and the National Archives in Delhi. I am especially grateful to the ever helpful Cheryl Oaks of the Forest History Society, North Carolina, and Adrian Hale, then librarian of Wolfson College, whose enthusiasm and efficiency defies description. Another set of institutional entities to thank are the Rhodes Scholarship committee of India, which awarded me a Radhakrishnan scholarship, the Beit Scholarship committee at Oxford, the Wolfson Junior Research fellowship committee, the S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup selection committee at Berkeley, the Rockefeller postdoctoral fellowship committee at Cornell, the Walter Rathenau fellowship committee at the Max Planck Instit für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, and Bell travel grant committee of the Forest History Society.

Acknowledgements

xi

I reserve my deepest gratitude to a few special people. I am very fortunate indeed to have friends as wonderful as Sunny Narang, Reid Hoffman, and Lorcan Kennan. I am also extremely fortunate to have had Anuradha Mittal as a partner during this project. And I am lucky to have a brother and his family, and parents as giving and understanding as mine. It is to them that I dedicate this book. I realize that I might well be missing some key people. All I can say to you, if you are one of them is: I am sincerely sorry. I do wish I had kept a systematic list, rather than relying on my fickle brain to remember everyone at the last minute. Please do get in touch, and I’ll not only make amends in any future edition of this book, should there be one, but buy you a drink of your choice. Needless to say, we will toast to your favourite companion animal! Thank you all. Ravi Rajan Point Reyes, CA

This page intentionally left blank

Contents List of Figures and Tables

xvi

1. Introduction 1.1. Science and Colonial Environmental History 1.2. The Case of British Colonial Forestry

1 3 6

1.2.1. Historical Overview 6 1.2.2. Historiographical Overview 14

1.3. The Framework of the Book 1.3.1. The Outline of the Chapters

17 19

2. A Contract with Nature 2.1. The Climatic Benefits of Forests 2.2. The Continental Forestry Tradition

21 21 35

2.2.1. Stages in the Development of German Forestry: A Brief Overview 37 2.2.2. German Forestry as an Ideology of Resource Use 41 2.2.3. German Forestry and Society 43 2.2.4. French Forestry 44 2.2.5. Modern French Forestry and People 48

2.3. Resonant Themes 2.3.1. Modernizing Nature 50 2.3.2. Emancipatory Appropriation and Technocracy

2.4. Conclusion 3. The Empire of Nature 3.1. The Campaign for Forest Conservancy in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 3.1.1. Forests and Climate 64 3.1.2. The Ethos of Colonial Science and the Economic Argument for Conservation 68 3.1.3. The Campaign for Forest Conservancy in the Cape 74

50 52

53 55 61

xiv

Contents 3.2. The Onset of Continental Forestry in the British Empire 3.2.1. 3.2.2. 3.2.3. 3.2.4. 3.2.5.

79

Indian Foresters and Forest Management 80 Indian Forestry as an Attitude to Nature 90 Indian Forestry and Society 92 Foresters and Other Colonial Officials 96 Empire Forestry, 1850–1900: The Wider Scenario 100

3.3. Conclusions 4. The Empire Strikes Back 4.1. Introduction 4.2. The Contexts of the Empire Forestry Conferences

102 108 108 113

4.2.1. Changing Attitudes to Science Policy 114 4.2.2. The First World War and Forestry 121 4.2.3. The Origins of the Empire Forestry Conferences 125 4.2.4. Science, Colonial Development, and Conferences, 1928–1952 129

4.3. Foresters and Colonial Forest Policy

138

4.3.1. Forest Policy at the Empire Forestry Conferences 142

4.4. Conclusion 5. The Imperial Environmentalist 5.1. Paradigm Articulation

153 159 160

5.1.1. The ‘Classical’ Problems 160 5.1.2. Organization and Institution Building for Research 165 5.1.3. Resonant Themes 170

5.2. Agro-forestry Dilemmas

171

5.2.1. Empire Foresters and the Debate on Shifting Cultivation 171 5.2.2. Foresters and the Politics of Soil Erosion 179 5.2.3. Wider Issues 190 5.2.4. Resonant Themes 193

5.3. Conclusion

194

Contents

xv

6. The Contested Legacy 6.1. The Nature of Colonial Forestry: A Revisionist Account 6.2. Postscript: Widening the Argument

197

Appendix 1: Syllabus and Coursework at Nancy Appendix 2: Brief Profiles of Some Colonial Scientist-Conservationists in India in the Period 1800–1850 Appendix 3: A List of Participants at the Empire Forestry Conferences

207

Bibliography Index

242 267

197 199

210 215

List of Figures and Tables FIGURES Figure 1.1.

The colonial network of scientific environmental management Figure 4.1. Conference train, Second Empire Forestry Conference, Canada Figure 5.1.–5.4. Government of Palestine soil erosion calendar

2 109 180

TABLE Table 5.1. The technocratic perception: environmental protection

189

1 Introduction Although more known as the age of empires and great wars, the hundred years 1850–1950 were also the era of ecological transformation on a global scale. During the nineteenth century, colonial governments established a number of scientific agencies to manage the landscapes of their empires.¹ In the first half of the twentieth century they consolidated on this investment by creating an increasingly co-ordinated network of natural and social scientific institutions (see Fig. 1).² They thereby bequeathed a legacy of eco-development to what today is a considerable proportion of the third world. ¹ See e.g. C. Jefferies, A Review of Colonial Research 1940–1960 (London, 1964); E. B. Worthington, The Ecological Century: A Personal Appraisal (Oxford, 1983); id., Science in Africa (Oxford, 1938); id., Middle Eastern Science (London, 1945); Lord Hailey, An African Survey (London, 1956); Inter-Faculty Committee for African Studies, University of Oxford Symposium on Africa in the Colonial Period I—The Conservation and Development of Natural Resources (Oxford, 1975) (hereafter IFCAS Symp.). It is worth noting here that even the then emergent science of ecology was employed for imperial ends. The work of Arthur Tansley is particularly relevant in this context. Tansley was a pioneering plant ecologist and coined the term, ‘ecosystem’. He was one of the founders of the British Ecological Society, and, as Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, attempted to expand the scope of plant ecological studies worldwide. To this end, Tansley collaborated with scientists in many of the colonial services. Amongst the most fruitful of these collaborations was the one with T. F. Chipp, a forest officer who worked on the Gold Coast and elsewhere in Africa. Perhaps the best known of the products of these collaborations was: A. G. Tansley and T. F. Chipp (eds.), Aims and Methods in Study of Vegetation (London, 1926). Tansley and Chipp made a strong case for ecological studies in the service of resource management and exploitation in the empire. Other noteworthy colonial influences in early ecology include studies by botanists, soil scientists, and hydrologists such as A. F. Wilhelm Schimper, Johannes Mildbraed, Homer Le Roy Shantz, Curtis Fletcher Marbut, André Aubreville, T. F. Chipp, G. P. Milne, Fernand Moreau, Bernard Dearman Burtt, and Clement Gillman (R. W. J. Keay, IFCAS Symp. 83). For two recent works on the subject of the history of colonial ecology, see Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945 (Cambridge, Mass, 2001) and Helen Tilley. ‘Africa as a Living Laboratory: The African Research Survey and the British Colonial Empire: Consolidating Environmental, Medical, and Anthropological Debates, 1920–1940’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 2001). ² J. McCracken, ‘Experts and Expertise in Colonial Malawi’, African Affairs, 81 (1982), 102.

2

Introduction

Figure 1.1. The colonial network of scientific environmental management. Source: Adapted from Worthington, Science in Africa, 2.

This enduring legacy has however been deeply contested. The protests began during the colonial era as uprisings by peasants in villages and hamlets. Over the ensuing decades, they have lingered and metamorphosed into full-blown critiques of post-colonial science policy.³ Given this potency, it is reasonable to argue that historical investigations into the agendas of colonial scientific environmentalist institutions are of practical relevance to governments, policy makers, and activists. At the same time, they have potential to inform our understanding of colonial and postcolonial environmental history, and indeed, add important dimensions to our knowledge of the impact of European imperialism on the third world. These tangible policy-relevant and academic connections between the past and the present provide the prime motivation for this monograph. ³ For a general idea of the extent of the critique, see T. Hayter, Exploited Earth: British Aid and the Environment (London, 1989); Rainforest Information Centre, The World Bank Tropical Action Plan for Papua New Guinea: A Critique (Lismore, 1990); M. Colchester and L. Lohmann, The Tropical Forestry Action Plan: What Progress? (Penang, 1990); A. Agrawal et al., Citizens Reports on the State of the Environment in India (Delhi, 1982, 1984–5); J. Westoby, The Purposes of Forests: Follies of Development (Oxford, 1987). See also A. Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence (Delhi,1989); F. A. Marglin and S. A. Marglin (eds.), Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance (Oxford, 1990); V. Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London, 1989); C. Alvares, Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West, 1492 to the Present Day (New York, 1991); id., Science, Development and Violence: The Twilight of Modernity (Delhi, 1992); and the journal The Ecologist.

Introduction

3

The emphasis in this study is forestry in the British Empire. This choice stems from the fact that British colonial forestry was arguably one of the most extensive imperial frameworks of scientific natural resource management anywhere, and continues to be a key locus of environmental conflicts across Asia and Africa. There is also a pragmatic reason for the choice. Unlike other forms of colonial environmental intervention, such as agriculture and irrigation, forestry is unique in that all its practitioners from the second half of the nineteenth century were trained in one clearly identifiable scientific tradition.⁴ This institutional homogeneity is extremely handy to undertake the kind of broad-based investigation into the history of environmental management being attempted here. The purpose of this chapter is to set the context for the argument to follow. It begins by critically discussing what is involved in focusing on science and technology in doing environmental history. It goes on to locate the historiography of British colonial forestry within the context of this analysis and thereby lays the groundwork for the ensuing chapters.

1.1. SCIENCE AND COLONIAL ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY During the past two decades, the evolving scholarship on colonial environmental history has shed considerable light on British colonial attitudes to natural resource management and the human and ecological impact of the ensuing policies in a wide range of contexts. However, the question of the role of science in shaping colonial environmental agendas and the attitudes and values concerning nature and society implicit in scientific resource management are largely unaddressed.⁵ With a few exceptions, the scientific institutions, communities, or disciplines concerned with colonial resource management remain largely understudied.⁶ ⁴ This point will be elaborated and developed further in the next section of this chapter. ⁵ For an elaborated version of the argument in this section see Ravi Rajan, ‘The Colonial Ecodrama: Resonant Themes in the Environmental History of South Africa and South Asia’, in S. Dovers, R. Edgecombe, and W. Guest (eds.), Perspectives on Southern African Environmental History (Athens, Oh., 2003). ⁶ The notable exception is the work of Richard Grove. See R. H. Grove, Green Imperialism (Cambridge, 1995); ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, and (with D. Anderson) ‘Introduction: The Scramble for Eden: Past, Present and Future in African Conservation’, in D. Anderson and R. H. Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Politics and Practice (Cambridge, 1987); ‘Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa 1820–1900’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15/2 (1989); ‘The Origins

4

Introduction

The reason for this general neglect, arguably, is that scholars have thus far tended to subsume science within wider concerns that have driven disciplinary enquiries in colonial history, economic geography, and, more recently, environmental history—such as the political economy of imperialism. In doing so, they base their work on the assumption that science and scientific ideas were deeply embedded in and manifestations of imperial rule rather than ‘an independent lever externally brought to bear on contemporaneous political and economic events’.⁷ Science and scientific institutions are consequently seen as ‘tools of empire’.⁸ Scientists in turn are seen as servants of the colonial state. This attitude is clearly manifest in the term ‘state science’ used by many scholars to explain the nature of the colonial sciences of resource management.⁹ The principle implicit in this ideal-type is that the efficacy of the imperial scientific and scientific institutions concerned with environmental management can be explained deductively with reference to the political and economic exigencies of imperialism. Recently, a few scholars have begun to make the case that such an approach conceals as much as it reveals. For one of the pioneers, Richard Grove, the roots of conservation as a colonial scientific concern lay in the role played by scientific communities in the colonial periphery in generating and propagating ideas of resource conservation. Grove is not explicitly clear about what such conservation ideas actually meant in terms of agendas and ideologies of resource management. Despite this, his work offers a very important message for imperial environmental history and allied fields. By identifying scientific communities and institutions as distinctive entities in colonial society, it suggests that science is not merely a passive tool of empire but that it has cognitive, ideological, and interventionist of Environmentalism’, Nature, 345/6370 (3 May 1990); ‘Colonial Conservation, Ecological Hegemony and Popular Resistance: Towards a Global Synthesis’, in J. MacKenzie (ed.), Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester, 1990); ‘Imperialism and the Discourse of Desiccation: The Institutionalisation of Global Environmental Concerns and the Role of the Royal Geographical Society 1860–1880’, in M. Bell, R. Butlin, and M. Heffernan (eds.), Geography and Imperialism (Manchester, 1995); and ‘Chiefs, Boundaries and Sacred Woodlands: Early Nationalism and the Defeat of Colonial Conservationism in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, 1870–1916’ (unpublished paper, 1993). Other important and relevant work in this genre include Richard Drayton’s excellent book on the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven, 2000). ⁷ MacKenzie, introduction to Imperialism and the Natural World. ⁸ See D. R. Headrick, Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1981). ⁹ See e.g. R. Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Delhi, 1989).

Introduction

5

traditions distinct from others in colonial society, especially those of the colonial bureaucracy.¹⁰ It also advances the idea that scientists were active agents in the formation of environmental policy, often at loggerheads with members of other colonial agencies.¹¹ This important insight is arguably quite critical for studies of the colonial scientific resource management frameworks established in the mid nineteenth century and later, and especially relevant to post-colonial contexts. In order to appreciate its significance, it is important to note that many of the colonial scientific regimes of resource management had first developed within specific social, economic, and political milieus in Europe. The transfer of these technical frameworks to colonial contexts meant the introduction, in such settings, of their implicit values and ideologies on nature and resource use priorities, their inherent modes of production, and their approaches toward engineering specific forms of ecological and human change.¹² The vehicles of such transfers, which were indeed fraught with all sorts of contestations, including over uses of nature and social engineering, were the scientific communities involved in natural resource management. Trained in continental institutions, they imbibed the traditions and perspectives of the European sciences. When they went to the colonial empires, these scientists constituted ‘epistemic communities’ or ‘agree-cultures’ carrying with them agendas of resource use developed within a European context.¹³ There was however a rub. Although colonial governments financed the scientific frameworks of resource management and the training of scientific communities, they were not committed to abiding by all the priorities identified by scientists. While ecological regulation was an important issue, particularly by the late nineteenth century, it was by no means their only major concern.¹⁴ Policies on environmental management advocated ¹⁰ See especially, Grove, ‘Chiefs, Boundaries and Sacred Woodlands’. ¹¹ An excellent account of such contests is Grove, ‘Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa’. See also William Beinart, ‘Introduction: the Politics of Colonial Conservation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15/2 (1989). ¹² The dynamics and politics of such transfers has been an important theme of discussion in the growing critique of science and technics referred to at the beginning of this chapter. See e.g. Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence and Marglin and Marglin (eds.), Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance. ¹³ The idea of scientists as epistemic communities occurs widely in the sociology of science and has recently begun to be deployed in discussions of the international politics of the environment. See e.g. A. Hurrell and B. Kingsbury, ‘The International Politics of the Environment: An Introduction’, in Hurrell and Kingsbury (eds.), The International Politics of the Environment (Oxford, 1992). For a description of ‘agree-cultures’ see Pat Roy Mooney, ‘Private Parts, Public Parts’, paper presented to The Yale Agrarian Studies Seminar. ¹⁴ Beinart, ‘Introduction: The Politics of Colonial Conservation’.

6

Introduction

by scientists usually had ramifications such as civil unrest, which colonial governments were not willing to accept. Colonial environmental politics, as in environmental politics in other contexts, therefore often involved contests between scientists and scientific institutions, on the one hand, and colonial governments and government departments (usually another scientific department), on the other. At stake were material priorities and ideological visions. Moreover, there were conflicts between scientists and indigenous peoples and between scientists and governments over what to do with local populations.¹⁵ Against this backdrop, a focus on science in colonial environmental history involves asking three broad questions. At the outset, there is the issue of the priorities and objectives of natural resource management of the various imperial scientific institutions. Important here is an understanding of the European origins of these sciences and the nature and extent to which this background informed the goals and priorities of colonial environmental regimes. Secondly, there is the question of the ideological orientation of these sciences—what these agendas meant in terms of attitudes concerning nature and toward indigenous populations. Last, but by no means least, the differences in attitudes and priorities between scientists and others in colonial society, and the resultant tensions and conflicts are worthy of investigation. It is the first two of these issues and, peripherally, the third which will constitute the main themes of this book. The next section provides an overview of British colonial forestry, the topic of the study, and identifies the contexts and institutions that will be the objects of its focus.

1.2. THE CASE OF BRITISH COLONIAL FORESTRY

1.2.1. Historical Overview British colonial forestry developed over four distinct stages: the phase prior to the mid-nineteenth century; the period 1860–1900; the first two decades of the twentieth century culminating in the immediate aftermath ¹⁵ None of these conflicts is unique to environmental history. Indeed, the issue of conflicts between colonial scientific communities, their governments, and local peoples has been a major theme in the historiography of colonial science. See e.g. Roy Macleod, ‘Scientific Advice for British India’, Modern Asian Studies, 9/3 (1975), 343–84; R. Stafford, Scientist of Empire (Cambridge, 1989); M. Harrison, Public Health in British India: AngloIndian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914 (Cambridge, 1994).

Introduction

7

of the First World War; and the post-First World War era, leading up to the present day. As historians and foresters have ceaselessly pointed out, British colonial administrators adopted an ad hoc attitude to forest management up until the mid nineteenth century and even later.¹⁶ In India, governmental involvement in questions concerning forest use began in 1805 when the court of directors of the East India Company (EIC) sent a dispatch enquiring whether and to what extent the deficiency in England of oak for the Royal Navy could be offset by Malabar teak. This enquiry led to the appointment of a forest committee which reported that extensive deforestation had taken place and recommended the protection of the Malabar forests on grounds that they were valuable property. The immediate fallout of the report was a general proclamation declaring that the royalty right in teak trees claimed by former governments was vested in the EIC and that all further unauthorized felling of such trees was prohibited.¹⁷ The British government, however, soon began to exert pressure to step up the extraction of teak to augment the strength of the Royal Navy. Captain Watson, a police officer who ostensibly knew the local conditions, was appointed to improve the production of teak and other timbers suitable for shipbuilding.¹⁸ He succeeded, within a couple of years, in establishing a timber monopoly throughout Malabar-Travancore. Between 1806 and 1823, the forests of Malabar were protected by means of this monopoly despite the fact that nothing was done for forest regeneration. By 1823, however, the general discontent against Watson’s socially coercive conservancy methods among various interests rose to such a pitch that the then governor of Madras, Sir Thomas Munro, abolished the post of conservator. Rapid deforestation ensued in the years that followed. Prices of timber rose and as early as 1831 the navy recommended the re-establishment of the conservatorship. Despite many representations which highlighted the state of forests, the Madras revenue board in 1838 ruled out the establishment of an independent authority to manage forests, stating that any interference necessary for the conservation of teak forests should be exercised only by a revenue officer. The only major development over the next ten years was the creation of a few strategically important teak plantations.¹⁹ ¹⁶ See e.g. E. P. Stebbing, The Forests of India (London, 1922–46); T. P. Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony (Aberdeen, 1907); R. G. Sangster, ‘Forestry’, in IFCAS Symp. ¹⁷ B. Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India (Calcutta, 1899). ¹⁸ Ibid. 64; Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 70. ¹⁹ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 66. Also, Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 71–2.

8

Introduction

Events followed a similar course in Tenasserim, Burma. In 1826, Dr Nathaniel Wallich, a botanist employed by the Calcutta Botanical Garden, was deputed to examine the forest resources of the country. He declared them to be unrivalled when compared with other forests possessed by the EIC, but suggested that they be placed under systematic and conservative management including strict fire protection. Wallich’s advice was only partially accepted. The forests were thrown open to speculators in 1829 but were not otherwise interfered with. Fire protection was not introduced. By 1837, anxiety about the future of the forests began to be felt locally. Dr Helfer, who was deputed to examine them, found a great absence of young growth and recommended the establishment of extensive plantations. This advice was however not acted on.²⁰ It was not until the 1840s that the government in India began to take measures to establish forest conservancy on a permanent basis. In Tenasserim in 1841, it was proposed that all old leases and contracts be cancelled and new agreements containing suitable conditions for safeguarding the future of the forests issued. This proposal was met with considerable opposition but eventually accepted. In 1847, a small forest department was organized.²¹ In the same year, the government of Bombay appointed Dr Alexander Gibson, a medical doctor, as the conservator of forests. Madras followed suit nine years later, appointing another doctor, Hugh Cleghorn, in the same capacity.²² Meanwhile, in the Cape Colony in Southern Africa, forest conservation began to emerge in the British colonial discourse in about 1811, when the Royal Navy decided that the Cape woods were not good enough for its needs. This decision led to some sections of the government beginning to debate the issue of the state of the forests. In 1846, an ordinance was promulgated for ‘the better preservation of the Cape Flats and Downs’.²³ In 1854 a commission was appointed by the Cape Legislative Assembly to examine the forest issue. It condemned the structure of existing property rights and timber concessions. The Assembly did not however accept the recommendations of the commission in full, opting partially to retain private property rights and to encourage competition between government and private interests.²⁴ By mid-century, haphazard exploitation of forests had resulted in the destruction of large areas of timber. The state of pastures and scrubland surrounding Cape Town increasingly became ²⁰ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 70. ²¹ Ibid. 70–5. ²² Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 205. ²³ H. B. Darnell, The Past, Present and Future Condition of the Forests of the George, Knysna and Uitenhage Districts (Cape Town, 1866), 21. ²⁴ Ibid.

Introduction

9

a subject of serious public concern. In 1856, conservancies were established in some forest regions. In 1859, the Forest and Herbage Act was passed, which was in many ways the foundation upon which future policy and action would be based. Between 1860 and the late 1870s a number of measures of forest management were undertaken. None of these however became permanent.²⁵ The broad course of events followed a similar trajectory in Australia, where the effects of deforestation began to be felt as early as 1803. Over the next fifty years some regulations on cutting were introduced by the government. These regulations were promulgated in order to ensure supplies of forest products for administration and revenue generation. The general governmental attitude, however, was that as long as a licensee complied with governmental regulations on the size and description of trees to be cut and the terms and conditions for the cutting and removing of timber, he could ‘do what he wished to do with the forest. He felled what trees he liked, removed what pleased him and left on the ground to rot what did not suit him.’²⁶ This early attempt to cash in on Australian timber supplies predictably led to extensive deforestation. By 1820, timber users faced some restrictions on the quantity and quality of timber they could cut. All such actions were however ad hoc and poorly enforced. The story was not much different in New Zealand. From the early days of European settlement (the 1840s), there was an attempt to clear forests rapidly to provide land for agricultural development. A predominant perception was of the inexhaustibility of timber supplies. It was not until the 1870s, by which time an acute timber crisis had set in, that any serious attempts were made to assess the state of the forests.²⁷ The course of events was no different in Kenya and Uganda in eastern Africa or in Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Togo, and Nigeria in western Africa.²⁸ The reason for the ad hoc attitude to forests among colonial officials and governments in the first half of the nineteenth century was that forest products, in their view, could be converted into money only under exceptional conditions. Trade in forest products in this period was in its infancy and, as a result of poorly developed markets, forests did not have economic value. There was also a widespread belief that the colonial forest resources were inexhaustible. Moreover, colonial administrators did not appreciate the protective importance of ²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸

Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 76–91. L. T. Carron, A History of Forestry in Australia (Canberra, 1985), 4. A. L. Poole, Forestry in New Zealand: The Shaping of Policy (Auckland, 1969), 7–8. Sangster, ‘Forestry’, 69–70.

10

Introduction

forests and especially their influence on climate. These beliefs stemmed in part from three factors: Britain’s naval supremacy, which allowed it readily to supply its needs by importations, the abundance of coal, which supplied most of its energy needs, and its situation within the influence of the Gulf Stream, which regulated the climate and prevented the physical influence of deforestation from being felt.²⁹ Against this backdrop, the general attitude to forests among colonial officials and governments was to view them either as timber mines or as sources of other ‘minor’ forest products. There was also a widespread belief, stemming from physiocratic thinking, that forests were an obstruction to agriculture and therefore a limiting factor to increasing revenue. Forest lands were thus seen as being ideal for conversion into agricultural zones and remunerative cash-crop plantations.³⁰ In many parts of the empire, efforts were consequently made to sell all the forests outright except for a few that were reserved for the production of timber for public works. Many early land settlements transferred large forest areas to landowners or cultivators who, like the government, did not realize their potential value. Even where forests were not handed over to agriculturists, the rights of the forest user were often abandoned in favour of the cultivator. The first tentative steps towards systematic forest management in the empire were taken amidst this broad attitudinal and policy climate. The initiatives were launched in the first half of the nineteenth century by botanists and doctors in government employment. These colonial scientists promoted their goal of systematic forest management by exploiting governmental anxieties concerning the agricultural implications of local environmental change such as siltation and soil erosion. More often than not, however, governmental interest did not outlive the immediate crisis.³¹ The history of British colonial forestry, however, took a decisive turn in the post-1860 period, the second of the four phases in the development of British colonial forestry. Following the revolt of 1857, the government of India sought to pursue active interventionist policies aimed at economic and social development. State support of forestry, with an emphasis on ensuring permanent supply of forest products, was one such policy.³² This was part of a wider experimental climate within the Indian government in which it was believed that centralized science policy would ²⁹ B. E. Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry in Europe, the United States and Other Countries (Toronto, 1913), 366. ³⁰ C. Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest: An Historical Analysis of Success and Failure’ (unpublished MS, Oxford, 1992), 3. ³¹ This point has been argued convincingly by Richard Grove in chapter 5 of Green Imperialism. ³² See e.g. Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 62–3.

11

Introduction

yield rich economic dividends. Science was consequently embraced as a responsibility of the state.³³ Experts were deployed as ‘scientific soldiers’ and new agencies established.³⁴ Governmental support for scientific forestry began in a modest way with the appointment of some doctors and botanists to the posts of conservators of forests in various provinces of India. These men of science were charged with three main objectives: to satisfy the complaints and demands of the lessees of the forests; to assure the government the provision of its full timber demands for the dockyards, gun-carriage factories, and public works; and to restrict practices such as shifting cultivation.³⁵ Soon, forest departments were established in several provinces. Significantly, these departments were led initially by German forestry experts. A cadre of foresters trained in leading German and French forestry schools was subsequently created as an imperial service.³⁶ A professional forestry community thereby emerged in the British Empire. A permanent infrastructure for forestry was soon established and continental European systems of forest management introduced. Around the turn of the century, governments in other parts of the empire followed the Indian example and established forest departments. These developments coincided with the emergence in the Colonial Office of a strategy that envisaged the deployment of science for the pursuit of imperial ends. Officials around the turn of the century were thus increasingly convinced that: the quarter of the globe which was coloured red would be kept together ‘in part by concession, in part by force, and in part by the constant intervention of new scientific forces’ to deal with the growing difficulties of imperial rule.³⁷

In this new policy environment, colonial governments began to show active interest in hiring scientific specialists to advise on scientific matters. For forestry, such governmental interest in science and scientific expertise often meant hiring Indian forestry professionals to set up forestry agencies in different parts of the empire. As early as 1876, a forest department was set up in New Zealand by Campbell Walker of the Indian forestry service. Four years later, another Indian forester, R. Thompson, set up the forest department in Mauritius. In 1882, the governments of Ceylon, Cyprus, and the Cape Colony requested the services of the Indian ³³ ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷

Macleod, ‘Scientific Advice for British India’, 347. Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 219–20. Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 76–96. Macleod, ‘Scientific Advice for British India’, 349.

³⁴ Ibid. 348.

12

Introduction

forest experts, and forest departments were established in these countries by F. d’A. Vincent, E. Dobbs, and D. E. Hutchins respectively.³⁸ This trend continued after the turn of the century with the founding of the Nigerian forest department by H. M. Thompson of the Indian forest service in 1903 and, at his instigation, of the Gold Coast forest department in 1909. Sierra Leone followed in 1911. In East Africa, Kenya’s forest department was created in 1902 and Uganda’s in 1917, both by professionals from the Indian forest service.³⁹ In 1900, the Straits Settlements established a forest department under an experienced Indian forest officer and the Federated Malay States began to reserve forest areas for management following a report by the Indian inspector-general. Indian foresters also played an important part in the establishment of forest departments in Southern Africa and Australia.⁴⁰ In Canada, forest departments began to be established in the various provinces during the last two decades of the nineteenth century under the influence of the forestry movement of the United States which in turn had been influenced by German and Indian forestry.⁴¹ By the end of the nineteenth century a large percentage of forested land in almost every part of the empire was under the management of foresters originating in the Indian forest department, members of which had in turn been trained strictly within the continental tradition of forestry. The empire was thus united by a definite system of ecological praxis. The various governmental initiatives in establishing forestry in the empire did not necessarily result in foresters or their institutions being provided with adequate resources to undertake their proposed activities. As an ex-colonial forester put it, these departments were ‘always at the far end of the queue for governmental funds’.⁴² Moreover until the First World War, British colonial forestry was composed of a number of forest departments in different parts of the empire, working ‘quietly and in complete isolation’ from each other.⁴³ Information exchange among foresters, to the extent it existed, took place through either personal contacts or journals such as the Indian Forester. No serious attempt was made to co-ordinate the work of these remote forestry agencies. There was no central institution for empire forestry and no co-ordinated empire-wide ³⁸ D. Brandis, ‘Progress of Forestry in India’, Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultural Society, 10/3 (1884), 25. ³⁹ Sangster, ‘Forestry’, 70. ⁴⁰ Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 438–9. ⁴¹ See e.g. C. Leavitt, ‘The Progress of Forestry in Canada’, Canadian Forestry Journal, 16/3 (1920); H. R. T. MacMillan, The Profession and Practice of Forestry in Canada, 1907–1957 (Ontario, 1958); R. P. Gillis and Thomas Roach, ‘The American Influence on Conservation in Canada: 1899–1911’, Journal of Forest History, 30/4 (1986). ⁴² Sangster, ‘Forestry’, 70. ⁴³ Ibid.

Introduction

13

forestry agenda even though timber and forest products were by then important components of trade within the empire. The setting up of forest departments in different parts of the empire however resulted in the creation of a homogeneous and assertive pancolonial community of foresters. Having been trained in a few select schools in Germany and France, this community shared a common intellectual tradition. It therefore had a clear and specific vision of how to manage forests. Moreover, it firmly believed that the continental approach was the best method of forest management. It was also convinced that strict forest management along continental lines was strategically an imperial necessity. During much of the period between the turn of the century and the First World War (the third phase in the development of British colonial forestry), colonial foresters, who had begun to network amongst themselves by then, systematically lobbied governments in the empire and in Britain to adopt scientific forestry and declare a permanent forest policy.⁴⁴ It took the First World War for governments in Britain and the empire to take these foresters seriously. The timber shortage and lack of substitutes experienced during the war dramatically demonstrated the need to co-ordinate and develop global agendas for forestry education, research, and utilization. It also pressed home the utility of institutionalizing frameworks for exchanging information and perspectives on forest management on an international scale. With governments showing increasing awareness of an impending timber crisis, foresters began to be taken seriously and their opinions consciously solicited. Empire foresters began to lobby governments, especially the Colonial Office, to support their agenda for the development of imperial forestry in the twentieth century.⁴⁵ An important consequence was the organization, starting in 1920, of periodic Empire Forestry Conferences. These conferences brought together senior foresters, civil servants, and politicians interested in forestry from across the empire. The ensuing pan-colonial debate enabled foresters from all parts of the empire to compare notes, co-ordinate goals, and devise agendas for lobbying governments on forest policy, using their credibility as experts. The conferences resulted, for the first time, in the co-ordination, planned development, and, to an extent, centralized control of empire forestry as a whole. ⁴⁴ See N. D. G. James, A History of English Forestry (Oxford, 1981), especially chapters 9 and 10. ⁴⁵ See Jefferies, A Review of Colonial Research; Worthington, Science in Africa.

14

Introduction

With the conferences serving as an informal co-ordinating agency, a massive international institutional framework for the management of colonial forests was built. By 1960, there were, in addition to the various scientific establishments in various parts of the Commonwealth, seven such agencies in Britain and the international arena.⁴⁶ The period after the First World War thus saw the emergence of a complex web of forestry agencies located in the metropolis and the periphery. With formal decolonization, these institutions changed nominally, with the word ‘Commonwealth’ often substituting for ‘Empire’—but continue to be influential to this day.

1.2.2. Historiographical Overview British Empire forest history has evolved greatly since its early days in the late nineteenth century when articles in the Indian Forester and books by foresters celebrated the onset of forestry in the British Empire with detailed chronologies of events. Colonial forest historiography has, in recent times, concentrated on the British colonial periphery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and engaged in a number of issues and debates of which two are especially relevant to the story you are about to read.⁴⁷ The first broad debate relevant to this book grapples with the reasons and causes for the rise and spread of colonial forestry. There are, on the one hand, some scholars who claim that it arose out of imperial revenue and strategic needs, especially the growing timber demands of an expanding empire.⁴⁸ As opposed to this, the aforementioned Richard Grove has sought to locate the origins of the colonial interest in forest conservation in the ‘evangelist discourses’ produced by botanists and doctors who, on the evidence of the impact of deforestation on climatic change in fragile environments, made a forceful case for conservation. A second big historiographical debate informing this book concerns the ideologies of British colonial forestry and the impact of colonial forest policy on nature and societies. An important thrust in the literature has been to analyse historically the ecological changes resulting from the ⁴⁶ They were the Empire Commonwealth Conferences, and the various institutions that were established on its recommendation, especially the Imperial Forestry Institute, the Commonwealth Forestry Bureau, the Forest Products Research Laboratory, the Tropical Products Institute, the Timber Development Association, and the British Paper and Board Industry Research Association. ⁴⁷ The term ‘colonial forest history’ is used to describe the work by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and foresters who have undertaken historical studies of colonial forestry. ⁴⁸ See e.g. Guha, The Unquiet Woods.

Introduction

15

introduction of scientific forestry in specific regions of India and Africa.⁴⁹ Another approach has been to explore the social, economic, and political impact of this introduction and examine the implicit systems of resource extraction and resource use priorities. A related genre has focused on understanding the nature of the consequent conflicts between colonial systems and traditional frameworks of forest resource use and exploring whether the introduction of European methods resulted in an ecological watershed. A third broad trend has been in examining the methods and idioms of resistance and the attempts by colonial states at co-opting and coercing popular protest.⁵⁰ A particular emphasis has been on detailing the essential features of the ‘classic’ or colonial approaches to natural resource management and conservation and explicating the ideologies associated with imperial resource management efforts.⁵¹ In describing various facets of the human and ecological impact of forest management in the British Empire, historians have thereby focused on advancing state power, the market imperative, aspirations by states to control and discipline, contests between the state and local communities, and colonial attitudes to indigenous populations. This focus has provided a useful and important picture of colonial environmental policies and their impacts. The historiography of British colonial forestry, however, reflects the gaps in colonial environmental history alluded to at the outset. One major absence is the general neglect of scientific communities, scientific ⁴⁹ See e.g. M. Adas, ‘Colonization, Commercial Agriculture and the Destruction of the Deltaic Rainforests of British Burma in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in J. P. Tucker and J. F. Richards (eds.), Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham, NC, 1983); J. P. Richards and M. Mc Alpin, ‘Cotton Cultivating and Land Clearing in the Bombay Deccan and Karnatak: 1818–1920’, in Tucker and Richards (eds.), Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy; R. P. Tucker, ‘The British Colonial System and the Forests of the Western Himalayas 1815–1914’, in Tucker and Richards (eds.), Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy; D. Anderson, ‘Managing the Forest: the Conservation History of Lembus, Kenya, 1905–63’, in Anderson and Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa. ⁵⁰ See e.g. Guha, The Unquiet Woods; R. Guha and M. Gadgil, This Fissured Land (Delhi, 1993); F. Hughes, ‘Conflict over Use of Forest Resources in the Lower Tana River Basin of Kenya’, in Anderson and Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa. ⁵¹ P. Blaikie, The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries (London, 1985). One example is the constant reference to imperial biases against shifting cultivation. See e.g. M. Rangarajan, ‘Swidden Cultivation and Forest Management in the Central Provinces: Baigas, Gonds and the British’, unpublished paper presented at the Conference on ‘South Asia’s Changing Environment’ (Bellagio, 1992); J. Pouchepadass, ‘British Attitudes to Shifting Cultivation in Colonial South India: A Case Study of South Canara District, 1800–1920’, unpublished paper presented at the Conference on ‘South Asia’s Changing Environment’; Guha and Gadgil, ‘The “Problem” of Shifting Cultivation’, in This Fissured Land, 150–7.

16

Introduction

institutions, and the discipline of forestry. Although the literature tells us a great deal about various facets of colonial forestry, the discussion subsumes the science of forestry within wider perspectives such as imperial interests. An important and pioneering book on colonial forestry in India, for example, devotes no more than three pages to scientific forestry, and that too with only a fleeting reference to agendas stemming from science.⁵² Similarly, a string of recent monographs on colonial forest policy make no distinction between foresters and others in the colonial administration: all officials are treated as representing one predominant interest, that of the state.⁵³ The generality of the category state forestry adopted in this body of work thereby conceals the differences, in motivations and perspectives, between scientific communities such as foresters, whose cultural backgrounds stem from the traditions of forestry developed in a European setting, and other state officials. These differences are, however, arguably as important to an understanding of the emergence of colonial agendas of forest management as are factors such as state expansion and the market imperative. Related to this is another important gap in the literature on British colonial forestry. The idea that the science of forestry could bring with it a historical baggage of agendas stemming from its European past is not adequately acknowledged in the existing work. There has thus been no attempt to study the continental European prehistory of imperial forestry and the question of whether and how this background has influenced its development in the colonial setting. The work on the forest history of the British Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century, for example, does not explore the intellectual links between the colonial campaign for forest conservation and the scientific work on deforestation and efficient forest use among European scientific communities.⁵⁴ It fails, further, to examine the relationships between this campaign and the agendas of colonial science during this period, more widely.⁵⁵ Similarly, ⁵² Guha, The Unquiet Woods. ⁵³ M. Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest (Oxford, 1996). See also Vasant Saberwal, Pastoral Politics: Shepherds, Bureaucrats and Conservation in the Western Himalaya (Oxford, 1998) and K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Stanford, Calif., 1999). ⁵⁴ See e.g. C. Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, in W. J. Thomas (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago, 1956); C. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967). ⁵⁵ See e.g. Harrison, Public Health in British India; D. Kumar, ‘The Evolution of Colonial Science in India: Natural History and the East India Company’, in MacKenzie (ed.), Imperialism and the Natural World, 54–6.

Introduction

17

the literature on the second half of the nineteenth century does not locate the development of colonial forestry during the period against the backdrop of what is known about the history of continental forestry.⁵⁶ An important consequence of this neglect is that historians of British colonial forestry have concluded that empire forestry was distinctively ‘colonial’. In the absence of a wider comparative analysis taking into account continental prehistories, such a claim is, however, difficult to sustain. A third important gap in the existing body of historical work on British colonial forestry is that in concentrating on examining the development of forestry in particular regions of the British Empire, none of these historiographical approaches has attempted to study imperial forestry as a pan-colonial phenomenon. While there are thus a number of studies on specific periods and contexts, there has as yet been no attempt to transcend this limited focus and gain a wider perspective on imperial forestry.

1.3. THE FRAMEWORK OF THE BOOK The objective of this book is to obtain a panoramic view of the agendas and ideologies of the science of forestry across the empire in each of the four stages of British colonial forestry. It seeks to get a wide-angled snapshot of the development of empire forestry that transcends the narrow spatial and temporal foci of the existing genre of regional case studies, while simultaneously concentrating on examining forestry from the perspective of the objectives of the scientific community and discipline. The book attempts, first of all, to revisit the nineteenth century and look at the agendas and ideologies of empire forestry science in each of its two stages. An important objective is to examine the question of the extent to which European scientific attitudes to forest use and frameworks of forest management affected the development of forestry in the British Empire. Put differently, was British colonial forestry, as a science of ⁵⁶ See e.g. Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry; F. Heske, German Forestry (New Haven, 1938); K. Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry with Special Consideration of Central Europe: Literature, Training, and Research from the Earliest Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century’, in J. A. Romberger and P. Mikola (eds.), International Review of Forestry Research, i. (New York, 1964); H. E. Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester: Quantification, Cameral Science, and the Emergence of Scientific Forestry Management in Germany’, in T. Frängsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and R. E. Rider (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990); S. Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism: An Exploration’, in Forest and Conservation History, 37 (Apr. 1993).

18

Introduction

resource use, ‘colonial’, or was it simply an instance of a European system of environmental management in a colonial context? Such a focus—on science, on the one hand, and on the influence of European environmental traditions on the other—will help address the important gaps in the historiography of British colonial forestry in the nineteenth century identified in the previous section. The book seeks further to undertake an examination of the development of the agendas of British colonial forestry in the twentieth century. In keeping with its broad goals, its basic objective is to look at empire forestry as a science and as a pan-colonial phenomenon. It therefore focuses on what may be described as the ‘parliament of imperial forestry’ in this period—the Empire Forestry Conferences.⁵⁷ The conferences, as argued earlier, were looked upon by the empire forestry community as the single most important forum for co-ordinating an empire-wide forest policy. They also brought together the most senior foresters from across the empire on a regular basis. An examination of the debates and the influence of these conferences therefore enables a focused and yet a panoramic, pan-colonial picture of the agendas and ideologies of imperial forestry in the twentieth century. The significance of the conferences as a ‘centre of calculation’ in the twentieth century makes such a study important in its own right.⁵⁸ In examining these contexts and institutions, the book focuses primarily on the themes identified earlier in this chapter. At the outset, it is concerned with the agendas and priorities of resource management implicit in colonial forest science. In addition to documenting these agendas, it seeks to identify the problems and dilemmas faced by colonial foresters and their differences in perspective on specific issues. The book aims also to identify the resource management priorities common to the empire (and commonwealth) as a whole and to detail the social, political, and economic considerations cited by the main actors in these institutions in articulating these agendas. An important issue underlying both these questions is the extent to which European frameworks of environmental management affected British colonial forestry and its successor regimes. The book also engages the question of the meaning of the agendas of the scientific communities engaged in colonial and post-colonial forestry. This includes their attitudes to nature and resource, and to indigenous peoples, and their beliefs, technologies, and practices concerning resource ⁵⁷ I am indebted to Dr John Darwin for the idea that the Empire Forestry Conferences can be looked on as the parliament of colonial foresters. ⁵⁸ The term ‘centre of calculation’ is used in the sense in which Bruno Latour used it in Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, 1987).

Introduction

19

use. It also includes the manner in which the formation and justification of these attitudes were affected by perspectives on colonial and post-colonial development and exploitation, and, more widely, on the relationship between science, technology and human progress. Peripherally, the book grapples with the issue of the tensions between colonial foresters and other sections of state administrations and society, and the distinctiveness of scientific traditions in colonial environmental management. The scope of the book is delimited by concentrating throughout on the ideas and intellectual paradigms of natural resource management implicit in forestry science. It is primarily a context-bound intellectual history that seeks to understand how foresters, as a scientific community with a distinct cognitive tradition, generally approached resource management. The book, however, does not attempt to examine the changing economics of timber production in different areas in different times or the impact of economic forces on the development of forest policy in particular regions. It does not attempt further to compare or contrast the subtle differences in forest practice from one region to another. Moreover, the book does not attempt to examine the influence foresters have had within their colonial and national contexts and the extent to which they have been able to implement their objectives in particular operative conditions. It does however focus specifically on what has been common to the empire (and commonwealth) forestry community as a whole in terms of their broad paradigmatic and disciplinary approach to forest use and management. The purpose of the exercise is to arm scholars working on narrower spatial and regional contexts with an awareness of the world view of the forestry community on natural resource management, particularly as stemming from its disciplinary ethos.

1.3.1. The Outline of the Chapters As mentioned earlier, the book has two main parts, respectively on the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The purpose of the first part is to undertake a revisionist historical examination of the two epochs in British colonial forestry in this period, with a focus on science and against a backdrop of European environmental traditions. Chapter 2 sets the stage by providing an overarching account of the emergence of the idea of forest conservation in continental Europe from the mid eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries. In doing so, it attempts creatively to synthesize a wide range of printed primary and secondary sources that have hitherto been largely ignored by scholars.

20

Introduction

Chapter 3 describes the growth of the idea of forest conservancy in the British Empire throughout the nineteenth century. It begins by examining the period 1800–60, when colonial scientists in India, and to an extent the Cape, began to lobby their respective governments to establish permanent forest conservancy. The primary method in this section of the chapter is prosopography. By compiling a collective biography of the key scientists involved in the campaign in India and the Cape, as identified from historical accounts and publications, it builds a picture of their intellectual networks and thereby explores their motivations and agendas. The second half of the chapter concentrates on India in the second half of the nineteenth century and examines the agendas of the Indian forestry community, culminating in the publication of Schlich’s Manual of Forestry. A central concern throughout the chapter is to determine whether and to what extent the European forestry tradition influenced the formation of agendas in the British Empire. The second part of the book uses content analysis to examine the Empire Forestry Conferences that were held regularly in the aftermath of the First World War and, thereby, the development of British Empire forestry as a pan-colonial phenomenon in the twentieth century. The purpose of Chapter 4 is twofold. First, it seeks to understand what the origins of the Empire Forestry Conferences were and in particular what the role of the imperial forestry community, and its allies in the United Kingdom, was in bringing the conferences about. Secondly, it seeks to examine the agendas of the first two conferences, as they pertain to forest policy. Chapter 5, in turn, concentrates on the attitudes to natural resource management implicit in the discussions at the conferences, with particular reference to two perpetually vexing problems—soil erosion and shifting cultivation. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the key findings of the entire study and explores some of its wider implications concerning the contested legacy of colonial eco-development.

2 A Contract with Nature In his classic textbook, A Manual of Forestry, William Schlich, the former head of the Indian forestry service, wrote: Forests are, in the economy of man and nature, of direct and indirect value; the former chiefly through their produce, and the latter through the influence which they exercise upon climate, the regulation of moisture, the stability of the soil, the healthiness of a country and allied subjects.¹

Schlich was formally educated in the continental European forestry tradition and as his textbooks on forestry indicate, remained a strong adherent.² As the chief forestry instructor at the Cooper’s Hill and Oxford forestry schools, he was also responsible for training the cadres who effectively staffed the forestry departments of the British Empire from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth century. Any attempt at understanding the mindset of the leaders and practitioners of colonial forestry during this period must therefore begin by grasping the world view underlying Schlich’s theoretical paradigm. The purpose of this chapter is to do just that. It has two broad sections. The first traces the emergence of the idea that forests offered physical, or indirect climatic benefits. The second explores the evolution of the idea of direct utility, with particular reference to some of the traditions of political economy and state making co-terminous with the rise of scientific forestry in Europe.

2.1. THE CLIMATIC BENEFITS OF FORESTS An enduring dogma in environmentalist thought is the idea that modernity brought with it a domineering or imperial attitude toward the natural world. According to one fairly widespread narrative, the notion of human beings as controllers of nature crystallized in Europe between the fifteenth ¹ W. Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, i (London, 1889), 13. ² For more on Schlich, read Chapter 3.

22

A Contract with Nature

and the seventeenth centuries.³ It was ostensibly born out of a marriage between the religious concept that the human species had dominion over the earth, and the idea that, with tools and knowledge, they were improving the earth as much as they were improving themselves.⁴ The narrative proceeds to make the claim that such attitudes ultimately set the stage for the twentieth-century environmental crisis. Besides making the argument that can be caricatured by the phrase, ‘modernity begat the death of nature,’ the above narrative also draws up a genealogy of philosophies of care and respect for the earth and its creatures, variously described as ‘Arcadian’ or ‘feminine’. In effect, the argument goes, this counter-trend constituted the very antithesis of the ‘imperial’ mindset and, in doing so, provided the basis of the critique of industrial society. Such narratives, however, fail to acknowledge two important facts. First, there was considerable acknowledgement, from as early as the thirteenth century, if not earlier, of the environmental effects of deforestation. The evidence is enshrined in local laws: between 1535 and 1777, 322 forests were proclaimed protected by official ordinances.⁵ Secondly, the writings of George Perkins Marsh, John Croumbie Brown, Franklin Benjamin Hough, Élisée Reclus, and several other luminaries of late nineteenth-century eco-evangelism make the case for the argument that from the early modern period onward, there had begun a systematic body of scientific observations and research programmes that culminated, by the mid nineteenth century, in the recognition that human beings are geological agents, capable of making undesirable and, from the standpoint of human societies, catastrophic changes in nature.⁶ ³ Such ideas are usually linked in this literature with Bacon and Descartes, among others. See e.g. C. Merchant, The Death of Nature (San Francisco, 1990); D. Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (Cambridge, 1977); J. Bajaj, ‘Francis Bacon, the First Philosopher of Modern Science: A Non-Western View’, in Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence; Shiva, Staying Alive; Henryk Skolimowski, Eco-Philosophy (New York, 1981). ⁴ Glacken, Traces on the Rhodesian Shore, 495. ⁵ Joseph Kittredge, Forest Influences: The Effects of Woody Vegetation on Climate, Water and Soil (New York, 1948), 6. ⁶ G. P. Marsh, Man and Nature (Madras, 1882); É. Reclus, The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life: Being the Second Series of a Descriptive History of the Life of the Globe (New York, 1873); J. C. Brown, Forests and Moisture: Or the Effects of Forests on Humidity of Climate (Edinburgh, 1877); Franklin Benjamin Hough, Report on Forestry (Washington, DC, 1878–80). I owe my awareness of this body of work primarily to the writings of Clarence Glacken, on which I draw considerably in this chapter. By carefully tracing the footnotes of these authors, I came to the realization that these books were, in effect, elaborate literature surveys and thereby captured the essence of the scientific work on the environmental consequence of various anthropogenic activities that had been conducted from the mid 18th to the mid 19th centuries. The argument in this section is but a brief exposition of some of my findings. A longer paper will follow in due course.

A Contract with Nature

23

The roots of such scientific work can arguably be traced at least to the seventeenth century. One prominent example is John Evelyn’s book Sylvia, published in 1664, which argued, among other things, that grazing, glass-making, iron smelting, and naval building posed great threats to forests.⁷ Another equally cited example is the forest ordinance of Jean Baptiste Colbert in France in 1669, which was similarly sparked by concerns with the consequences of deforestation.⁸ In addition to worries about economic costs, Evelyn and Colbert were also aware of the wider environmental effects of deforestation, especially its impact on regional climates.⁹ The tradition of scientific concern with the effects of deforestation continued and developed further during the eighteenth century. In 1764, a German scientific article claimed that there was a causal connection between forests and precipitation.¹⁰ As the century progressed, a number of scientists and explorers, including Fernando Colon, George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and F. A. L. von Burgsdorf, were actively involved in investigating the consequences of forest clearance and deforestation.¹¹ The French naturalist Buffon was in many respects illustrative of this cohort of proto-environmentalists. He contrasted the appearance of uninhabited with inhabited lands and argued that in building habitations human beings destroyed woods, drained lakes and marshes, made mountains bare, and soils less fertile. Buffon claimed further that deforestation led to climatic change and to the heating up of the earth; that lands with forests were cold; and that it was more difficult to cool than to heat the earth. In making his case, Buffon cited many examples of ⁷ Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 74; C. Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London, 1975), 465–88, 495. ⁸ Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 74–5. ⁹ Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 487. It is important to note that Evelyn and Colbert were not outliers in making such arguments in the 17th century. Other, equally influential advocates included Ralph Austen, the author of Treatise of Fruit Trees (1653) and The Spiritual Use of an Orchard (1657). Moreover, there were many in Europe writing letters to governments and officials demanding urgent action aimed at forest conservation. For a particularly impressive letter dating back to 1608 in Venice, see Kittredge, Forest Influences, 6–7. On the importance of early modern Venice as a precursor to modern environmental policy sensibilities, see Karl Apuhn, ‘Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry, and State Power in Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Modern History, 72 (Dec. 2000). ¹⁰ Heske, German Forestry, 173. ¹¹ Ibid. 174. They were influenced in part by the writings of the ancients, especially of Theophrastus and Pliny. They were also influenced by the growing interest in climate in Europe. For an account of the impact of the climatic theories among 18th-century European scientific communities, see the discussion on the influence of John Arbuthnot and Montesquieu in Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 551–622.

24

A Contract with Nature

these effects from travel accounts from Quebec, Cayenne, and the Guineas.¹² By the late eighteenth century, research on the environmental impacts of deforestation had become an established domain for scientific enquiry. Scholars focused particularly on its effects on rivers and streams. For example, von Burgsdorf, speaking before the German Academy of Sciences in 1790, argued that forests were responsible for conserving water.¹³ Subsequent studies further deepened the understanding of the environmental importance of forests and, consequently, of the realization that environmental destruction adversely impacted political economy. Perhaps nothing is more illustrative of this than the case of the torrents of the French and Austrian Alps and the work of Jean Antoine Fabre, the chief engineer of bridges and highways in the Département du Var in France. Based on his observations in Var, Basses-Alpes, and Bouchesdu-Rhône, and his studies of the courses of the Rhône and Durance, Fabre pronounced in 1797 that deforestation and forest clearance in the high Alps were the two main causes of the sudden and overwhelming Alpine torrents which flooded the farms and settlements of the lowlands.¹⁴ Almost reminiscent of a modern political ecological analysis, Fabre wrote that deforestation and forest clearance in high mountainous areas brought about seven kinds of disaster: The first disaster produced by the two causes of which we have just spoken is the ruin of our forests. The second disaster is the destruction in a great many places of the bed of vegetable soil with which our mountains were covered. The third disaster is the ruin of the domains which lie upon the rivers. The fourth disaster is the drainage, experienced in the navigation of the rivers, by the divisions in the water-courses, which are the consequence of great floods. The fifth disaster ¹² Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 76. See also Comte Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular . . . trans. William Smellie, 20 vols. (new edn., corr., enl, London, 1812). ¹³ Heske, German Forestry, 173. See also F. A. L. von Burgsdorf, Forsthandbuch, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1800). ¹⁴ J. A. Fabre, Essai sur la théorie des torrens [sic] et des rivières . . . (Paris, 1797), cited in Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 698. An important historiographical controversy is brewing among Swiss and German historians over whether there was indeed a relationship between deforestation and torrents. Some, who deny such causal links, remark that such environmental complaints ‘served as the means for the dominant Swiss Lowlands to gain control over the mountain forests’. See, for example, Joachim Radkau, ‘Wood and Forestry in German History: In Quest of an Environmental Approach’, Environment and History, 2 (1996), 63–76 (68–9). Without getting embroiled in this debate, it is adequate, for the purposes of this section, to remark that there was a long and sustained scientific tradition that did make such claims—and that this genealogy of thought eventually formed one important strain of the emerging conservationist impulse.

A Contract with Nature

25

consists in the strifes and contentions, between the proprietors on opposite banks of the river, to which the divisions in these water-courses give rise. The sixth disaster results from the deposits which they make at the mouths of the streams, which often intercept the navigation. In fine, the seventh disaster consists in the diminution of the sources which feed the streams and rivers in their ordinary state.¹⁵

Fabre’s work sparked a series of French studies, pursued by foresters, engineers, and agronomists, who were intimately associated with the reforestation efforts undertaken by the French government in the HautesAlpes during the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth centuries. Fabre’s successor, Alexandre Surrel, who continued his studies, announced that Alpine torrents appeared when forests disappeared and that they disappeared when forests were restored.¹⁶ Similar research was conducted on the Austrian Alps and in Italy, where scientists had been interested in torrents, the control of watercourses, and soil erosion from the days of Leonardo da Vinci, who had noted that streams were muddier when they passed through populated districts.¹⁷ By the early nineteenth century, a substantial body of literature had been produced on the relationship between deforestation and torrents.¹⁸ It is important to note, here, that a considerable proportion of this research was conducted in the countries bordering the Alps, which were, in effect, the site of some of the crucial early research on anthropogenic environmental change.¹⁹ ¹⁵ Fabre, Essai sur la théorie des torrens, cited in J. C. Brown, Reboisement in France: Or Records of the Replanting of the Alps, the Cevennes and the Pyrennes with Trees, Herbage and Bush, with a View to Arresting and Preventing the Destructive Consequences and Effects (London, 1878), 56. See also Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 77. ¹⁶ Alexandre Surrel, Etude sur les torrents des Hautes Alpes (1841), cited in Brown, Forests and Moisture, 230. See also Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 77 and Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 698–702. Reforestation of mountains as a means of control of torrents was also practised in Japan in the 1680s. See Kittredge, Forest Influences, 8. ¹⁷ Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 77. ¹⁸ In France, the work of Fabre and Surrel was followed up by Belgrand, Belancer, Collignon, Comoy, Darcy et Bazin, Dumont, Dupit, Fargue, V. Fournié, Graeff, Krantz, Lamairesse, Malézieux, Mangon, Monestier-Savignat, Nadault de Buffon, Patriot, de Passy, Plocq, and M. A. Poirée. In Austria, the key studies were conducted by Franz von Zallinger (1778), von Arretin (1808), Franz Duile (1826), and Hagen (1826). Important among the Germans were Edmond von Berg (1844), Gustav Heyer (1852), Joseph Wessely (1853), J. van den Brinken (1854), Franz Müller (1857), and H. Berlepsch (1862). In Italy, scientific research on deforestation and torrents was conducted by Castellani-Torino (1818–19), Giuseppe Cereni-Milano (1844), Antonio Giovanni Batti Villa-Milano (1850), Pietro Caimi-Milano (1857), and G. Rosa (1861) (Brown, Reboisement in France, 129–33). ¹⁹ For more on science and the Alps, see John F. Freeman, ‘Forest Conservancy in the Alps of Dauphiné, 1287–1870’, Forest & Conservation History, 38 (Oct. 1994), 171–80; Alan Cook, ‘Across the Alps: London and Bologna in the Eighteenth Century’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 56 (2002), 1–2; Alix Cooper, ‘From the Alps to Egypt (and Back

26

A Contract with Nature

A related set of studies connecting deforestation with agrarian political economy involved lakes in the Alpine mountains in the late 1770s. These works posited an explicit connection between deforestation and decline in rainfall and, consequently, in water tables. Of particular importance was the work of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who measured the water levels of Lake Neuchâtel, Lake Bienne, and Lake Morat. Another important figure was the French chemist J. B. Boussingault, who had studied Saussure’s materials and concluded that water levels had lowered in modern times due to the cutting of woods.²⁰ ‘My opinion’, wrote Boussingault, ‘is that the felling of trees over a large extent of country has always had the effect of lessening the mean annual quantity of rain . . . Great clearings diminish the quantity of spring water in a country.’²¹ Another issue that sparked the interest of scientific investigators was the relationship between forest clearance and shifting sand. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many attempts were made in Europe and Japan to prevent the shifting of sand dunes through decrees and fix them by planting vegetation. By the early eighteenth century, this problem gained scientific scrutiny, and reports were published and commissions of dunes created to execute the recommendations therefrom. Between 1850 and 1892, in France alone, 1,750,000 acres of moving sand was fixed by planting pine forests.²² By the early nineteenth century, the European scientific environmental tradition brimmed with the idea that clearing, grazing, transhumance, torrents, and declining water tables were all interrelated parts of the greater problem of deforestation. With these scientific findings providing a backdrop, Alexander von Humboldt, around the turn of the nineteenth century, devoted much time to studying the relation between forest clearance and climatic change, using the lakes of the New World and of Central Again): Dolomieu, Scientific Voyaging, and the Construction of the Field in 18th-century Natural History’, in Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar (eds.), Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (London, 1998), 39–63; J. S. Rowlinson, ‘Our Common Room in Geneva’ and ‘The Early Exploration of the Alps of Savoy’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 52 (1998), 221–35; Giorgio Vittorio dal Piaz, ‘Alpine Geology and Historical Evolution of the Orogenic Concept’, Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, A. 214, ser. 5, vol. 1 (1997), 49–83; Frank F. Cunningham, ‘James D. Forbes’ Alpine Tour of 1832’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 95 (1979), 130–41. See also Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge, 1997). ²⁰ Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 78. ²¹ Boussingault, cited in Brown, Forests and Moisture, 159–60. ²² Kittredge, Forest Influences, 8–10. See also Marsh, Man and Nature.

A Contract with Nature

27

Asia as examples. He wrote: By felling trees which cover the tops and sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at once two calamities for future generations—the want of fuel and the scarcity of water . . . Plants exhale fluid from their leaves, in the first place, for their own benefit. One of these is maintaining a suitable portion of humidity in the air. Not only do they attract and condense the moisture suspended in the air, and borne by the wind over the earth’s surface, which, by falling from their leaves, keeps the ground below moist and cool; but they can, by means of their roots, pump it up from a very considerable depth, and, raising it into the atmosphere, diffuse it over the face of the country. Trees, by transpiration from their leaves, surround themselves with an atmosphere, constantly cold and moist. They also shelter the soil from the direct action of the sun, and thus prevent evaporation of the water furnished by rains.²³

Both von Humboldt and Boussingault were influential in promoting the scientific investigation of the relation between agriculture, forest clearance, and climatic change. Boussingault argued that extensive forest destruction diminished the amount of running water, that the diminution might be a result of less average annual rainfall or more active evaporation or both, and that the quantity of running water of countries having no agricultural encroachment on forests was regular and did not seem to change perceptibly. He argued further that forests regularized stream flow by impeding evaporation, that agriculture in a dry country which lacked forests dissipated an additional portion of running water, and that limited clearings of forests caused a diminution of springs.²⁴ Scientists working in Europe and America during the first three decades of the nineteenth century came to similar conclusions. Among them were the German scientist Berghaus, who conducted a historical examination of the depths of water in the Elbe and the Oder. There were also a host of others, including A. C. Becquerel, Moreau de Jormis, Dureau de la Malle, Dominique François Arago, Gustav Wex, and Noah Webster.²⁵ By the early nineteenth century, there were a substantial number of scientists working internationally on the relation between deforestation and climatic change, and especially on changes in water levels and water flows. These scientists, as the citations in their publications reveal, clearly knew each other’s work. There was thus an international ‘invisible ²³ A. von Humboldt, Aspects of Nature in Different Lands and Different Climates: With Scientific Elucidations (Philadelphia, 1849), 232. ²⁴ Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 79. See also J. B. Boussingault, Rural Economy, in its Relations with Chemistry, Physics and Meteorology: Or Chemistry Applied to Agriculture (New York, 1845), 507. ²⁵ Brown, Forests and Moisture, 111.

28

A Contract with Nature

college’ of scientists actively working on the impact of deforestation on water flows and water tables.²⁶ Moreover, they were united around a set of questions, a good illustration of which is Becquerel’s memoir on the climatic influences of forests, first published in 1853, translated into English in the annual report of the Smithsonian Institution in 1869, and republished in 1877 in Franklin Benjamin Hough’s ‘Report upon Forestry’. Becquerel, in effect, argued that there were six main questions:²⁷ 1. What is the part that forests play as a shelter against the winds or as a means of retarding the evaporation of rainwater? 2. What influences do the forests exert through the absorption of their roots or the evaporation of their leaves in modifying the hygrometrical conditions of the surrounding atmosphere? 3. How do they modify the temperatures of a country? 4. Do the forests exercise an influence upon the amount of water falling and upon the distribution of rains through the year, as well as upon the regulation of running waters and springs? 5. In what manner do they intervene in the protection of mountains and slopes? 6. What is the nature of the influence that they may be able to exercise upon public health? In addition to research on the impact of forest clearance on water tables, shifting sand dunes, temperature, and erosion, the nineteenth century also saw the emergence of another scientific issue concerning forest clearance: the effect of deforestation on vegetation. This new concern was spearheaded by a set of botanists whom a historian of ecology has called ‘Humboldtian Plant Geographers’.²⁸ The term owes its origins to Alexander von Humboldt’s emphasis, in the first half of the nineteenth century, on studies of vegetation, especially the relation between types of ²⁶ The concept ‘invisible college’ is adapted from D. Crane, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities (London, 1972). ²⁷ Hough, ‘Report upon Forestry’. The phrasing of the questions is directly from Kittredge, Forest Influences, 9. For more details, see George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature and John Croumbie Brown’s Forests and Moisture—which indicate that the range of scientific hypotheses connecting deforestation and climate change was, by the mid to late 19th century, extremely coherent and comprehensive. It is worth noting here that these scientific works resonated considerably in the emergent social scientific theory. For an excellent survey of the interrelations between environmental and societal relations, see Franklin Thomas, The Environmental Basis of Society: A Study in the History of Sociological Theory (New York, 1925). ²⁸ M. Nicolson, ‘The Development of Plant Ecology 1790–1960’, (Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1984), 14. Also M. Nicolson, ‘Alexander von Humboldt and the

A Contract with Nature

29

vegetation and environmental conditions.²⁹ Humboldt believed that the distribution of plants was directly related to climate and that every category of climate had one particular form of vegetation ideal for it. He wrote frequently about the ‘physiognomy’ of the landscape or, literally, its ‘face’: he argued that the face of the landscape was unique, as were human faces, and that it expressed the ideal qualities of that climatic region, just as human faces exemplified ideal racial characteristics.³⁰ Such concerns led to the emergence of a new scientific tradition in botany, and ultimately a new discipline— plant ecology.³¹ In addition to the plant geographers, the issue of the relation between deforestation and climate was raised by another group of botanists concerned with questions of anatomy and physiology of trees. Important amongst these botanists was Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700–88), who conducted biological, physical, and chemical experiments on trees, studied the relative yields of various silvicultural systems, site factors, wood characteristics, transformation of matter during carbonization, timber harvesting, and the relationship between wood, air, and humidity.³² It was widely believed among this botanical community that human beings in different parts of the world were causing a great deal of destruction of vegetation. Writing in the mid nineteenth century, the German botanist Matthias Jacob Schleiden stressed the influence man had in adversely altering the world distribution of vegetation. He wrote: A broad band of waste land follows gradually in the steps of cultivation. If it expands, its centre and cradle dies, and on the outer borders only do we find green shoots . . . True it is that thorns and thistles, ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named by botanists ‘rubbish plants,’ mark the tract which man has proudly traversed through the earth. Before him lay original nature in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind him he leaves a desert, a deformed and ruined land; for childish desire of destruction, or thoughtless squandering of vegetable treasures, have destroyed the character of nature; and man himself flies terrified from the arena of his actions, leaving the impoverished earth to barbarous races or animals, so long as yet another spot in virgin beauty smiles before him. Here again, in selfish pursuit of profit, consciously or unconsciously, he begins anew the work of destruction.³³ Geography of Vegetation’, in A. Cunningham and N. Jardine (eds.), Romanticism and the Sciences (Cambridge, 1990), 169–88. ²⁹ Nicolson, ‘The Development of Plant Ecology’, 14. ³⁰ R. C. Tobey, Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–1955 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), 50. ³¹ Before Humboldt’s emphasis on the study of vegetation as a study of the collective phenomena of plants, the dominant botanical tradition was that of floristics. ³² Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 26. ³³ M. J. Schleiden, The Plant: A Biography (London, 1848), 306.

30

A Contract with Nature

The Danish plant geographer Fredrick Schouw similarly argued that nature if not interfered with would remain about the same throughout time. With cultural advancement, however, the power of human beings to transform and destroy nature increased enormously.³⁴ The concern with the destruction of vegetation, when combined with the Humboldtian idea of the relation between vegetation and climate, led to new perspectives on the impact of human actions on forests. Once a relationship between climatic change and vegetational patterns had been established, it began to be believed that changes in vegetation, which were, in effect, consequences of deforestation, would also result in changes in climate. It was therefore increasingly argued that such climatic alterations, when combined with declines in water tables, would result in droughts.³⁵ In 1847, Carl Fraas published an influential book on the destruction of the vegetation of Greece, Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, and southern Europe as a result of human activities.³⁶ Fraas argued that the original vegetation of these regions had been a response to climatic conditions and that human beings, mostly through deforestation, had changed the vegetation—which was now less useful to them— and also the climate.³⁷ Such views and ideas began to be held widely in sections of the international scientific community. Concerns about the agency of human beings and, in particular, about the ability of people to engineer climatic change and the transformation of vegetation detrimental to human interests thus constituted a significant aspect of the scientific discourse in Europe between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Such concerns centred around theories about the role of forests in regulating water flows, inducing rainfall, and maintaining water tables, on the one hand, and ensuring climatic stability and, in particular, preventing erosion, floods, and droughts, on the other. ³⁴ J. F. Schouw, The Earth, Plants and Man (London, 1852). ³⁵ While historians of ecology (e.g. E. Cittadino, Nature as the Laboratory: Darwinian Plant Ecology in the German Empire, 1880–1900 (Cambridge, 1990); Tobey, Saving the Prairies; Nicolson, ‘The Development of Plant Ecology’) have written about the scientific contributions of the Humboldtian plant geographers, their work as botanical critics of deforestation, and thus as environmental commentators and eco-evangelists, has been totally ignored. This important gap has however been addressed in S. R. Rajan, ‘Botanists as Environmental Evangelists: Fraas, Schouw, Schleiden and the Ecological Critique of “Civilisation” ’ (unpublished paper, 1993). See also W. R. Woodward, ‘Writings on the Philosophy of Science (Review of T. Glasmacher, Fries, Apect, Schleiden—List of Primary and Secondary Literature, 1789–1988)’, Isis, 84/3 (1993). ³⁶ Brown, Forests and Moisture, 109. The book referred to was C. Fraas, Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Beider (Landshut, 1847). ³⁷ Glacken, ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, 79.

A Contract with Nature

31

These theories also began to be interpreted in normative terms, in the sense of their ‘morals’ for human society. To quote Humboldt again, ‘How foolish do men appear, destroying the forest cover without regard to consequences, for thereby they rob themselves of wood and water.’³⁸ By the time Marsh began his synthesis of the literature that culminated in his magnum opus, there were already apocalyptic ‘lessons’ to be drawn from a century of environmental science. An excellent illustration of these lessons is a short section in Man and Nature entitled, ‘General Consequences of the Destruction of the Forest’. It is so extraordinary in its combination of comprehensiveness with brevity and in its apocalyptic tone that it is worth reproducing almost in entirety.³⁹ With the disappearance of the forest all is changed. At one season, the earth parts with its warmth by radiation to an open sky—receives, at another, an immoderate heat from the unobstructed rays of the sun. Hence the climate becomes excessive, and the soil is alternatively parched by the fervors of summer, and seared by the rigors of winter. Bleak winds sweep unresisted over its surface, drift away the snow that sheltered it from the frost, and dry up its scanty moisture. The precipitation becomes as regular as the temperature; the melting snows and vernal rains, no longer absorbed by a loose and bibulous vegetable mould, rush over the frozen surface, and pour down the valleys seaward, instead of filling a retentive bed of absorbent earth, and storing up a supply of moisture to feed perennial springs. The soil is bared of its covering of leaves, broken and loosened by the plough, deprived of the fibrous rootlets which held it together, dried and pulverized by sun and wind, and at last exhausted by new combinations. The face of the earth is no longer a sponge, but a dust heap, and the floods which the waters of the sky pour over it hurry swiftly along its slopes, carrying in suspension vast quantities of earthy particles which increase the abrading power and mechanical force of the current, and, augmented by the sand and gravel of falling banks, fill the beds of the streams, divert them into new channels and obstruct their outlets. The rivulets, wanting their former regularity of supply and deprived of the protecting shade of the woods, are heated, evaporated, and thus reduced in their summer currents, but swollen to raging torrents in autumn and in spring. From these causes, there is a constant degradation of the uplands, and a consequent elevation of the beds of watercourses and of lakes by the deposition of the mineral and vegetable matter carried down by the waters. The channels of the great rivers become unnavigable, their estuaries are choked up, and harbors which once sheltered large navies are shoaled by dangerous sandbars. The earth, stripped of its vegetable glebe, grows less and less productive, and, consequently, less able to protect itself by weaving a new network of roots to bind its particles together, a new carpeting of turf to shield it from wind and sun and scouring rain. Gradually, ³⁸ Humboldt, Aspects of Nature.

³⁹ Marsh, Man and Nature, 186–8.

32

A Contract with Nature

it becomes altogether barren. The washing of the soil from the mountains leaves bare ridges of sterile rock, and the rich organic mould which covered them, now swept down into the dank low grounds, promotes a luxuriance of aquatic vegetation that breeds fever, and more insidious forms of mortal disease, by its decay, and thus the earth is rendered no longer fit for the habitation of man.⁴⁰

The last point in the above passage, the allusion to disease, indirectly draws attention to yet another trend in the evolution of environmentalist sensibilities among scientific communities during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. This trend, which Clarence Glacken and Richard Grove have called the ‘Hippocratic’ concern, stems from the theories of Arbuthnot, Montesquieu, Hales, and Priestley, and hypothesizes, in essence, that trees influenced the health of human beings.⁴¹ It is noteworthy, in conclusion to this section, that the emergence of modern scientific traditions in Europe brought with it research programmes that gave rise to some of the most enduring environmentalist ideas. Significantly, environmentalist concerns stemmed from scientific investigative practices that were profoundly reductionist. Consequently, frameworks of valuation that locate the roots of human destructiveness in modernity or its knowledge systems need to be carefully rethought. If indeed it can be argued that ‘imperial’ attitudes stemming from modern science led eventually to ecological catastrophe, it can be equally contended that the recognition of harm and solutions for redressing it are also to be found in modern science. It is important to observe, however, that the European tradition of concern with deforestation was, from the earliest writers with their roots in Baconianism, part of an overall commitment to progress. None of the authors of the European scientific debate on the effects of deforestation, from Evelyn to Humboldt, glorified supposed golden ages of the past. The motivations underlying Evelyn’s work were primarily economic, directed at showing that tree planting could raise the value of estates.⁴² Similarly, the provisions in Colbert’s ordinance reveal an awareness of the relation of forest care to practices such as grazing, mast feeding, and the gathering of forest litter. Again, Buffon included a discussion of problems of forest management and utilization in his great encyclopedia Histoire naturelle.⁴³ Moreover, he undertook site evaluation observations on his ⁴⁰ Marsh, Man and Nature, 186–7. ⁴¹ Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 551–622. Also Grove, Green Imperialism, 189–206. ⁴² K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (London, 1983), 199. ⁴³ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 26.

A Contract with Nature

33

estates, began experiments concerning tree growth, established hardwood plantings, cultivated conifers in his nurseries, and also conducted pioneering research on wood technology, establishing a correlation between the density and the strength of wood for the first time.⁴⁴ Similarly, Humboldt was interested in using science, which for him meant a commitment to accuracy in all instruments and observations, a new mental sophistication, including a set of conceptual tools including isomaps, graphs, and the theory of errors, and the application of these not only to laboratory isolates but to studying the complex interrelationships of the physical, the biological, and the human, for the efficient use of natural resources.⁴⁵ He therefore encouraged research and education in forest management and, in particular, assisted in the establishment of the forest school at Eberswalde in 1830, an institution which subsequently became one of the important educational and research centres in forestry in Germany.⁴⁶ Concerns with the impact of deforestation for the European scientists mentioned in this section did not thus negate or counter what the environmental historian Donald Worster has called ‘Christian Pastoralism’, the idea that nature’s chief purpose is to serve human needs.⁴⁷ For a great many of the engineers concerned with the problem of Alpine torrents, for example, the prime goal was to tame nature: the time is still remote when man shall have completely subdued, and, if the word may be used, domesticated, tamed and utilised the wild waters of the mountains. But there is one happy land, the picture of which, contrasting with these gloomy sketches, may be offered to inquirers as a model and as an encouragement. It is the German Hartz . . . the mining industry, in quest of motive power, has seized upon the water—a force supplied without money and without price . . . and it may be said that there is not a single drop left to follow the natural course; from the highest slopes the rain is collected in furrows forming gutters; all the ravines ⁴⁴ Ibid. 26–7. ⁴⁵ See Michael Dettelbach, ‘Romanticism and Administration: Mining, Galvanism and Oversight in Alexander von Humboldt’s Global Physics’ Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge University, 1993); Susan Faye Cannon, ‘Humboldtian Science’, in Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period (New York, 1978), 73–110; Nicolson, ‘Alexander von Humboldt and the Geography of Vegetation’; Anne Margaret Macpherson, ‘The Human Geography of Alexander von Humboldt’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1971), 35–112, 153–354. It is important to note here that environmental historians such as Donald Worster are not entirely right in locating Humboldt as an ‘Arcadian’ scientist. In addition to his theoretical interests, Humboldt was actively interested in practical applications of science, especially for natural resource use: he thus attended the Freiburg School of Mines from June 1791 to March 1792 among many others to obtain practical training (Macpherson, ‘The Human Geography of Alexander von Humboldt’, 94). ⁴⁶ Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 101. ⁴⁷ Worster, Nature’s Economy, 27.

34

A Contract with Nature

are closed up, and numerous ponds store up their supplies; collected in canals the waters make the circuit of the brows of the hills, are carried across valleys, bury themselves in projecting spurs, and conducted to the gate of the factories, move the hydraulic wheels placed one below another at all the descending levels of the mountains; and, coming at length to the thalweg, the waters are not yet freed— they are made to descend into the mine and there to work underground.⁴⁸

It follows that early or proto-environmentalist scientific traditions did not espouse a preservationist attitude to nature, wherein conservation is a mandate stemming from the idea that non-human species had intrinsic rights to exist. On the contrary, most of the early scientific studies on vegetation and climatic change sought to ensure that human beings could continue to strive to control nature without destroying their basis of subsistence.⁴⁹ One possible reason for this is that many of the scientific practitioners who propounded environmental theories were either landowners, managers, or had held some other responsibility that related to well-being and continued generation of wealth through cultivation. This concern with agrarian productivity resonated sharply with the doctrine of physiocracy, which, as will be argued later in this chapter, was one of the important emergent frameworks of political economy during this period. Climatic environmentalism, thus, was in many significant ways connected with doctrines of and practices pertaining to agrarian political economy. However, many among the proto-environmentalists of this period believed that human environmental misdeeds could be undone. One example is the following passage, written by the botanist Matthias Jacob Schleiden: it is not impossible, it is only difficult, for man without renouncing the advantage of culture itself, one day to make reparation for the injury which he has inflicted: he is appointed lord of creation . . . But we see, too, that the nobler races, or truly cultivated men, even now raise their warning voices, put their small hand to the mighty work of restoring to nature her strength and fullness in yet a higher stage than that of wild nature; one dependent on the law of purpose given by man.⁵⁰

The last sentence in the above quotation is particularly important. Nature, in this modernist interpretation of the dominion myth, had to be improved upon or cultivated to serve higher ends determined by the ⁴⁸ M. Cézanne, cited in Brown, Reboisement in France, 131–2. ⁴⁹ E. Ackerkneckt, ‘George Forster, Alexander von Humboldt, and Ethnology’, Isis, 46 (June 1955), 83–95. ⁵⁰ Schleiden, The Plant: A Biography, 306–7.

A Contract with Nature

35

children of the enlightenment.⁵¹ Put differently, betterment was enlightened humanity’s contract with nature.

2.2. THE CONTINENTAL FORESTRY TRADITION Nowhere are the ostensibly higher ends or laws of purpose alluded to in the Schleiden quote more visible than the evolution of scientific forestry. As an economic system, modern forestry originated in eighteenthcentury Prussia. It was, in effect, an attempt to consolidate upon earlier and extant practices of woodland management, and to establish a scientific resource use regime. In this, it was an important exemplar of cameralist science and economics. Cameralism was an early public policy doctrine that sought to reconstruct the economic foundations of a region devastated by a series of wars by providing state support to industries and banks, extending and improving infrastructure (canals, bridges, harbours, and roads), promoting modernization, and strictly regulating trade, commerce, and the agricultural sector.⁵² The term originated in the management of the state’s treasury (Kammer, caisse, camera principis), seen as the principal instrument of economic and political power. In an age of enlightened absolutism, cameralism emphasized the idea that the state ought to be a regulator of development and thereby serve the general happiness of the subjects.⁵³ The cameralist doctrine essentially held that improvements in administration and resource management mandated a science of state finances. Accordingly, various economic, administrative, and social practices of the state were vigorously scrutinized in order to subject ‘scattered pieces of knowledge . . . into systems’ and to transform ‘all sorts of activities ⁵¹ For a comprehensive discussion of the evolution of the dominion myth, see John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (2nd edn., New York, 1974). ⁵² H. C. Recktenwald, ‘Cameralism’, in J. Eatwell et al. (eds.), The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, i. (London, 1987), 313–14. ⁵³ Ibid. 313. For a comprehensive discussion of the doctrines of political economy in Germany during this period, see Keith Tribe, Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse, 1750–1840 (Cambridge, 1988). For a short but excellent discussion of the relationship between cameralism and other doctrines, including physiocracy, see Keith Tribe, ‘Cameralism and the Science of Government’, Journal of Modern History, 56/2 (June 1984), 263–84. For a wider discussion of absolutism, see Leonard Krieger, An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism (Chicago, 1975).

36

A Contract with Nature

previously left to habit into a science’.⁵⁴ Underlying these various cameral sciences, as the resultant new disciplines of knowledge came to be known, was a commitment to quantification and economic rationalization. The inclusion of forestry among the cameral sciences was a result of a perceived shortage of wood in Germany in the mid eighteenth century.⁵⁵ A small group of state officials began to hypothesize that a crisis in the supply of wood was impending. They began to articulate the idea that expanding the supply of wood by complex forest management promised long-term gains. Further, they made the argument that the skill to realize this potential was lacking.⁵⁶ Indeed, the vast majority of foresters were caretakers, game wardens, and masters of the hunt, with no theoretical or practical training in forestry. The first step towards a new science of forestry therefore was the establishment of a number of schools of training and research. By the middle of the century, forestry schools had been established and books and journals devoted to forestry began to be published.⁵⁷ The key people involved in the creation of this new discipline were the holzgerechte Jäger (game wardens versed in forestry), the Kameralisten (students of finance and administration) in the government, and the Kameralisten in the universities.⁵⁸ By the nineteenth century, the methods and approaches of ⁵⁴ I am greatly indebted to Henry Lowood for the upcoming description of cameralist forestry. I am particularly influenced by two of his works—H. E. Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester: Quantification, Cameral Science, and the Emergence of Scientific Forestry Management in Germany’, in T. Frängsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and R. E. Rider (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990); H. E. Lowood, ‘Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment: The Economic and Scientific Societies, 1760–1815’ (Ph.D. thesis, Berkeley, 1987). The specific quote cited here is from Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 315–16. ⁵⁵ The word ‘Germany’ is used here to designate German-speaking Central Europe, including the German client states of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg dominions, and most of the Swiss cantons. ⁵⁶ For a sophisticated and revisionist account of the wood crisis debate and the motivations of the various stake holders involved, see Radkau, ‘Wood and Forestry in German History: In Quest of an Environmental Approach’. See also Joachim Radkau and Ingrid Schäfer, Holz—Ein Naturstoff in der Technikgeschichte (Reinbek, 1987) and Heske, German Forestry, 18–30. The objective of the description in this section is to sketch the broad intellectual contours of the principles of the emergent discipline of forestry. Therefore, the details of the actual practice of forest management on the ground—and the many historical and historiographical controversies arising therefrom—have been deliberately avoided. ⁵⁷ Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 83. Among the earliest such works was W. Gottfried von Moser’s Grundsätze der Forstökonomie, published in 1757. The earliest forestry school was set up by H. D. van Zanthier in the Hartz forest in 1763. (Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 14.) ⁵⁸ Important among the holzgerechte Jäger were J. C. Beckmann and J. J. Büchting. The leading Kameralisten in government were J. F. Stahl, J. Pfeiffer, J. von Hazzi, and H. von

A Contract with Nature

37

German forestry had undergone a considerable degree of metamorphosis since its early days as a cameral science. Despite this change, the basic agenda of German forestry remained more or less the same. It consisted, in essence, in describing ‘the living forest quantitatively before subjecting it to economic reason’.⁵⁹ An understanding of these methods and approaches as they evolved over the years offers a great deal of insight into the priorities and resource management ideologies of modern continental forestry and indeed of British colonial forestry in the second half of the nineteenth century and later.

2.2.1. Stages in the Development of German Forestry: A Brief Overview Cameralist forestry initially built on forest management practices already prevalent among local forest communities. The areal method, one of the earliest systems developed by cameralist foresters, was based on a traditional practice of forest use that involved the setting of annual cutting schedules. Foresters demarcated and measured the acreage covered by the woods and estimated the numbers of years that the dominant types of trees needed to grow between cuttings and clearings. They then partitioned the forest into a number of divisions equal to the number of years in this growth cycle and derived annual yields on the assumption that equal areas yielded equal amounts of wood for harvest each year.⁶⁰ Although this method worked well for relatively short growth periods typical of traditional forestry practices, it was soon abandoned. The reason for this is indicative of the direction in which German cameralist forestry was to develop in the decades to come. The areal method was rejected because it proved insufficient for fiscal or forest officials interested in the systematic and scientifically sustainable harvest of high (old and mature) timber, which they thought of as equivalent to cash crops. The insufficiency arose from the irregular topography and uneven distribution of German woodlands, which made areal computations extremely difficult. Moreover, such computations were further complicated by the fact that the correlation of acreage with actual distribution of lumber and firewood required principles not formulated and measurements not Brocke, and in the universities Beckmann (who joined the University of Göttingen), J. J. Trunk, and J. H. Jung (also named Stilling) (Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 30). ⁵⁹ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 323. ⁶⁰ Ibid. 324–5. See also Heske, German Forestry, 26–30.

38

A Contract with Nature

routinely executed under this method of forestry. The area-based system was also inadequate to respond to the fluctuations produced by nature over the many decades of a single forest cycle. Nor could it provide a flexible way of directly adjusting the harvest from year to year, or predict annual yields over the long cycle from the outset.⁶¹ Methods involving area-based approaches to forest economy therefore gave way to those based on mass or volume of wood. In the early 1760s, Johann Gottlieb Beckmann from Saxony, a game warden turned forest inspector turned university professor, developed a method which involved a team of assistants, each supplied with birch nails of various colours, walking side by side through the forest at intervals of a few yards.⁶² Each member of the group concentrated on one side of the forest, noted every tree he passed, made estimates of the size categories into which each tree fell, and marked individual trees with nails of an appropriate colour. When the operation was completed, the unused nails were counted and subtracted from the original supply, thus yielding an estimate of the number of trees in each size category. Since the approximate yield of wood from trees of each size category was known from experience, the amount of standing wood in a forest could, with appropriate multipliers, be determined easily.⁶³ Empirical approaches such as Beckmann’s were further developed upon by a generation of mathematically trained foresters such as Karl Christoph Oettelt, Johann Vierenklee, and Johann Hossfeld.⁶⁴ These foresters assigned the task of making measurements in the forest to the Forstgeometer, a surveyor who, in addition to making such measurements, demarcated the borders of the forest, prepared maps, and carried out other prescribed tasks for a set fee. A division of labour then evolved, with the forest geometer along with a team of marching assistants gathering the data, and the chief forester and his superiors undertaking the work of calculation, analysis, and planning. The activity of data analysis was inspired by a new confidence in the ability of mathematical principles and techniques to ascertain wood mass, the crucial variable of the new forestry. Several methods were developed to ⁶¹ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 324–5; Heske, German Forestry, 26–30. ⁶² Beckmann, who wrote an influential work, Anweisung zu einer pfleglichen Forstwirthschaft, in 1759, was the person who, in his 1763 work, Beyträge zur verbesserung der Forstwissenschaft, first used the word Forstwissenschaft (Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 87). ⁶³ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 325. Also Heske, German Forestry, 30–1. ⁶⁴ Other important foresters of this genre included G. H. Werner, K. W. Hennert, J. H. L Wiesenhavern, and G. König (Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 32).

A Contract with Nature

39

calculate the mass of wood mathematically. While some used tree heights as the basis for calculations, others deployed integral calculus to handle the irregular shapes of standing trees, while yet others idealized the shapes to truncated cones. The techniques developed by Oettelt, Vierenklee, and Hossfeld enabled the calculation of the quantity of wood in a tree without felling it. A new abstract mathematics-based forestry thus evolved. In this framework, forestry science supplied the necessary principles to organize the data gathered in the field and thereby ascertain the mass of wood which could be found at any given place and time. Tables were compiled based on the carefully constructed and controlled field measurements.⁶⁵ In this tradition of Forstwissenschaft, the forester’s idea of a forest was gleaned from the conceptual framework of his manual, which provided an outline of exemplary tables specifying details such as the type and yield of various tree species. The manual thereby helped the forester decide how best to manage any individual forest. It provided an ideal approximation of a standard tree, or the Normalbaum, to which the natural specimens could be approximated, thereby helping expedite processes of inventory, estimation, and, ultimately, planning.⁶⁶ Indeed, although most treatises on forestry contained instructions for averaging measurements made on a test plot, many foresters preferred the Normalbaum, for the simplicity it afforded. Moreover, tables of numbers representing measurements and calculations provided data on specific classes of trees under specified conditions. These tables rationalized across space, and were indifferent to regional variations.⁶⁷ By the end of the eighteenth century, German forestry metamorphosed into a systematic science of determining, predicting, and controlling wood mass. It reached a climax in the work of Heinrich Cotta, Georg Ludwig Hartig, Friedrich Wilhelm Leopold Pfeil, Johann Christian Hundeshagen, and Carl Justus Heyer, who wrote the first ‘classics’ and to whom is attributed the birth of the modern science of forestry.⁶⁸ Writing at the turn of the century, Cotta enunciated a three-pronged approach to forest management. The first step was a geometric survey, which would supply information about the extent of forests. The second involved calculations ⁶⁵ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 326–8. Some of the important authors are K. C. Oettelt and J. E. Vierenklee. ⁶⁶ J. L. Heilbron, ‘Introductory Essay’, in Frängsmyr et al. (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century, 15. ⁶⁷ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 329. See also Heske, German Forestry, 31. ⁶⁸ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 16.

40

A Contract with Nature

of wood mass of individual trees and stands and finally of the forest as a whole with growth rates calculated for each level of organization. The third step entailed linking the forest balance sheet to the monetary budget by treating the standing forest as capital, its yield as interest, and then completing a chain of conversions from wood to units of currency.⁶⁹ The fundamental problem of forest management for Cotta and his colleagues was the determination of the ‘standing value’ of the forest, given uninterrupted maintenance costs and full harvest some 100 to 150 years hence. Their science therefore consisted of inventory and prediction. Cotta, for example, championed the use of ‘experience tables’ which reinforced the notion of the Normalbaum, or a forest conceptualized as a set of standard trees. The forester instructed his assistants in the use of these tables so that a mental picture of a tree encountered in a forest corresponded to an entry in the tables. A well-trained forester could therefore make an instant association from the mental picture triggered by a given tree to the value of wood mass contained in that tree, in effect, being an instant computer of wood mass. The division of labour in this forestry system entailed the head forester determining the growth rates, preparing maps and calculating tables, and delegating to his staff routine measurements and the mechanical application of tables.⁷⁰ The forestry practices of Cotta’s generation had thereby evolved considerably from the days of Beckmann and his army of assistants with coloured nails. It was, in effect, a confluence of two broad influences. First, it was based upon the practical experiences of several generations of artisan-trained, empirically schooled holzgerechte Jäger. What made the new forestry distinctive was the fact this vast constellation of practical or local knowledge was consolidated and repackaged. One aspect of this repackaging was the use of advanced mathematics. The emergence of sophisticated sampling and generalization techniques meant that the work of the assessment and management of the forest required only standard trees and the experience tables. Instead of getting the data needed for determining fellings or predicting monetary yield from direct measurements of wood mass or volume, the forester could now employ new analytic tools developed for forest computation, the ‘standard tree’, the ‘size class’, the ‘age class’, and the ‘sample plot’. A second facet of the new forestry involved the development and deployment of a specialized body of literature on forest botany and zoology.⁷¹ There was however ⁶⁹ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 330. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 331. ⁷¹ This literature developed simultaneously in Germany and France. Important among the forest botanists were H. L. Duhamel du Monceau, J. G. Gleditch, J. F. Enderlin,

A Contract with Nature

41

a third and extremely important aspect to the repackaging: the incorporation of the goals of forestry science within cameralist economic principles.⁷²

2.2.2. German Forestry as an Ideology of Resource Use In order to appreciate the significance of cameralism, it is important to attempt to characterize the ideology of resource use implicit in this new approach to forest management. A critical principle that stands out here is that of sustained yield, or sustainability (Nachhaltigkeit). This concept was fundamental for any system established to provide resources for the future. The idea emerged as early as 1767, when Johann Ehrenfried Vierenklee argued that the forester must know how to divide up a forest into a definite number of annual cutting areas from which he should obtain a definite amount of wood each year. Vierenklee had used mathematics to obtain formulae to achieve this distinction and had based his work on growth calculations for high timber. The idea of sustained yield thereafter became the cornerstone of the Forstwissenschaft. From a series of quantities and qualifiers such as growth rates, mass of wood in a forest, and quality of soils, the scientific forester was trained to create a schedule of cuttings for the forest of standard trees under the ‘particular aspects of each system of culture’ such as timber forest, coppice, or a mixed form.⁷³ The methods of ‘forest regulation’ developed were predictive and prescriptive. They offered a long-term framework of forest management based on the mathematics and standard practices for application in forests. Scientific forest regulation also exercised many aspects of the forester’s art and science, from cartography, description, and techniques for regeneration to silviculture and assessment. Although the methods varied greatly, they resulted in the visual arrangement of age classes and plots, linked with the quantities of wood and cuttings over time. Fold-out tables were common and, like modernday business charts, paid great attention to graphic clarity and had a great faith in numbers. The concept of sustained yield brought into forestry science the concept of time: it forced the forester to ask how much wood a forest could deliver, not only immediately but over a century or two, and how this yield could be harvested in a given year so as to ensure that the F. A. L. von Burgsdorf, J. D. Reitter, F. A. J. von Wangenheim, J. M. Bechstein, and M. B. Borkhausen (Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 31). ⁷² Ibid. 16. ⁷³ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 337–40.

42

A Contract with Nature

same yield would still be available a hundred years hence. It thereby effectively made a forester a curator of forests.⁷⁴ The idea of sustainable yield forestry brought with it an important operational requirement, stemming from the imperative to convert the amount of wood to its value. This requirement was the need to maintain a balance sheet. The forester was therefore required to prepare a Forst-etat, a budget that compared the yield to what the forest could bear over time in order to prevent either under- or overutilization of wood. Terms such as ‘forest use budget’ and ‘natural forest budget’ were accordingly used to describe the related components of planning and biological growth that concerned the forester in his attempt to balance supply and demand. In drawing up a balance sheet, the forester was meant to evaluate disturbances to the equilibrium of the forest caused both by natural causes such as fires and pests and by human-induced causes. Having done so, and having calculated the magnitude of these disturbances, the forester had the information to prescribe means for restoring the equilibrium of growth and yield over time. Forests could thus be managed according to books consisting largely of numbers concerning consumption, production, and distribution of wood—arranged so that ultimately the balance in every forest, district, administrative region, and province could easily be reviewed at a glance.⁷⁵ Given that the principal goal of economic forestry was to create an optimal resource use regimen defined in terms of yield, there was no particular motivation to maximize species diversity. On the contrary, sustained yield forestry practised during this period sought to economize effort by producing approximations that, for the sake of calculation, simplified the diversity of nature. For example, Johann Wilhelm Hossfeld, a leading proponent of stereometrical and geometrical methods in the determination of wood volume and the inventor of methods to calculate the value of the forest, argued that a series of multiplied averages based on one or two easily observed characteristics such as the height of a stand of trees was as good as an exact summation of all the individual cases.⁷⁶ Again, Hartig advocated strict adherence to results drawn from a few sample plots. He advocated the application of simple rules and the discarding of ‘arbitrary’ details of nature.⁷⁷ Similarly, Cotta argued that selective measurements should be used to generate acceptable values for quantities like typical yield or growth. These could then become the ⁷⁴ Lowood, ‘The Calculating Forester’, 339–40. ⁷⁶ Ibid. 333. ⁷⁷ Ibid. 334.

⁷⁵ Ibid. 335–7.

A Contract with Nature

43

characteristics of ideal-types presented in tables and other summations and multiplications of data from test plots. Cotta contended, further, that the forester did not have to worry about the accumulation of errors, claiming that individual differences cancelled out in the aggregate, thus giving the forester freedom from the need to poll every tree without increasing the risk of error.⁷⁸ As a consequence of such reasoning, Forstwissenschaft, through to the late nineteenth century, when new philosophies emerged, concentrated on regulating nature according to age classes and wood masses, aiming, ultimately, to construct the ‘normal forest’. The physical result was the creation of monocultural, even-aged forests. The Normalbaum had, in effect, been transformed from abstraction to reality.⁷⁹

2.2.3. German Forestry and Society There is one more aspect to the ideology of German forestry that needs to be understood before discussing the significance of the cameralist revolution—the consequence of new practices for social and economic relations. Owing to the fact that forests were perceived as being crucially important for the national economy, as both climatic regulators and economic engines, the German forestry tradition was committed to exercising a strict regime of protection. As a result, as more and more areas came under their control, the question of the definition of forests became increasingly significant to foresters. Although traditional privileges and the continued use of the forest for agricultural purposes such as grazing had long discouraged a conceptually precise demarcation of the forest, the Kameralisten foresters promoted the notion that it could be defined precisely and studied objectively.⁸⁰ This idea was born out of a belief that most rights of forest use were harmful and their regulation highly desirable.⁸¹ Consequently, there began a movement to diminish the rights of traditional forest users over their resources. Over time, the Prussian forestry tradition devised explicit tools for regulating the usufruct rights of local peoples. There were four different kinds of regulation, defined as ‘the definite restriction in respect to time or duration of rights, or with respect to the areas subject to them’.⁸² They included conversion (Umwandlung), in which the ‘beneficiary’ ⁷⁸ Ibid. 333–5. ⁷⁹ Ibid. 340–1. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 319. ⁸¹ Heske, German Forestry, 244. ⁸² Ibid.

44

A Contract with Nature

was assigned another product in place of the one taken; reduction (Einschraenkung) or diminution (Ermaessigung), a temporary reduction below the normal use quota in cases when the encumbered forest could not produce the necessary material as a result of changes in system of management such as deterioration of soil, fire, and insect attacks; settlement (Fixierung), in which the extent of rights, hitherto vaguely defined, was fixed definitely on the basis of the need for the material; and transformation (Verlegung), according to which the rights of use were shifted to another part of the forest.⁸³ In addition to regulation, German forestry also allowed for extinction (Abloesung), which involved the complete abolition or annulment of rights in return for suitable compensation paid to the ‘beneficiary’.⁸⁴ German forest law gave forest officials the right to enforce these provisions, which they did with a great deal of force and authority. Their uncontrolled harshness engendered a great deal of resentment among local populations and led to many protests over access to forest resources.⁸⁵ With the institutionalization of forestry and the establishment of schools and training programmes, such forest laws and regulations were encoded into the disciplinary matrix that emerged. Modes of forest use devised by foresters and their policy perspectives on whether and to what extent forests ought to be maintained in any country, and whether forest ownership should rest with the state, individuals, communities, or private enterprise, were thereby entrenched and reproduced across generations.⁸⁶ The historical evolution of these branches also reflected the tensions between foresters, who had emerged as an interest group on the issue of forest resource use, and various other interest groups, including agriculturalists and pastoralists. This tradition of forestry, as will be shown in the next section, played a major role in shaping French forestry which, along with the German, was instrumental to the development of the British colonial forestry tradition in the nineteenth century.

2.2.4. French Forestry France had a tradition of systematic state forestry prior to the introduction of German methods in the late eighteenth century. In the mid seventeenth century, Jean Baptiste Colbert, a minister in the court of Louis XIV, declared the forest of state importance and passed an ordinance in 1669 ⁸³ Heske, German Forestry. ⁸⁴ Ibid. ⁸⁵ Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 52–3. ⁸⁶ Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, i, 2–3.

A Contract with Nature

45

which gave the king significant new rights over French forests.⁸⁷ The ordinance was enacted after an eight-year study by a commission consisting of administrative officials, lawyers, and people familiar with forestry problems. It arose out of a realization, following an acute shortfall in timber for ship construction in France, that maintaining a domestic source in the face of international competition for wood was vital to the future of that country.⁸⁸ The main goal of the ordinance was to systematize forest management based on economics, with the purpose of determining the productivity of forests and clarifying disputes over ownership and land tenure.⁸⁹ Colbert’s ordinance gave water and forest superintendents power to levy heavy fines for violations while recognizing the importance of forests for the resource needs of agrarian populations.⁹⁰ French forest law continued to evolve in the following decades until 1752, when the chief forest master of Rouen, Antoine Pecquet, wrote Loix forestiers de France.⁹¹ Following the French Revolution, and in the wave of expropriation and public distribution of state and church properties, Colbert’s system of forest management, which had assigned an important role to the state and the king, came under severe attack. Leading the charge were the French physiocrats, who had contested the ideas of the mercantilist Kameralisten from the middle of the eighteenth century.⁹² In 1770, a leading French physiocrat, G. F. le Trosne, had launched an open attack on the Colbertian system and advocated private property ownership. His criticisms however, had no immediate effect, and the ordinance remained in force until the revolution in 1789.⁹³ At the National Convention of 1792, the question of what to replace the Colbertian scheme with was an important topic of discussion and philosophical debate. The issue was whether royal forests should be ⁸⁷ I am particularly indebted to Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism for the discussion of French forestry. For this particular point, see p. 81. See also Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 215–18 and Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, 491–4. ⁸⁸ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 23. ⁸⁹ Ibid. ⁹⁰ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 81. For the wider context underlying Colbert’s policies, see G. G. Meynell. The French Academy of Sciences, 1666–91: A Reassessment of the French Académie Royale des Sciences under Colbert (1666–83) and Louvois (1683–91) (Dover, 2002) and David S. Lux, ‘Colbert’s Plan for the “Grande Académie”: Royal Policy toward Science, 1663–1667’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 12 (1990), 177–88. ⁹¹ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 24. ⁹² Ibid. See also G. Vaggi, ‘Physiocrats’, in J. Eatwell et al. (eds.), The New Palgrave: Dictionary of Economics, iii (London, 1987), 869–76. ⁹³ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 24.

46

A Contract with Nature

alienated and put into private hands, or kept and managed by the state for the national interest. A related question for debate concerned the role of public property in a democracy and, specifically, how a democratic forest administration could be organized.⁹⁴There was no clear consensus on these issues until 1801 when, with the re-establishment of the Administration of Water and Forests under the finance ministry, a definite perspective began to evolve. Forests, in this view, were seen as national resources, to be managed on the basis of the emerging science of silviculture, which had by then begun thriving in neighbouring Germany. The idea that scientific management was necessary to cultivate France’s forests had, during this period, also been promoted by a number of important people, notably Baudrillart, who was chief of division, Administration Générale des Forêts, and professor of political economy.⁹⁵ The Water and Forest Administration promulgated 123 regulations concerning forest management. These regulations included applying principles of modern forest management to communal forests, the reassertion of state management of forest plantations, and the adoption and application of scientific survey techniques.⁹⁶ In 1820, the French national government established an independent agency, the Corps des Eaux et Forêts, charged with developing management policy and administering the forestry estate. In 1824–5, a school of forestry was established at Nancy to train personnel for this professional corps. The Nancy forestry school was one of the grandes écoles of the nation, along with the École des Mines, the École des Ponts et Chaussées, the École Polytechnique, the École Navale, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, and the École Normale Supérieure.⁹⁷ These schools were designed to provide an educated, scientific, modern, technocratic elite: engineers, scientists, planners, educators, and politicians who would systematically and rationally address the planning needs of the nation as it entered the modern period.⁹⁸ The first director of the Nancy school was J. Bernard Lorentz, a German-trained forester and a friend of G. L. Hartig, who had published the Lorentz manuel du forestier in 1801.⁹⁹ His successors as directors of the ⁹⁴ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 81. ⁹⁵ Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 209. ⁹⁶ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. ⁹⁷ These schools were established by Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 19th century. ⁹⁸ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 84. See also Lowood, ‘Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment’, 10. ⁹⁹ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry, 210.

A Contract with Nature

47

Nancy school were de Salomon (1830–8), Adolphe L. F. Parade (1838–65), who was an assistant and son-in-law of Lorentz, and H. Nanquette (1864–80), all of whom were foresters trained in Germany.¹⁰⁰ The German training was necessitated because although France had a distinguished tradition of woodland management, the new ideology privileged scientific silviculture.¹⁰¹ Together, Lorentz and his successors ardently promoted German forestry techniques that favoured tree plantations— monocultural ‘high forests’ composed of species suitable for construction and meeting industrial needs.¹⁰² The state corps forestier subsequently undertook reforestation programmes in consonance with the Germanic forestry agenda. Under their schemes, forests across France were cut and replanted with monocultural stands of species such as pines that were deemed economically important, replacing mixed forests.¹⁰³ The new forestry steadily displaced the traditional coppice system, which yielded timber and products more varied in size and kind than did the high forest but which had been more suitable to the myriad requirements of local inhabitants besides sustaining the biological complexity required for the forest’s health and creating an iconic landscape. Moreover, as in Germany, the new forestry replaced communal forest management systems, rights of forage, pasturage, gleaning, and coppicing practices. The forest, in the view of the graduates of Nancy, was an element of France’s infrastructure, like a bridge or a road, and at the service of the state’s general political and economic policies.¹⁰⁴ It necessitated the long-term presence of a professional group of foresters to manage the desired high forest woods. The locals, who had traditionally managed the coppiced woodlands for their daily needs, consequently had to abide by the forest management regimes set by professional foresters.¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁰ Instruction at Nancy under Lorentz was based on the principles advocated by Hartig. Again, Parade had studied under von Cotta in Tharandt (Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 27). See also Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 83. ¹⁰¹ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 26. ¹⁰² Lorentz and his successors, however, had to fight hard against several local uprisings and against many who did not agree with their forest agendas. In 1839, Lorentz drew tremendous fire when he advocated a system of regeneration under shelterwood to replace the coppice and selection forest. Parade, the successor of Lorentz, was in trouble for the same reason and in 1847 was attacked in the legislature so severely that it threatened the collapse of the school. The condition lasted until Parade’s death, in 1864, when Nanquette assumed guidance of the school. The latter was less radical, but did not escape criticism, nor did his successor, Puton. Fernow, A History of Forestry, 242–3, 244, 245. ¹⁰³ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 83. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid. 82. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid.

48

A Contract with Nature

2.2.5. Modern French Forestry and People The forest that the French Forestry Corps protected, rehabilitated, and developed was thus very different from the historic forest managed by local people for their needs. However, the new forestry also placed blame for forest degradation on the traditional systems of natural resource management. Such blame reflected the ongoing struggle for control over natural resources between traditional resource users and the new class of people, the bourgeoisie, whose commercial interests in a unified, industrial nature required access to wood for fuel needs.¹⁰⁶ It also reflected the emergent scientific consensus about the fragility of mountain ecosystems.¹⁰⁷ The latter concern led, over time, to a scientific crusade, developed to ‘save’ the forest from local populations. Led by engineers, agronomists, and other scientists, this campaign produced what Richard Drayton has termed the Myth of the Environmentally Profligate Native.¹⁰⁸ It asserted that whereas forest resources remained static, the size of local populations ‘abusing’ them continued to grow. An important aspect of this campaign to save the forest from local people was the conception that forests were needed for agriculture in the lowlands and to prevent erosion, landslides, avalanches, and floods in the mountains.¹⁰⁹ Here, French foresters worked along with the engineers and others described in section 2.1 who were concerned with the impact of deforestation on watersheds.¹¹⁰ The connection between forest cover, healthy watersheds, and agricultural productivity coincided with and was influenced in part by the work of the environmental scientists described earlier. The claims of the forest protectionists received added credence in the aftermath of a series of serious floods in 1840 and 1843. Following a massive ecological debate about the mountain, which played on the environmental vulnerability of the state, a law was enacted in 1860, permitting the imposition of zones in mountainous areas wherein the forcible expropriation of land for the environmentalist cause was allowed. There were ¹⁰⁶ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. ¹⁰⁷ Tamara Whited, Forests and Peasant Politics in Modern France (New Haven, 2000). See especially chapter 2. ¹⁰⁸ Richard Drayton, ‘The Myth of the Environmentally Profligate Native.’ Seminar Presentation, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1992. ¹⁰⁹ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. See also Whited, Forests and Peasant Politics. ¹¹⁰ Mantel, ‘History of the International Science of Forestry’, 27–8.

A Contract with Nature

49

a number of revolts, such as in Jarrier in Savoie and Massat in Ariège, in the face of this state enforced land alienation.¹¹¹ It is important to note that peasant revolts following the enforcement of the laws passed under the Germanic forestry paradigm were rampant from the very early days. Following the passage of the 1827 National Forest Code, for example, male peasants dressed up as women and engaged in armed resistance against the forest guards in the Ariège.¹¹² In subsequent years, protests in peripheral mountain communities of the Mediterranean Alps, the Pyrénées, Alsace, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, and Bourgogne were big enough that the army had to intervene.¹¹³ Such organized peasant protests forced the state to backtrack on the enforcement of the forest laws restricting the rights of local people, and in practice, policies on the ground were, in many cases, flexible and accommodating.¹¹⁴ Foresters and their supporters, however, continued to blame local inhabitants for the degradation of resources and to press for authority to intervene. Reminiscent of more recent myths of environmental profligacy, mountain people were described by professional foresters as ‘incapable of managing the mountain, preserving its soil and conserving its vegetative cover’ and as being so ‘unconscious of their own interests that they persevere in exploiting their mountains in the least advantageous manner’—a testament to their ‘inertia and deplorable egotism’.¹¹⁵ The reasons for deforestation and the increase in natural disasters such as flooding and avalanches lay in a complex mixture of issues. These included the break-up of traditional forest holdings due to large-scale economic transformations caused by the industrial revolution, privatization, and capitalism, and economic and demographic changes which caused the soil in these poor, isolated regions to become unstable. French foresters, however, claimed that the reason for the economic underdevelopment and growing pauperization of the mountain regions was that the local people had wantonly caused deforestation and erosion.¹¹⁶ They saw themselves as the protectors of resource against the local populations and argued that the panacea for these problems was sound scientific forest management and reforestation based on state control over forest lands. ¹¹¹ Whited, Forests and Peasant Politics. See especially chapters 1 and 2. ¹¹² Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, Mass., 1994). ¹¹³ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. ¹¹⁴ Whited, Forests and Peasant Politics. See especially chapters 1 and 2. ¹¹⁵ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. ¹¹⁶ Ibid. 83.

50

A Contract with Nature 2.3. RESONANT THEMES

The regime of scientific forestry that originated in Europe from the middle of the eighteenth century onward had two interrelated emergent tendencies: modernizing nature, on the one hand; and emancipatory appropriation and technocracy, on the other.

2.3.1. Modernizing Nature As the discussion in the previous section pointed out, modern forestry was a direct offshoot of new doctrines of political economy, such as cameralism, that sought to raise the quality of life of people and nations. These new doctrines, in turn, were associated with a wider philosophy of improvement and emancipation: economic betterment through efficient use of resources, it was argued, would enable the advancement of culture.¹¹⁷ It is important to point out here that it was not just the cameralists who supported state control of forests and their management on scientific lines. Although some free traders repudiated all state interference in forestry and even advocated the sale of the state forests, many took the opposite view and advocated state control of forest enterprises.¹¹⁸ The state thus emerged as the centre of calculation, the entity that planned and managed resource use for public interest. The rationale for state involvement lay in the doctrine of the greater good. Given the wide distribution of forests and multiple claims on their products, it emerged as the mediating entity, husbanding and marshalling scarce resources, with efficiency, sustainability, and the idea of meeting the demands of the future as the core organizing principles.¹¹⁹ The new science of forestry, in this scheme, was an attempt to embed the processes of knowledge making and technological development that constituted the discipline within the wider goals of development and societal emancipation implicit in the emergent doctrines of political economy. The difference between modern forestry and earlier forest management practices in Germany and France was essentially one of the relationship ¹¹⁷ For an excellent analysis, see Richard Carl Bowler, Bildung, Bureaucracy, and Political Economy: Karl Heinrich Rau and the Development of German Economics (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996). ¹¹⁸ Heske, German Forestry, 26. ¹¹⁹ The idea of sustainability, in this context, was fundamentally about judicious resource use, aiming to ensure the availability of forest products into the indefinite future.

A Contract with Nature

51

between science, economy, and society: the new forestry sought to systematize local knowledge in order to transcend the local, and then introduce empirical, experimental methods to iteratively improve the practice of resource management to satisfy the goals of the new political economic doctrines. An important consequence of such developments was the secularization of nature, which was increasingly valued for its economic potential.¹²⁰ An excellent illustration of this shift in values is in the entry on forests by Monsieur Le Roy, warden of the Park of Versailles, in the French Encyclopédie edited by Diderot in 1750. Le Roy wrote: ‘Our oaks no longer proffer oracles, and we no longer ask of them the sacred mistletoe; we must replace this cult by care; and whatever advantage one may previously have found in the respect that one had for forests, one can expect even more success from vigilance and economy.’¹²¹ Analyzing Le Roy’s entry, Robert Pogue Harrison writes: In Le Roy’s article, forests are stripped of the symbolic density they may once have possessed. They are reduced to the most literal of determinations, namely ‘a great expanse of woodlands . . . composed of trees of all sorts.’ Le Roy never once mentions the issue of wildlife. The forest as habitat has disappeared. If habitat is not an issue for Le Roy it is because the forest has already been conceived of in terms of timber. This timber, in turn, has been conceived of in terms of its use-value. Use-value, in turn, has been linked to the concept of ‘rights’—the rights of the state, the rights of private owners, and the rights of posterity. Nowhere is there any mention of the rights of the forest’s wildlife.¹²²

To summarize, the origins of modern continental European forestry lay in rationalism as much as in romanticism. Cameralist forestry was, however, essentially a ‘bureaucratic-scientific approach to resource management’.¹²³ It was concerned with the production of timber and other forest products and with meeting the needs of the national economy. Its oldest branches included forest utilization, the preparation of forest working plans, silviculture, forest valuation or forest finance, and forest ¹²⁰ For an excellent discussion of the relationship between the emergent doctrines of political economy and the instrumental valuation of nature, see R. Andre Wakefield, ‘The Apostles of Good Police: Science, Cameralism and the Culture of Administration in Central Europe, 1656–1800’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1999). See also E. C. Spary, Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago, 2000). ¹²¹ Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago 1993), 115–16. ¹²² Harrison, Forests, 121. ¹²³ Lowood, ‘Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment’, 278.

52

A Contract with Nature

protection. These branches emphasized respectively the systematization and regulation of forest use, the determination of periodical production and the regulation of yield, artificial forest regeneration, the valuing of forest products, and the protection of forests from human beings as well as naturally destructive phenomena such as insect attacks and fungi.

2.3.2. Emancipatory Appropriation and Technocracy The new economy, however, had important implications for human society and community, as it did for nature. At the outset, the discourse on emancipation legitimized the abrogation of rights of local communities. Although there was considerable negotiation, in some places, between protesting peasants affected by the new legal regimes that determined forest use and state forest departments, the transformation of relationships between local communities and nature was permanent, with customary rights and traditional use practices construed as backward and thereby needing to be extinguished.¹²⁴ It is useful here to quote Karl Marx’s astute observation on forest law and local communities, albeit in the mid nineteenth century. Marx wrote: We demand for the poor a customary right, and indeed one which is not of a local character but is a customary right of the poor in all countries. We go still further and maintain that a customary right by its very nature can only be a right of this lowest, propertyless and elemental mass.¹²⁵

Along with the emergence of new legal regimes abrogating customary rights came another important trend—the rise of what Timothy Mitchell has called ‘Rule of Experts’.¹²⁶ Technocracy, in turn, brought with it a linear view of history. Thus, while modern forestry practices were considered legitimate, the efficacy of the management systems of peasant communities, or, indeed, of landlords who engaged in traditional methods of cultivation and harvest, was denied. An excellent illustration of such ¹²⁴ To make one speculative point here, it is worth investigating whether and to what extent the biases held by foresters against the practices of agrarian communities and, especially, against mountain dwellers was akin to that described by Michael Hecter in Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National development, 1536–1966 (London, 1975). ¹²⁵ Karl Marx, ‘Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood,’ Supplement to the Rheinische Zeitung, 298, 300, 303, 305, 307, (25, 27, 30 Oct., 1, 3 Nov. 1842), trans. by Clemens Dutt. It is important to note, however, that while Marx was sensitive to the impact of forest laws on peasant communities, the target of his ire was private forest owners, as opposed to the state. ¹²⁶ Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angles, 2002).

A Contract with Nature

53

a dismissal is Bernard Fernow’s comments on traditional French forestry, wherein he stated summarily that ‘there was very little forestry of note done in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries due to war and unrest’.¹²⁷ Technocracy thus spawned a particularly imperial environmentalism, one that privileged a modern view of sustainability and conservation over previous constellations of co-produced relationships between nature, science, and community in significantly different, but arguably legitimate ways.

2.4. CONCLUSION The emergence of modern scientific forestry engendered a new relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. The basis of this relationship was a set of doctrines that emerged from the new formal studies of ‘the economy’, which, as Colin Duncan has pointed out, ‘was born at the same time as capitalism, along with its other siblings in the same litter, industrialism and modernity’.¹²⁸ If the essence of modernism was ‘the notion of human interdependence above and beyond the ties of kinship and acquaintanceship’, or as the state in which ‘A society is modern to the extent that its households consume little of what they themselves produce and produce little of what they themselves consume,’¹²⁹ the new forestry was modern in that it sought to break ties between communities and forests at the ‘local’ levels, and created regimes of what is perhaps best described as ‘nature at a distance’.¹³⁰ Put differently, the new relationship between humanity and the rest of nature was, in effect, a contract with nature. It consisted, in essence, of a quid pro quo—conservation, in exchange for sustained, long-term yield. In both Germany and France by the first part of the nineteenth century, forests therefore began to be regarded as territories specially important for the economic vitality of the country as a whole and a legitimate subject for state intervention. Forests thereby became a part of the national infrastructure, a state resource. This system had no place for local forest inhabitants in forest management. Local knowledge systems were consequently discredited and replaced with an approach that was based on long-term biological cycles ¹²⁷ Fernow, A History of Forestry, 214. ¹²⁸ Colin Duncan, The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humanity and the Rest of Nature (Montreal, 1996). ¹²⁹ Ibid. 26. ¹³⁰ Ibid. 26–7.

54

A Contract with Nature

that suited the nation’s economic and especially industrial needs. The underlying philosophy was to restrict access to forests, subsidize private landowner replantations, take over and replant communal mountain lands, and implement an intensive agricultural policy. In moving towards this, foresters, as scientific experts, increasingly sought and got control over policy making on forest resource use. They were supported by other sections of the national elite, including members of the artistic community, who argued for forest conservation for aesthetic reasons.¹³¹ Decision making thus moved from the local to the national level and was made by a domain of experts trained in elite schools.¹³² To return to the introduction, Schlich’s description of the importance of forests and forestry was a summary of an entire tradition of postenlightenment attitudes to nature. Moreover, as a result of the indoctrination provided by Schlich and his colleagues, the British Empire came to acquire a corps of environmental technocrats, with an outlook very similar to their continental counterparts. The coming chapters examine their attempts at pressing forth their agenda across the vast expanse of the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ¹³¹ Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 82. See also p. 89. Important among those who supported foresters were the impressionist painters Théodore Rousseau and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who founded the Société des Amis de la Forêt. ¹³² Pincetl, ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism’, 84–6.

3 The Empire of Nature The first half of the nineteenth century saw a great deal of forest destruction in different parts of the British Empire. Colonial forests were exploited extensively for timber and a host of minor forest products. Forested lands were also increasingly converted to remunerative cashcrop plantations of sugar, cardamom, bananas, tea, coffee, and rubber.¹ Much of the forest destruction in the British Empire in this period took place with the tacit, if not explicit, approval of colonial governments. For most colonial administrative officials, forests were a vast and seemingly limitless reservoir of resources for imperial expansion and a hindrance to agricultural development. As the following lament made by a leading proponent of forestry in the nineteenth century illustrates, there was little recognition of the importance of forest conservation: In some of our colonies, extensive forests are treated as beds of onions, leeks, cabbages and turnips in the kitchen garden. Trees deemed suitable for some purpose desired have been felled, others around them have been left standing, or have been cut down to allow of the felled timber being brought out; and the results have been scarcely less destructive than the forest clearings in the Western world.²

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, colonial governmental attitudes to forests had, in principle, if not in actual practice, undergone a sea change. Governments throughout the empire began to set up forest departments staffed by personnel trained in forestry schools in Germany and France. Where there had once been state-sponsored forest destruction, there were now extensive state-sponsored regimes of scientific resource management. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the role played by expatriate scientists in bringing about this change in colonial governmental approaches to forest use and the transformation of attitudes to forestry and land use brought about by the import of European techniques. ¹ Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 3. ² J. C. Brown, Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy (London, 1884), 8.

56

The Empire of Nature

The earliest attempt at grappling with these questions was made by colonial forester-historians who at the beginning of the twentieth century began to write histories of colonial forestry celebrating the great march of their discipline and profession.³ Their explanation of the change in colonial attitudes to forests marked the beginning of a myth of origin for empire foresters which, with constant repetition, has now assumed the status of a truism amongst the international forestry community. A modern version of this myth captures its central argument succinctly: In many parts of the world a sequential pattern of use of the forest resource can be demonstrated. Initially, the forest is seen as an almost unlimited resource, with little danger of exhaustion and little need of conservation. Trends in forest use and area are perceived in neutral or positive terms: a reduction in forest area may be welcomed in allowing an expansion of the agricultural area. As this phase of resource destruction proceeds, some voices begin to call for conservation. Initially they are largely ignored, but from the faint stirrings a clamour may arise and may eventually lead to legislation or other government action aimed at halting the trend. The effectiveness of these voices has been variable. In some instances, forest destruction was halted while significant forest areas still survived. In others it continued to a point where the forest resource was all but exhausted. In some instances, near-exhaustion was followed by attempts at the re-creation of the resource, and in a few of these cases, the expansion of the forest area has recently attracted adverse reaction.⁴

Most colonial forester-historians explained the origins of forestry in the British Empire in similar terms. The onset of empire forestry in their account could be dated to a single event, the establishment in India in the mid nineteenth century of departments staffed by officers trained in Germany and France. The setting up of such forestry services was in their view a consequence of a campaign by ‘wise’ voices within colonial administrations reacting to the pace of destruction of empire forests and urgently lobbying for planned and scientific management.⁵ This historiographical tradition has persisted in modern studies of colonial forest history. While otherwise critical of colonial foresterhistorians, most contemporary work on imperial forest history has tended to accept their account of the origins of forestry in the empire.⁶ ³ See e.g. Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India; Stebbing, The Forests of India; Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony. ⁴ A. S. Mather, Global Forest Resources (London, 1990), 30. ⁵ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 63–75; Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 60–8; Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 76–91; M. Grut, Forestry and Forest Industry in South Africa (Cape Town, 1965), 6–9. ⁶ See e.g. R. Guha, ‘Forestry in British and Post-British India: A Historical Analysis’, Economic and Political Weekly (29 Oct., 5–12 Nov. 1983); Guha, The Unquiet Woods.

The Empire of Nature

57

Indeed, modern historians of colonial forestry have used the explanation of the origins of forestry in the British Empire given by colonial foresterhistorians to support their own claims about the nature of imperial environmental intervention. According to this argument, the emergence of regimes of environmental regulation, such as forestry, was a direct result of the rapidly growing imperial resource needs of the colonial state. Colonial forests in the first half of the nineteenth century were thus cut down extensively to fuel the resource demands of the imperial shipbuilding industry, make way for remunerative cash-crop plantations, and extend revenue-producing agriculture.⁷ In the second half of the century, conservation was introduced to sustain the imperial economic engine in the face of a potential increased demand for and decline in supply of resources.⁸ Although reasonably correct in their chronology, such explanations of the origins of colonial forests leave out one important detail. Missing crucially from such historical accounts are the motivations of the people behind the ostensibly ‘wise’ voices advocating conservation, and their agendas regarding resource use, elements that could provide context to an otherwise linear rendering of the history of the onset of forestry in the British Empire. An important exception to such an analysis has been the work of Richard Grove.⁹ Unlike other historians of British colonial forestry, Grove’s focus has explicitly been on the role and perspectives of the people behind the movement for conservation, whom he persuasively identifies as being colonial scientists. His main contention is that the roots of colonial ecological intervention do not necessarily lie in the commercial aspirations of the imperial state, as argued by many historians and environmentalists, but in humanitarian and ecological impulses latent in colonial society. Demonstrating a long genealogy of conservationist concerns among European colonial scientists in the tropics, Grove argues that the origins of forestry in the British Empire lay in the emergence of members of the colonial scientific community as environmental commentators who canvassed new scientific insights about the environmental, species extinction, aesthetic, and social effects of deforestation. The motivations of the colonial scientific communities campaigning for conservation, Grove claims, stemmed mainly from two main sources. ⁷ See e.g. R. G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652–1862 (Cambridge, 1926). ⁸ See e.g. Guha, ‘Forestry in British and Post-British India’. ⁹ Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, (with D. Anderson) ‘Introduction: The Scramble for Eden’; Green Imperialism; ‘Scottish

58

The Empire of Nature

The first was a concern with the impact of deforestation on climatic change which arose as a result of the spread of scientific theories linking deforestation with desiccation. The second source of the conservationist concerns of empire scientists, according to Grove, was aesthetic inclinations, including various religious and ritualistic ideas. Important among these was ‘edenism’, the wish to protect the natural environment as a special kind of ‘Eden’ for the purposes of the European psyche. Other aesthetic influences included worries about species extinction and the ideas of the neo-romanticist school of landscape painting.¹⁰ Although Grove argues that a major objective of the campaign for conservation launched by colonial scientists was to regulate the exploitation of forests by private timber interests, he tends to discount the significance of economic factors such as the decline in timber supply in influencing the growing campaign for conservation.¹¹ The principal motive of the colonial scientist-conservationists, he argues, stemmed from their environmentalist concerns which ‘valued the natural environment in terms wider than the commercial’.¹² He contends that it was such an outlook that underlay the emergence of forestry regimes and other protective institutions such as laws to conserve flora and fauna in different parts of the empire throughout the nineteenth century. Grove sees a distinct political relevance in his explanation of the origins of colonial conservation. ‘If modern ideas of conservation did emerge initially as a direct response by a coterie of humanitarian scientists to environmental consequences of colonialism as seems increasingly likely,’ he argues, ‘a substantial revision of some of the premises of contemporary environmentalist thinking will be necessary.’¹³ Grove is certainly right in his contention that colonial scientific communities played a crucially important role in the emergence and development of a regime of scientific forest management in the British Empire. The historical and historiographical evidence clearly corroborates his argument that scientists in the first half of the nineteenth century were an important factor motivating colonial governments to set up forestry Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa’; ‘The Origins of Environmentalism’; ‘Colonial Conservation, Ecological Hegemony and Popular Resistance’; ‘Imperialism and the Discourse of Desiccation’; ‘Chiefs, Boundaries and Sacred Woodlands’. ¹⁰ See e.g. Grove, ‘The Origins of Environmentalism’. ¹¹ See e.g. Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, 22. ¹² R. H. Grove, ‘Conservation and Colonial Expansion’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988), 286. ¹³ Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, 36.

The Empire of Nature

59

regimes. In a context of general governmental lack of concern, colonial scientists articulated an alternative discourse about forest use which emphasized the economic and social utility of forests and the importance of conservation. Moreover, they lobbied other state officials on the place of forests in the national economy and on the importance of forest conservation. Indeed, it was as a direct consequence of their campaign that the first forest departments staffed by the scientific protagonists of forestry began to be set up in different parts of the empire in the 1840s.¹⁴ By demonstrating the efficacy of colonial scientific communities in the emergence of forestry in the British Empire, Grove has therefore done much to question the determinism and the ostensible inevitability of the forester’s ‘myth of origin’ alluded to earlier. In responding to Grove, however, historians have tended to posit his arguments against those of other environmental historians of empire, especially those who claim that imperial economic interests underlay colonial attempts at ecological intervention. The ensuing debate has centred on the question of whether economic and imperial factors or ideological interests were responsible for the onset of colonial forestry.¹⁵ While this debate rages, two important issues have remained largely ignored. The first of these concerns the agendas and ideologies of natural resource management of the colonial scientific community that lobbied for forest conservancy. It raises questions such as: What were the attitudes to nature and human communities of the colonial scientist-conservationists who worked for conservation? What were their agendas of natural resource use and management? What modes of production were their environmental interventions intended to engender? What was the relation between their conservationism and their role as colonial scientists: was there something in the agenda of colonial science in this period that can explain their campaign for forest conservation? To what extent were their conservationist ideas influenced by European scientific environmentalist and forestry traditions? What in short, was their conservationism about? Answers to such questions will not in themselves provide reasons for colonial governments supporting environmental regimes. However, by clarifying the character of the resource management agendas of the colonial scientist-conservationists and thereby attempting to reconcile the material and the ideological motives underlying the origins of colonial conservation, they could provide an interesting and new perspective on the problem. ¹⁴ See Rajan. ‘The Colonial Ecodrama’ for a more complete discussion of the existing historiography. ¹⁵ See e.g. Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest, preface, 4–7.

60

The Empire of Nature

They could, in particular, potentially identify areas of convergence in perspective between the colonial scientists who argued for conservation, and members of the colonial civil administrations. Grove’s writings are unfortunately not clear on these issues. Despite his allusions to influences such as edenism, orientalism, the Hippocratic ideal, and physiocracy as the ideas motivating conservationism among the colonial scientific communities, Grove’s argument falls short of an unambiguous statement setting out what the agendas of the colonial scientist-conservationists were actually about.¹⁶ The second important historiographical issue that has remained unaddressed is the question of whether the campaign for conservancy had purely ‘colonial’ origins or whether it was inspired by ideas and developments elsewhere, particularly by the continental European tradition of scientific concern with the effects of deforestation. Grove’s analysis of this question is again not conclusive. In his bid to demonstrate the efficacy of colonial scientists in bringing about regimes of forest conservancy in the British Empire, he has avoided any comparisons between their concerns and those of their counterparts in Europe. This neglect is particularly glaring given that he identifies scientists such as Humboldt and Boussingault as important influences for the colonial protagonists of forest conservancy in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is noteworthy, however, that he underplays their research in Europe while emphasizing their New World work. Indeed, Grove has built his argument around the thesis that the motivations of colonial scientific campaigns for forest conservancy came from the colonial periphery, rather than the centre. ‘While it is tempting to conceptualise the development of the colonial conservation movement in terms of the “European system” set out by Immanuel Wallerstein’, he reasons, ‘the notion of a European-centred system fails as an explanatory device, particularly in Western India and West Africa.’¹⁷ The nub of his argument is that it was observations of environmental decline in different parts of the empire, and especially in small, environmentally vulnerable island colonies, that engendered worries about phenomena such as droughts. Underlying these concerns, Grove claims, lay a ‘fundamental and subliminal anxiety about the ability of the European settler to survive in an alien land, or indeed, his right to do so’.¹⁸ ¹⁶ It is important to note here that although Grove mentions such influences, he does not go one further step and analyse what they mean in terms of perceptions and agendas of resource use and conservation. ¹⁷ Grove, ‘Colonial Conservation, Ecological Hegemony and Popular Resistance’, 17–18. ¹⁸ Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, 35.

The Empire of Nature

61

Grove contends further that it was in a colonial context that early environmentalists were first able to lobby governments and exert an influence inhibiting environmental changes they did not like. He claims that they were able to do this long before this was politically palatable in Europe. In particular, it was in the colonial context, in Australia and North America as well as in Africa, that the natural environment was first perceived as threatened specifically by European economic forces and where governments first incorporated conservation as part of their accepted role.¹⁹ In the absence of an attempt to locate colonial environmentalist campaigns in the context of concerns among the scientific community with the social and environmental effects of deforestation in Europe, however, any attempt, such as Grove’s, to argue that they were a result of a purely colonial concern is open to challenge. Although his central thesis—that scientific communities played an important role in the emergence and development of colonial forestry regimes—is valid, his analysis of the origins and character of their conservationist motivations therefore needs to be re-examined. The task of this chapter is to undertake such a revision. In doing so, it continues with the two broad themes in forest conservation history described in Chapter 2, which were concerned, respectively, with the ‘indirect’, or the climatic effects of woodlands, and the ‘direct’, or their commercial use. The chapter traces the emergence of the idea of forest conservancy in the British Empire by following the development of these two intellectual trends, through the two distinct periods in colonial forest history in the nineteenth century—the first half, when expatriate colonial scientists lobbied for scientific conservancy, and the second, when the system of continental forestry was established in British India with state support. 3.1. THE CAMPAIGN FOR FOREST CONSERVANCY IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY One way to understand the motivations of the forest conservation protagonists of the first half of the nineteenth century is to use the method of collective biography to examine their interests and activities as scientists of empire.²⁰ Such an analysis, contextualized within an understanding of the nature of colonial science in the nineteenth century, could also help ¹⁹ Grove and Anderson ‘Introduction: The Scramble for Eden’, 6. ²⁰ For an analysis of prosopography as a research tool in the history of science, see S. Shapin and A. Thackray, ‘Prosopography as a Research Topic in History of Science: The

62

The Empire of Nature

explain the agendas and ideologies underlying their conservationism. In undertaking such a study, this section will concentrate in large measure on India. It will however seek to compare the Indian case with developments in the Cape Colony, which, like India, witnessed a strong campaign for conservancy in the first half of the nineteenth century. The early proponents of forest conservancy in India were all East India Company (EIC) employees, working either in the botanical gardens, the medical service, or the army. Their character profiles and writings help us understand the motivations underlying their campaign to conserve forests.²¹ A critical fact in this regard is that a great many of the EIC surgeons and scientific officials had been educated in botany and medicine in Edinburgh, which was, at that time, one of the big centres of the Scottish enlightenment and linked extensively with the enlightenment scientific centres of Germany and France.²² Equally noteworthy is the fact that other supporters of scientific forestry in India had been educated in leading European schools. One significance of the continental connection is that the scientists of the EIC were aware of the latest scientific work in Europe and had been exposed to the European scientific theories concerning the deleterious effects of deforestation.²³ Another consequence of the continental connection is that they were cognizant of a range of intellectual currents in Europe, including German Naturphilosophie and French physiocracy.²⁴ The latter is particularly relevant because of its emphasis on the primacy of land and on improving agricultural productivity. It is important to note here that a great deal of work in the Asiatic Society was influenced by the physiocratic doctrine.²⁵ British Scientific Community 1700–1900’, History of Science, 12 (1974), 1–28. See also G. Werskey, The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists of the 1930s (London, 1988). For an excellent illustration of the use of prosopography in the history of colonial science see H. Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, 1991), especially chapter 5. ²¹ See Appendix 2, Profiles of Some Colonial Scientist-Conservationists in India in the Period 1800–1850. See also IOR L/PWD/8/190. ²² See especially Harrison, Public Health in British India, 94. ²³ See for example the footnotes of the relevant articles in journals such as Madras Journal of Literature and Science, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Journal of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, Edinburgh Botanical Society Transactions, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and Bombay Agricultural and Horticultural Society. ²⁴ Harrison, Public Health in British India, 94. ²⁵ See e.g. George Watt, A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, 6 vols. (n.p., 1889); Centenary Review of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, from 1784–1883; Edward W. Ellsworth, Science and Social Science Research in India, 1780–1880: The Role of the AngloIndian Associations and the Government (London, 1991).

The Empire of Nature

63

The emphasis on ‘improvement’ led many colonial scientists to argue that science was vitally important for social and national development. A common justification for state support for science, therefore, was ‘on the ground of self-preservation even if there were no higher wants of an ideal character to be satisfied. No nation which would be independent and influential can afford to be left behind in the race.’²⁶ They were particularly interested in using science to exploit the resources of the earth and especially the produce of land for societal benefit. For example, one of them commented: in contemplating the sources and examining the various substances which constitute the wealth of nations, whether these be the necessities, the conveniences, or the luxuries of life, and which, by the exercise of industry have been rendered of value both to ourselves and to others, we observe that the greater number have been derived from the earth.²⁷

They saw India as a country which was ‘fruitful in soil and rich in climate’ but which displayed ‘an unaccountable discrepancy between its natural riches and the quality of the different productions when compared with similar products from other countries’.²⁸ They believed that the reason for this was that India did not exploit its natural resources and, in particular, the produce of its land adequately. More importantly, its people lacked the knowledge necessary for the purpose. Whereas in Europe, ‘arts of culture’ had been promoted by sovereigns, by non-professional individuals, and by the ‘union of men in societies’, in India, they had been neglected.²⁹ India had made the fatal mistake of including ‘the sciences and the arts amongst those subjects which were treated of in the sacred writings of the Hindoos; a circumstance which has been hitherto an insurmountable obstacle to improvement’.³⁰ India, it was therefore believed, was now ‘inferior to the West in skill’. Therefore, ‘skill alone’ was required in India.³¹ These scientists saw themselves and justified their colonial presence as agents of change—experts who would use their knowledge to improve the material conditions and human resources of the country they were employed in. They studied indigenous texts on the arts of manufacture published in various Indian languages to determine the extent to which ²⁶ E. Balfour, Vydian and the Hakim (London, 1864), frontispiece. The quote is attributed to Helmholtz. ²⁷ Ibid. 1. ²⁸ J. F. Royle, Essay on the Productive Resources of India (London, 1840), 5. ²⁹ Ibid. 275–9. ³⁰ W. Ainslie, Materia Medica of Hindoostan and Artisans and Agriculturalists Nomenclature (Madras, 1813), 21. ³¹ Royle, Essay on the Productive Resources of India, 289.

64

The Empire of Nature

they could learn from these sources.³² They explored the manner in which natural resources were being exploited by the local people, and in particular the indigenous ways of extracting, preparing, and using metals and materials. They examined medicinal plants and local drugs, the formulae of various compounds used therein, and their methods of preparation. Of particular interest to this community was the question of how to make Indian agriculture as remunerative to the East India Company as possible.³³ They examined various agricultural products and their uses.³⁴ They attempted to introduce useful plants from Europe and the rest of the world in to India and to improve experimentally the productivity of, among many other things, indigenous sheep and cattle.³⁵ They experimented with improving the productivity of profit-generating cash crops such as hemp, cotton, and tea.³⁶ Moreover, they engaged in research on using European science to realize the potential of India’s natural resources.³⁷ The campaign for conservancy mounted by these scientific communities stemmed partly from the scientific tradition of concern with the environmental impact of deforestation. It also grew, to a degree, upon the colonial science ethos in early nineteenth-century India, especially its commitment to using science to ‘improve’ what they saw as a stagnating and underdeveloped agrarian economy. The pages to follow will explore each of these motivating factors for conservation in turn.

3.1.1. Forests and Climate As Richard Grove has argued, concerns with the environmental effects of deforestation played an important role in the emergence of a ³² See, for example the various articles in Asiatic Researches. See also W. Roxburgh, Flora Indica: Or a Description of Indian Plants (Serampore, 1820–4); H. Drury, The Useful Plants of India (London, 1817); Ainsley, Materia Medica. ³³ The critical concern here was to produce crops in India for the benefit of the mother country. For a good discussion of the role of colonial scientists in India in this period in promoting imperial interests see David Mackay, ‘Science and the East Indian Empire’, in Mackay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire, 1780–1801 (Wellington, 1985), 168–91. ³⁴ Ainsley, Materia Medica, for example, studies in detail the characteristics of various indigenous corns, grains, fruits, legumes, pulses, roots, teas, flowers, seeds, spices, oils, and liquors. ³⁵ See, for example, Royle, Essay on the Productive Resources of India. See also H. H. Spry, Suggestions . . . for Cultivation and Introduction of Useful and Ornamental Plants (Calcutta 1841). ³⁶ Kumar, ‘The Evolution of Colonial Science in India’, 54–6. ³⁷ See, for example, E. Balfour, The Cyclopaedia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (London, 1885); On Iron Ores (Madras, 1845); On the Coals of the Madras Presidency

The Empire of Nature

65

conservationist impulse among the colonial forestry community in early nineteenth-century India. An important culmination of this concern was the production, by a team of colonial scientific protagonists of forest conservancy in the mid nineteenth century, of a report on the economic and environmental effects of tropical forest deforestation for the British Association for the Advancement of Science.³⁸ The concern with the physical effects of forests was not however a result of insular colonial discourses on the effects of deforestation, as Grove contends. On the contrary, it was strongly influenced by the European scientific concerns with deforestation described in Chapter 2. Many of the proponents of forestry amongst the scientific community in India during the first half of the century closely studied the work of scientists concerned with deforestation in Europe and the United States.³⁹ Surgeon Edward Balfour, a keen follower of the European scientific literature on deforestation and one of the most vocal proponents in India of the theory that deforestation leads to desiccation, for example, compiled a bibliography of the international scientific literature on the influence of trees on rainfall and the preservation of moisture for the Madras government in 1840.⁴⁰ Hugh Cleghorn, celebrated by many as the ‘father’ of forestry in India, maintained close links with the great American conservationist George Perkins Marsh.⁴¹ Moreover, he too actively followed the research on the Continent on the effects of forest clearance.⁴² Late in his career, he was a central figure in designing and supervising forestry training for trainees bound for the Indian forestry and Colonial Office (Madras, 1847); The Commercial Products of the Madras Presidency (Madras, 1848); A. Faulkner, Dictionary of Commercial Terms (London, 1857); Revd F. A. M. Mason, Notes on the Flora, Fauna, Minerals and Nations of British Burma (London, 1830); R. Wight, Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Orientalis (London, 1834). ³⁸ H. Cleghorn, Prof. Forbes Royle, Captain R. Baird Smith, and Captain R. Strachey, ‘Report of the Committee Appointed by the British Association to Consider the Probable Effects in an Economical and Physical Point of View of the Destruction of Tropical Forests’, Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1860), 78–102 (hereafter ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’). ³⁹ It is important to note here that there was no systematic scientific concern about the environmental effects of deforestation in the British Isles during the period. The environmentalist ideas of the colonial scientist-conservationists were therefore derived almost entirely from traditions outside Britain. ⁴⁰ E. Balfour, ‘Letter to the Secretary to the Madras Government on the Influence Exercised by Trees on Climate’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 15/36 (1849), 401. See also E. Balfour, On the Influence Exercised by Trees on the Climate of a Country: Being Reports to the Madras Government (Madras, 1849). ⁴¹ D. Lowenthal, G. P. Marsh—Venerable Vermonter (New York, 1978), 269. ⁴² See the bibliography of H. F. C. Cleghorn, The Forests and Gardens of South India (London, 1861).

66

The Empire of Nature

services.⁴³ Alexander Gibson, the first forest conservator of the Bombay Presidency, similarly was a keen student of the global literature on deforestation. Citing the European literature, he said that trees were ‘chemical instruments for the formation and distillation of dews and rain’.⁴⁴ The fact that the colonial scientist-conservationists actively invoked the work of Humboldt, Boussingault, and other European authors on the relation between deforestation and climatic change therefore indicates that their ideas were not only derived from local colonial experiences but also drew upon a global ‘invisible college’ of environmentalists. Moreover, rather than being isolated voices in the colonial wilderness generating insular conservationist discourses, as Grove has claimed, they were carriers of a growing European environmentalist consciousness. The importance of international exposure to the campaign for conservation launched by EIC botanists and doctors in the first half of the nineteenth century is evident in the issues they chose to articulate while advocating forest conservancy. One such issue was that of the relation between deforestation and water flows. Citing the European literature, they argued that events in many parts of India corroborated what had happened in Europe. In the Bombay Presidency, for example, rivers and creeks of the Malabar coast where ships once used to ride at anchor had been silted up in the living memory of people.⁴⁵ In the Deccan Highlands and the Eastern Ghats, denudation had again resulted in the gradual silting up of rivers. The story was similar in the Coromandel coast and the rivers Godaveri and Krishna.⁴⁶ In addition to siltation, deforestation had caused the destruction of fertile valleys as a result of erosion and avalanches in many parts of India.⁴⁷ An associated issue was the question of water supply. Local water supplies, especially springs, the colonial scientist-conservationists pointed out, had dried up in many parts of India. Again, water levels in the big rivers had, they claimed, perceptibly declined. Citing the European work, they argued that forests improved soils and maintained the permanency of springs.⁴⁸ It is pertinent to note here that a great deal of the focus on the environmental effects of forests by the colonial scientists was, as in the case of the work done in the French, Italian, and Austrian Alps, concentrated ⁴³ See for example, Cleghorn’s memo: IOR L/PWD/8/129. ⁴⁴ A. Gibson, ‘Extracts from a Report on the Teak Forests of Western India’, Bombay Times (16 Oct. 1852). ⁴⁵ A. J. Gibson, On Bombay Forests (London, 1850), lists rivers and creeks that had been silted up in the author’s living memory. ⁴⁶ Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 213. ⁴⁷ Ibid. 210–11. ⁴⁸ E. Balfour, The Timber Trees, Timber and Fancy Woods, as also, the Forests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (Madras, 1862), 18–22.

The Empire of Nature

67

on mountain ecosystems. As the report to the British Association mentioned earlier put it: if the forests had no other effect than to protect the clay soil of the mountains from the action of the sun’s rays, this ought alone to be sufficient to secure their careful preservation. It is in this soil that the waters which supply all the streams of the island, and which percolate downwards to the lower lands, are enclosed.⁴⁹

In addition to worries about water flows and water levels, there was, as in Europe, a concern with the relation between the destruction of vegetation and the incidence of drought. Citing the European research on this subject, the colonial scientist-conservationists argued that the droughts in different parts of the empire were related to forest clearance. They concluded, for example, that the periodic droughts in Penang and the Eastern Archipelago were a result of deforestation.⁵⁰ Again, the ‘sultry atmosphere and dreadful droughts’ of the Cape Verde Islands were seen as a consequence of deforestation.⁵¹ In India, they pointed out, with the exception of a few localities in the south, the whole country ‘seems destitute of trees . . . nothing so much strikes the attention as their general scarcity’.⁵² In large parts of India, they thus argued, ‘climate and irrigation have rapidly deteriorated from a similar cause’.⁵³ They claimed further that it ‘admits of no question’ that ‘such droughts will again and again happen’.⁵⁴They contended further that with the destruction of leafy forests ‘every drought will prove more baneful than the preceding’.⁵⁵ The concern with drought among the scientists campaigning for conservancy was accentuated by their commitment, mentioned earlier, to ensure the productivity of agriculture. To quote Edward Balfour, ‘we can not but look upon the cultivation of trees as of vital importance in such a country as India, where . . . the fertility of the land is so much dependent on the supply of water’.⁵⁶ The agenda of the colonial scientific protagonists of forest conservancy in the early nineteenth century was to bring to the colonial world the kinds of protective regimes that were beginning to emerge in Europe. In an influential report published in 1860, some of the most vocal of the ⁴⁹ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 91. ⁵⁰ J. S. Logan, ‘Climatic Effects of the Destruction of Forests in Penang’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 2 (1851), 534, cited in Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 91. ⁵¹ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 91. ⁵² Balfour, ‘Notes on the Influence Exercised by Trees in Inducing Rain and Preserving Moisture’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 15/36 (1849), 402. ⁵³ Ibid. ⁵⁴ Ibid. ⁵⁵ Ibid. ⁵⁶ Balfour, ‘Notes on the Influence Exercised by Trees in Inducing Rain and Preserving Moisture’, 402.

68

The Empire of Nature

colonial scientist-conservationists especially referred to European-style environmental regimes as ideal for the empire: In Germany and France there are especial laws for the protection and extension of forests. They have the same in all the Italian States. So far back as 1475 the subject attracts the attention of the famous Venetian Council of X., by which a law was passed on the 7th of January that year, regulating in great detail the clearance of the forests on terra firma. The mountain forests especially were protected by judicious regulations, which were renewed from time to time down to the very year of the extinction of the old republics. Tuscany and the Pontifical governments were equally provident.⁵⁷

The colonial context in the nineteenth century was thus not a setting for the implementation of ideas that could not get state sanction in Europe, as Grove argues.⁵⁸ Rather, the onset of environmentalism as a state concern in the empire in this period was facilitated by an explicit reference to European precedents. It is clear from the educational backgrounds of colonial scientist-conservationists, their personal associations, the literature they cited, and the kinds of issues they raised in support of their campaign for forest conservancy that they were influenced considerably by the body of scientific work on the environmental effects of deforestation that had been conducted in continental Europe. The thrust of the campaign for conservancy was to get colonial governments to adopt the technological and legal regimes of environmental management that were already in existence in Europe.

3.1.2. The Ethos of Colonial Science and the Economic Argument for Conservation The concern with the physical and environmental effects of deforestation was however only a part of the campaign for forest conservancy. As in Europe, the colonial scientific community in early nineteenth-century India looked upon forest conservation as part of a wider commitment to ⁵⁷ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 91. ⁵⁸ It is important to note here that Grove’s argument about insular environmental discourses could well be valid in the period prior to the 19th century (see e.g. Grove, ‘The Origins of Environmentalism’). Indeed, the impact of developments in the colonial periphery on European ideas needs to be more thoroughly investigated. By the 19th century, however, as argued in the previous section, there already was a strong global scientific tradition of concern with deforestation. Moreover, European states, as shown earlier, had already set important precedents concerning forest conservation.

The Empire of Nature

69

efficient resource use. At the outset, most of them were active in what today are called bio-prospecting activities, engaging in inventory surveys of the biotic potential in India’s forests.⁵⁹ They also took part in scientific research on various aspects of forests and forest products.⁶⁰ On the basis of such work, they began to argue that forests were potentially a vast reservoir of natural resources. As the BAAS report put it: it is not only in affording indigenous woods of wonderful variety, serving all the purposes to which timber is applied, that the Indian forests claim our attentive consideration. In them Nature presents to us other sources of wealth, which under judicious management may yield a considerable increase to the present revenue. Gums, drugs, dyes, resins abound, as gutta-percha, caoutachouc, kino, gamboge, camphor, dammer, piney, varnish, wood-oil, with many other products not sufficiently known or appreciated, but which, as the light of European science penetrates these partially explored regions, will be applied to many useful purposes in the arts and the sciences.⁶¹

It is important to emphasize here that the colonial scientists campaigning for forestry in the early nineteenth century stressed the commercial potential of Indian forests. A number of their early initiatives were therefore about utilizing forests for commercially valuable timber. An example of this is a report by Dr Nathaniel Wallich in 1841 which argued that ‘dense jungle’ was an inhibitor for teak and recommended the cutting down of ‘every other kind of timber (other than teak)’, allowing the teak to ‘spring up naturally’.⁶² Tables were compiled by colonial scientists setting out in detail the histories of revenues from woods in different parts of the ⁵⁹ See for example, the various survey reports and correspondences in the Greville Papers (IOR MSS Eur. E 309). See also the correspondence between Wallich and the East India Company in which the latter effectively requests him to bio-prospect. (IOR MSS Eur. D 445). Other sources of interest in this regard are in the Munro Collection (IOR MSS Eur. E 313), the Roxburgh Collection (IOR MSS Eur. D 49–69, E 64–7, and F 18/I, 2–25), and the Buchanan Hamilton Collection (IOR MSS Eur. C 12–14, D 70–98, E 68–73, and G 10–25). ⁶⁰ See, for example, P. Barlow, An Essay on the Strength and Stress of Timber (London, 1817); Lt. Beddome, Timber Trees of the Godavery (London, 1821); Maj. Benson, Reports on the Woods of Tenasserim (London, 1840); Lt.-Col. Firth, Woods in the Madras Arsenal (Madras, 1851); Gibson, On Bombay Forests; id., On Timber Trees (London, 1850); Capt. Mac Donald, On the Woods of Ganjam and Gumsur (London, 1841); J. Rhode, On the Woods of the Madras Presidency (London, 1843); J. F. Royle, On the Sources of East India Kino (London, 1850); N. Wallich, Proceedings of the Agri-Horticultural Society of India (London, 1853). ⁶¹ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’. The report goes on to give examples of discoveries made by scientists of the medicinal and other uses of various forest products. ⁶² Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 16. There were some other similarly ‘wild’ claims made by a few—a good example was an enduring claim that deforestation is good for water supply. See ‘Copy of All Correspondence between the Secretary of

70

The Empire of Nature

country.⁶³ A great deal of research was conducted to discover the properties of Indian timbers and woods. The capacities of different species for producing marketable minor forest products such as wood oil, resins, and dammar gums used widely in European as well as local industry were also explored. Moreover, the conducting of systematic topographic and timber surveys was strongly recommended.⁶⁴ Forests were also seen as useful for providing woods for engraving, furniture, and ornamental purposes.⁶⁵ In addition to their commercial benefits, forests in the Indian context were also seen as playing an important function in the economy by ‘furnishing fuel to all the classes’ and serving other needs of the local populations.⁶⁶ Moreover, there was an appreciation of indigenous Indian systems of plantations: The planting of such trees as are desirable from the fruit which they afford, or grateful from the shade which they yield, is an act which has been held in high esteem in eastern countries, especially India, from very early times. The eastern appreciation of the luxury of shade led to the banks of the canals, constructed by the Mohameddan emperors, being planted, and the waysides of the imperial roads being lined with trees of various kinds.⁶⁷

The scientist-conservationists were, however, worried that, contrary to what was commonly believed by officials in the company administration, the productive potential of Indian forests and especially their capacity to supply timber had severely diminished. An influential report thus argued that From the number and extent of the forests and jungles of India, it might be inferred that timber was abundant in all parts, not only for home consumption, but that a supply might be obtained for foreign commerce: this is far from being the case. Though forest lands are extensive, their contents in accessible situations are not of a nature, or sufficiently abundant, to supply even the ordinary demands.⁶⁸

There was therefore a great deal of concern among EIC scientists all over the country with establishing plantations, especially of commercially State for India and the Governor General, and the Governors of Madras and Bombay, Relating to the Cultivation of Chichona Plants, from April 1866 to 1870’ (Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9 Aug. 1870). ⁶³ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 88–98. See also Royle, Essay on the Productive Resources of India. ⁶⁴ Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 14–18. ⁶⁵ Balfour Timber Trees, 10. Also Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens of Southern India. ⁶⁶ Balfour, Timber Trees, 10. ⁶⁷ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 79. ⁶⁸ Ibid. 80.

The Empire of Nature

71

valuable species such as teak and sissoo. An important epitome of this concern was the setting up of ‘The Plantation Committee’ in 1825 which produced more than 1,060 pages of manuscript on forest cultivation, especially of sissoo.⁶⁹ In addition to plantation and production there was a concern with effective utilization of forests. It was argued that in order to be valuable, timber must not only be of the proper kind and age but be made easily accessible.⁷⁰ The diagnosis of the causes of deforestation made by the colonial scientist-conservationists was, like their understanding of the effects of forest clearance, rooted in the international environmentalist literature of the period. An important early report on deforestation in western India thus prefaced its argument on observations made in another continent: It is a sort of rage in America . . . to destroy the forest as rapidly as possible. The poor emigrant coming from Europe where wood is very valuable, and where he never probably owned a good walking stick, conscious that the treasure thus placed at his unlimited disposal is inexhaustible, without much reflection proceeds to clear the wilderness for the cultivation of his farm. The incalculable benefit that would arise to his cattle, and to himself, by having patches of forest trees here and there, never troubles him. He uses the trees as men use water of a river, merely because there is plenty of it.⁷¹

The theory that human beings caused deforestation due to ignorance was extended to the Indian context. It was argued that the growing demand for forest products and the increasingly unregulated commercial exploitation of Indian forests was responsible for their rapid destruction. There was consequently a great deal of concern about the impact of the steadily increasing demand for forests stemming from the extension of cultivation and the onset of the railways. Soon, such fears metamorphosed into the argument that demand was far in excess of possible supply. Many colonial scientist-conservationists urged the setting up of plantations exclusively for railway use. They also urged the use of timber substitutes, such as iron, for railway sleepers.⁷² There was also a concern with the wastefulness of private timber interests and, especially, unregulated commercial exploitation by corrupt contractors. As one article on the forests of the Malabar put it: This work of destruction is conducted by a company of Parsee merchants, who take a certain number of the natives from Mangalore at the proper season for felling, and, without consideration for the future, cut all sorts of peon-spars, saplings as well ⁶⁹ Ibid. 81. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 80–1. ⁷¹ Gibson, ‘Extracts from a Report on the Teak Forests of Western India’. ⁷² Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens, 32.

72

The Empire of Nature

as large trees, to the great injury of the forests. There were hundreds of small spars from five to nine inches diameter, and thirty-five to seventy-feet long, actually decaying on the beach at Mangalore at the time I was there; from which circumstance in the course of a few years these valuable forests must be exhausted. The whole of this trade is in the hands of a combined party of these people, who never fail to take advantage of any particular demand that might occur.⁷³

Moreover, unlike Europe, where ‘soft wood is thinned out and the hard wood left’, it was argued that in India, ‘the valuable kinds are removed and the scrub left’.⁷⁴ Indeed, laissez-faire economic policies in the realm of forests were seen as giving rise to the free-rider problem and creating a tragedy of the commons that would be ultimately destructive to both agriculture and industry.⁷⁵ Another human-related reason for forest destruction cited by the colonial scientists campaigning for forest conservation in India in their analysis of the causes of deforestation in India was what they perceived to be the ‘careless rapacity of the native population’.⁷⁶ A major target for attack was shifting (Coormi) cultivation which was seen as causing ‘the most rapid destruction of forests’ some of which, like sandalwood, were very valuable economically. Shifting cultivation was also seen as destructive of soil and thus affecting the cultivation of major cash crops like coffee. Moreover, it was seen as attracting the lower classes away from cultivation and thereby directly affecting revenue besides producing in those who took to it ‘lawless and vagabond habits’.⁷⁷ The local people were also seen as felling trees injudiciously and, in not seasoning them properly, using them inoptimally. In addition to human causes, the colonial scientist-conservationists also argued that deforestation was caused by natural reasons, especially fire and insect attacks.⁷⁸ To sum up the argument thus far, the early initiatives on forest management by botanists and doctors in India were motivated by a perception of the direct and indirect uses of forests similar to that which had evolved in Europe. Forests were seen as providing both indigenous populations and the company with resources they respectively needed. ⁷³ John Edye, ‘Malabar Forests’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, 2 (1835). ⁷⁴ Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens, 2. ⁷⁵ G. Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162 (1968), 1243–8. ⁷⁶ Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens. See also Royle, Essay on the Productive Resources of India. ⁷⁷ Buchanan Hamilton, Journey through Mysore (London, 1807), cited in Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 84–5. ⁷⁸ Balfour, Timber Trees. Also Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’.

The Empire of Nature

73

Forests were also perceived as safeguarding environmental stability and, thereby, the health of European savants.⁷⁹ Surgeon Edward Balfour, for example, specifically mentioned the writings of Priestley which, he claimed, directed his attention to the influence of trees on the health of man.⁸⁰ The main thrust of the campaign for conservancy was to broaden the governmental perspective on forests and in particular to get it to recognize that forest plantations were potentially as economically remunerable a land use system as agriculture. Indeed, the principal thrust of the writings of most of the scientist-conservationists of this period was their advocacy of the establishment of plantations of ‘useful’ species.⁸¹ The campaign also emphasized that parts of India had been witnessing a severe shortfall in forest products. Calcutta and Madras had in fact taken to importing timber, respectively from Burma and Ceylon. An important item in the agenda of the campaign for forest conservancy was therefore to curb waste due to reckless deforestation, and, where possible, to optimize production and exploitation. A basic objective was to get the government to establish a permanent framework for forest management with effective safeguards to minimize the occurrence of forest fires. Such a framework involved the replacement of laissez-faire economic policies with those that advocated regulation and restriction of private capitalist interests on forested lands.⁸² It also meant strict regulation of forest use and the banning of practices such as shifting cultivation. As Grove has argued, the campaign played on occasional governmental worries about this impending timber crisis.⁸³ It also attempted to expoit the increasing governmental concern with the droughts in southern India in the 1840s by arguing that there was a clear link between deforestation and drought.⁸⁴ The European tradition was an important influence for this campaign. The arguments about the impact of deforestation on climatic change were made with explicit reference to scientific theories that stemmed from ⁷⁹ A number of doctors were interested in the health of Europeans and particularly soldiers in the tropics. In this they were influenced to a considerable extent by the writings of Montesquieu (see M. Harrison, ‘Public Health and Medical Research in India, c. 1860–1914’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1991)). ⁸⁰ Balfour, ‘Letter to the Secretary to the Madras Government’, 401. ⁸¹ This is dealt with at length in Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, wherein the authors take great pains to establish the economic viability of plantations. ⁸² It is important to note here that most colonial scientists in India during this period were committed to mercantilism and opposed to the ideas of Adam Smith. See e.g. Mackay, ‘Science and the East Indian Empire’, 180. ⁸³ Grove, ‘Conservation and Colonial Expansion’, chapter 5. ⁸⁴ See British Library, Government of India, Despatch No. 21, 7 July 1847 which asked for more information on the link between deforestation and drought.

74

The Empire of Nature

Europe. Similarly, the attitudes to forest use among the colonial scientific communities arguing for deforestation mirrored those of their European predecessors. The ‘colonial’ campaign for forest conservation in early nineteenth-century India thus had explicit European roots. With the appointment of the colonial scientist-conservationists as forest conservators in the mid nineteenth century, this continental connection was taken one step further. Their concern with scientific management of forests led them to look to Europe for examples of how this could be done. The writings of the scientist-conservationists during this period therefore regularly cited the work of continental foresters like du Breuil and Meaume in France and Hartig in Germany. Moreover, these protagonists of forestry took great pains to procure and read books on arboriculture and silviculture produced in the continent. This was to play a crucial role in the development of British colonial forestry in India and the empire in the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond.⁸⁵

3.1.3. The Campaign for Forest Conservancy in the Cape The campaign for forest conservancy in India was reflective of the wider movement for conservation in other parts of the empire. The motivations of proponents of forestry elsewhere were in significant ways similar to that in India. Indeed, in almost every case the broad ideological framework of the propagandists of forestry, the glasses through which they understood the relation between science and development and between human beings and the environment, was similar to that among the scientistconservationists in India. This can be illustrated clearly by examining the movement for conservancy in the Cape Colony, which like India witnessed a strong, if less successful campaign, and especially the work of two people, Dr Ludwig Pappe and Dr John Croumbie Brown, who, it has been argued, led the campaign for forest conservancy in the Cape.⁸⁶ Like the Indian protagonists of forestry, both Pappe and Brown were scientists. Pappe was a surgeon, medical practitioner, and botanist and was appointed by the government to the newly created office of Cape botanist in 1858. Brown was a trained botanist who had been a missionary in the Cape Colony in the 1840s and who subsequently taught botany ⁸⁵ See section 3.2. ⁸⁶ Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, and ‘Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa’.

The Empire of Nature

75

at Aberdeen University between 1853 and 1862. He succeeded Pappe as Cape botanist after the latter’s death in 1862.⁸⁷ Pappe and Brown, like their colleagues in India, were very concerned about the environmental role played by forests. Pappe was greatly interested in the relationship between deforestation and soil erosion and the impact of this on agriculture. He was also aware of the relation between forest depletion and rainfall.⁸⁸ It is important to note here that Pappe’s associate R. W. Rawson was a close friend of Louis Bouton, the secretary of the Mauritius Royal Society and a keen advocate of the theories of Humboldt and Boussingault.⁸⁹ Similarly, Brown was also concerned with the relation between deforestation, soil erosion, and decline in rainfall. He conducted extensive surveys of the scientific literature of the day and wrote prolifically on the subject.⁹⁰ Moreover, his writings on the environmental effects of deforestation were the most comprehensive amongst the deforestation theorists in the British Empire and, with the exception of the American Franklin Benjamin Hough, in the entire world during the period.⁹¹ Like those of their Indian counterparts, the writings of Pappe, Rawson, and especially Brown reveal a strong awareness of the European scientific debate on the effects of deforestation. Their concerns with deforestation were thus by no means insular. On the contrary, their constant allusion to the wider global scientific environmental literature reflects the fact that the Cape scientists campaigning for forestry were, like their Indian counterparts, part of a global ‘invisible college’ of scientists concerned with the impact of deforestation. Pappe, like his Indian counterparts, was interested in using scientific and in particular botanical knowledge to further the interests of the colonial state. He undertook botanical mapping, assessing the economic potential of various vegetational products. Through the 1840s and 1850s he spent a great deal of time studying the flora of the Cape and collaborated with others in exploring the Cape flora for potential economic uses, especially R. W. Rawson, with whom he co-authored the Filicum Africae Arboralis, ⁸⁷ Grove, ‘Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa’. ⁸⁸ N. L. King, ‘Historical Sketch of the Development of Forestry in South Africa’, Journal of the South African Forestry Association, 1 (1938), 4–16. ⁸⁹ Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, 26. ⁹⁰ See especially, Brown, Forests and Moisture; id., Hydrology of South Africa: Or Details of the Former Hydrographic Condition of the Cape of Good Hope, and of Causes of its Present Aridity, with Suggestions of Appropriate Remedies for its Aridity (London, 1875); id., Reboisement in France; id., Water Supply in South Africa, and Facilities for the Storage of it (Edinburgh, 1877). ⁹¹ Hough, Report on Forestry.

76

The Empire of Nature

a description of hitherto unknown southern African ferns.⁹² In addition to research in economic botany, Pappe also undertook research on other aspects of the Cape’s natural riches. In 1853, he published a Synopsis of the Edible Fishes of the Cape of Good Hope.⁹³ Pappe also played an active role in campaigning for the establishment and maintenance of botanical gardens in the Cape, stressing their economic role.⁹⁴ Indeed, he was for a great part of his career in active correspondence with members of the Kew establishment in Britain and in particular with Sir William Hooker, the then director.⁹⁵ Like Pappe, Brown attempted to use scientific knowledge to further economic interests. He argued that science, which was systematic knowledge, ought to be applied to tackle various developmental problems such as irrigation, agriculture, arboriculture, horticulture, and forest economy. He also advocated the setting up of experimental farms across the colony that would deploy science for the development of natural resources.⁹⁶ Both Pappe and Brown shared their Indian counterparts’ conception of the social and economic utility of forests. They held that forests were necessary to serve the economic needs of the state and local populations. A great deal of Pappe’s work consisted in the identification of the economic potential of forests. Pappe painstakingly compiled a collection of timber specimens which formed the majority of the specimens in the Museum of Economic Botany at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and various South African museums until early in the twentieth century .⁹⁷ He also prepared a descriptive catalogue of South African timbers for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855 and the International Exhibition of London, 1861, under the title of Silva Capensis.⁹⁸ Brown shared Pappe’s interest in the efficient use of forests. The basic purpose of forests, he thus wrote, was to ‘utilise land well’.⁹⁹ He was particularly concerned that no revenue had been obtained from the Cape forests in excess of expenses incurred in connection with them.¹⁰⁰ Moreover, Brown was a keen advocate of extensive plantations. He ⁹² L. Pappe and W. Rawson, Filicum Africae Arboralis: Or an Enumeration of the South African Ferns hitherto Known (Cape Town, 1858). ⁹³ L. Pappe, Synopsis of the Edible Fishes of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, 1853). ⁹⁴ King, ‘Historical Sketch of the Development of Forestry in South Africa’, 4–16. ⁹⁵ Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 82. For a comprehensive analysis of the work of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew see Drayton, Nature’s Government. ⁹⁶ J. C. Brown, Report of the Colonial Botanist for 1865 (Cape Town, 1865), 21. ⁹⁷ Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 82. ⁹⁸ Ibid. See L. Pappe, Silvia Capensis: Or a Description of South African Forest Trees and Arborescent Shrubs (Cape Town, 1862). ⁹⁹ Brown, Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy, 9. ¹⁰⁰ Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 79.

The Empire of Nature

77

suggested the creation of farm plantations and, like Cleghorn in India, the establishment of railway fuel plantations.¹⁰¹ In addition to such concerns, Brown was interested in other uses, such as medicinal, to which forests could be put.¹⁰² The diagnosis of the problem of deforestation in the Cape made by the forestry experts there was similar to that of their Indian counterparts, as was their understanding of the social and environmental role of forests. To begin with, there was a great deal of emphasis on the rate of deforestation in the Cape. Soon after taking over as colonial botanist in 1858, Pappe toured the colony, especially the Eastern Province, extensively, and strove to educate the public and the government on the effects of fire and maltreatment.¹⁰³ Moreover, he published official reports from 1859 to 1961 in which he examined the forest question in detail, emphasizing the economic and environmental importance of forests.¹⁰⁴ Again Brown, like his Indian counterparts, saw the problem of deforestation in the Cape as arising out of natural and human factors. Natural factors included fire, epiphytic and parasitic vegetable growths, and attacks by insects, birds, and beasts. Man-made causes included reckless and wasteful fellings made worse by corruption by supervisory officials, governmentsponsored land clearing for agriculture, and damage inflicted by local populations and their herds and flocks.¹⁰⁵ As in India, a great part of the campaign for conservation in the Cape was over the issue of whether or not laissez-faire policies should be encouraged in the realm of forests. There was a vocal body of opinion, led by A. B. Darnell, MLA for Queenstown, that was strongly critical of government conservation. Darnell’s influential pamphlet of 1866 entitled ‘The Past, Present, and Future Condition of the Forests in the George, Knysna, and Uitenhage Districts’, for example, argued that it was private interests, and not the government, which could ensure protection against fire and prevent the exploitation of forests when the season was over.¹⁰⁶ Against such opinion, scientists like Brown argued that it was only by effective and authoritative management along scientific lines that forests could be saved and supplies assured for different resource users in the long run.¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰¹ Ibid. 82. ¹⁰² See e.g. J. C. Brown, African Fever and the Culture of the Blue Gum Tree to Counteract Malaria in Italy (Aberdeen, 1890). ¹⁰³ Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 82. ¹⁰⁴ Official Reports of the Cape Botanist (Cape Government, 1859–61). ¹⁰⁵ Brown, Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy, 12. See also Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 80–2. ¹⁰⁶ Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 82. ¹⁰⁷ Ibid. 83.

78

The Empire of Nature

The conservation agenda in the Cape, like in India, was about curbing waste and ensuring efficient and sustained use. Brown himself emphasized four points: protection against the destruction occurring irrespective of man’s agency, protection against destruction through man’s carelessness, protection against destruction due to man’s dishonesty, and, most importantly, forest management to effect ‘an improved, economic and less wasteful forest exploitation combined with forest restoration for environmental reasons’.¹⁰⁸ The latter point is crucial to an understanding of the Cape conservation movement. Although there was a great deal of emphasis on the environmental effects of forests in Brown’s writings, there was in addition a considerable interest in exploiting forests to meet the resource needs of society and the state. As colonial botanist, Brown’s agenda on Cape forests was to ensure that the government adopted a programme of planned scientific management. His appeal for planned forest use led to the setting up of a Select Committee on forest management in 1865.¹⁰⁹ Testifying to this committee, Brown strongly advocated the procurement of basic information about the kinds and extent of forest use in the Cape as a precursor to planned scientific management. Like his Indian counterparts, he urged the setting up of forest surveys and the preparation of stock statements of the forests of the Cape.¹¹⁰ By the mid nineteenth century, Croumbie Brown, among other colonial scientists, was fully convinced that the best way of managing the forests of the Cape was to introduce continental European forestry methods. Like the Indian pioneer Hugh Cleghorn, Brown believed that European-style forestry was the only way of seriously addressing the issue of forest management. After being retrenched in 1866 following the adoption of economy measures by the Cape government in the 1860s, he devoted most of his time to studying and writing about the development and evolution of different systems of forestry in several East and West European countries.¹¹¹ ¹⁰⁸ Brown, Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy, 12. ¹⁰⁹ Sim, The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 82. ¹¹⁰ Ibid. 83. ¹¹¹ See e.g. J. C. Brown, Finland: Its Forests and Forest Management (Edinburgh, 1884); id., Forestry in Norway: With Notices of the Physical Geography of the Country (Edinburgh, 1885); id., Forests and Forestry in Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and the Baltic Provinces of Russia: With Notices of the Export of Timber from Memel, Dantzig and Riga (Edinburgh, 1885); id., French Forest Ordinance of 1669: With Historical Sketch of Previous Treatment of Forests in France (Edinburgh, 1883); id., Glances at the Forests of Northern Europe (London, 1879); id., Management of Crown Forests at the Cape of Good Hope under the Old Regime and the New (Edinburgh, 1887); id., School of Forest Engineers in Spain, Indicative of a Type for a British National School of Forestry (Edinburgh, 1886); id., Pine Plantations on the SandWastes of France (Edinburgh, 1878); id., Forestry in the Mining Districts of the Ural

The Empire of Nature

79

In their campaigns, Pappe and Brown, like the Indian foresters, played on the sensibilities of the colonial state, particularly by stressing the issue of the depletion of timber supply and by linking deforestation with the droughts of 1847 and 1862. They were only partially successful, however: while their campaign did much to bring the issue of forestry to governmental attention, they themselves did not have the political clout to persuade the government to accept their policy programmes. Indeed, it was not until the Indian forest department began to show ‘success’ in providing the state with its forest needs on an assured basis that the Cape government seriously acted on the recommendations of Brown and his colleagues and established forest departments with the help of Indian and continental forestry experts.

3.2. THE ONSET OF CONTINENTAL FORESTRY IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE The second half of the nineteenth century marked an important watershed in the history of British colonial forestry. The creation of a governmental forest service in India in the mid nineteenth century set in motion a programme to change systems of forest management and recast them in the continental mould. Over the next five decades, the Indian forest department, staffed by personnel trained in Germany and France, systematically erected a framework of resource use modelled along European lines. Laws restricting resource use were passed, silvicultural systems inaugurated, and new approaches to forest utilization launched. By the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Indian forestry community could claim success in supplying the government with its forest products needs. This ostensible success, combined with effective lobbying by forestry supporters in Britain and the empire, led to governments in other regions of the colonial periphery following the Indian model. Between 1876 and 1900, forest departments had been set up with the assistance of the Indian forest department in New Zealand, Mauritius, Cyprus, Ceylon, the Cape Colony, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mountains in Eastern Russia (Edinburgh, 1884); id., Forests and Forestry in Northern Russia and Lands Beyond (Edinburgh, 1884); id., The Forests of England and the Management of Them in Bye-gone Times (Edinburgh, 1883); id., Schools of Forestry in Germany, with Addenda Relative to a Desiderated British National School of Forestry (Edinburgh, 1887). For an excellent recent analysis of Brown see William Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770–1950 (Oxford, 2004).

80

The Empire of Nature

Gold Coast, Kenya, Uganda, the Straits Settlements, Malaya, and Australia. By the turn of the century a large pan-colonial scientific community was in existence, trained in the German and French tradition of forestry, and therefore sharing a common intellectual ethos and practical outlook.¹¹² An important feature of this community was its homogeneity, brought about by the shared professional ethos of its members, all of whom had been trained either in the Nancy forest school or in forestry institutions in Germany until the mid 1880s.¹¹³ The purpose of this section is to examine the impact of this professional ethos on the development of forestry in India and other parts of the British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. At the outset, it seeks to examine the extent to which the agendas and ideologies of colonial forestry in this context bore similarities to its continental parent. To this end, it focuses on the two key aspects of forestry: its agendas on forest management and its attitude to society, especially local peoples. Since India was the central theatre in which professional forestry emerged in the British Empire in the nineteenth century, the argument in this section will concentrate on this context. It will, however, seek in conclusion briefly to locate the Indian case in the wider scenario of empire forestry as a whole.

3.2.1. Indian Foresters and Forest Management In order to understand the objectives of the Indian forestry profession on forest management in the second half of the nineteenth century, it is important, at the outset, to note the continuities between them and the scientist-foresters of the earlier era. Like the early forestry advocates, ¹¹² For a chronology of the development of British colonial forestry, see Chapter 1. ¹¹³ Of particular utility here is the ideal-type of ‘profession’ and ‘professionalism’ developed by sociologists who have attempted to characterize the concept by identifying traits common among different professions. Sociologists following such an approach have described a profession as a full-time vocation defined by the following characteristics: the possession of skill based on systematic, theoretical, and esoteric knowledge; the provision of exacting and specialized training; procedures for testing and certifying the competence of members; organizations, often self-regulating and state sanctioned, to enforce standards, maintain a strong sense of corporate identity, and exert a degree of monopoly and adherence to the norm of altruistic, though remunerated, service to clients and to society at large. Professions, they argue, existed in part to deal with the ‘vital practical affairs of the general public and of individual lay clients, via the application of esoteric knowledge’ (J. Morell, ‘Professionalisation’, in R. C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London, 1990), 981). The reason for using this definition of professionalism and not any other is purely heuristic: it eminently suits the analysis being carried out in this section. The question of the type of professional community the colonial foresters constituted is a topic of discussion in its own right and is beyond the scope of this book.

The Empire of Nature

81

the founders and leading lights of Indian forestry in the second half of the century, including Hugh Cleghorn, Dietrich Brandis, and Frederick Bailey, were, to use a term currently in vogue, bio-prospectors who sought optimally to exploit the riches of the subcontinent’s forests.¹¹⁴ Their point of departure, however, was the fact that rather than attempt to manage forests on a piecemeal basis, as their predecessors did, they embraced the continental tradition unequivocally. Hugh Cleghorn, for example, toured European forestry schools quite extensively and wrote about their relevance for the training of Indian foresters. Similarly, Dietrich Brandis, about whom there will be more discussion in the pages to come, strongly advocated the training of Indian foresters in Europe, going so far as to recommend that the trainees be placed under the direct supervision of Prussian master-foresters.¹¹⁵ Moreover, both Brandis and Cleghorn wrote several memos to the India Office and the government of India lobbying heavily for the provision of continental forestry training for Indian forest officers. It is noteworthy that government favourably received their proposals.¹¹⁶ One of the earliest attempts at imparting European training was the scheme, from 1867 to 1884, wherein Indian forestry trainees were sent to the Nancy forestry school in France. As shown in Appendix 1, which outlines the syllabus and coursework programme at Nancy, the training they received there was quintessentially representative of the continental approach, stressing silviculture, engineering, law, economics and management, and wider environmental aspects of forestry, including the fixation of dunes and the control of mountain streams.¹¹⁷ Although the forestry curriculum at Nancy was deemed perfectly adequate by those at the head of Indian forestry, a debate loomed by 1880 about the feasibility of shifting the training to a location in the British Isles.¹¹⁸ The reason was ¹¹⁴ For examples of the work of Brandis and Cleghorn in this regard, see ‘Copy of Correspondence Regarding to the Introduction of the Chichona Plant into India, and to the Proceedings Connected with its Cultivation, from March 1852 to March 1863’ (India Office, 18 Mar. 1863, Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 20 Mar. 1863). See also ‘Accounts and Papers Session’, 5 Feb.–28 July 1863, vol. xlv (1863) and ‘Accounts and Papers: East India Bengal and Bombay San-LMS; Chichona Plant Session’, 1 Feb.– 10 Aug. 1866, vol. lii (1866). For Bailey, see several relevant papers in IOR Eur. F. 157. ¹¹⁵ Brandis to Schlich, Bonn, 11 May 1892, IOR L/PWD/8/163. It is important to note that the request was rejected by the India Office (Horace Walpole (writing on behalf of the Earl of Kimberley) to Alexander Taylor, 7 Oct. 1892, IOR L/PWD/8/163). ¹¹⁶ See, for example, the memos written by Cleghorn and Brandis to the government of India and the India Office in IOR L/PWD/8/129 and IOR L/PWD/8/163. ¹¹⁷ Henry S. Graves, and Cedric H. Guise, Forest Education (New Haven, 1932), 385. ¹¹⁸ See IOR L/PWD/8/42.

82

The Empire of Nature

a letter by H. Nanquette, the director of the Nancy forestry school, complaining that the English students there were negligent and inattentive to their studies.¹¹⁹ The ensuing inquiry found that with the rise of English students at Nancy from around 4–5 in 1873 to about 18 by 1880, the need for them to mix with their French colleagues was not pressing. Consequently, their knowledge of the French language deteriorated, hampering their ability to follow the lectures and undertake their studies adequately.¹²⁰ Some of those engaged in the debate, like Col. F. Pearson, explained these sociological changes and argued that at the end of the day: it would be a great error to suppose that the Frenchmen as a body would prefer our young fellows as their constant companions to their own countrymen. The tastes and habits of the two races are too different.¹²¹

And so, the locus of training for Indian foresters moved, in 1885, to the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill.¹²² Ironically, the western slope of the hill was witness to the last fatal duel in England in 1852, in which the loser was a French exile named Frederick Cournet.¹²³ The French, however, ultimately had the last laugh, because the distinguishing feature of forestry in the second half of the nineteenth century in British India was its strong continental thrust.¹²⁴ In order to appreciate why this was the case and understand the ideology of Indian forestry with respect to nature and human societies, it is useful to appreciate the work of the first two inspectors-general of forests for India—Dietrich Brandis and Wilhelm Schlich.

Brandis Dietrich Brandis (1824–1907), considered the founder of Indian forestry, studied botany in Copenhagen under Schouw, at Göttingen under Grisebach and Lantzius-Benings, and at Bonn where he got his ¹¹⁹ H. Nanquette to Alexander Anderson, Nancy, 27 Oct. 1880, IOR L/PWD/8/42. ¹²⁰ Col. G. F. Pearson to Louis Mallet, Nancy, 8 Dec. 1880, IOR L/PWD/8/42. ¹²¹ Ibid. ¹²² It cost £1,358 6s. to train a forester at Cooper’s Hill in 1895. ¹²³ J. G. P. Cameron, A Short History of the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper’s Hill (Issued by the Cooper’s Hill Society for private circulation, 1966), 7. ¹²⁴ To get a good sense of the influence of the continental Forestry paradigm on the Cooper’s Hill curriculum and training programme, see IOR L/PWD/8/129. See also the description of Schlich’s Manual to follow. It is also significant that Franz Heske, director of the Institute for Foreign and Colonial Forestry, Tharandt, Germany, wrote to H. G. Champion on 8 September 1932 eulogizing the benefits of ‘adapting the centuries of Germany in rational scientific forestry to the conditions in the new countries’ (FRI Office of the Silviculturist, Ledger File No. 71).

The Empire of Nature

83

Ph.D. under Treviranus. In 1854, he married Rachel Marshman, who was a sister of Frederick Bailey, an important forestry pioneer in India and a member of the Indian forest department 1871–90. Marshman was also the sister of the wife of General Havelock, a close friend of Lord Dalhousie, the then governor-general of India. On Havelock’s recommendation, Brandis was put in charge of the forests of Pegu in Burma in 1856 and was subsequently appointed inspector-general of forests of India. During 1863–5 and 1868–70 he toured India extensively and established forest management there along continental lines. As mentioned earlier, he arranged for the training of prospective Indian foresters in Germany and France in 1866 and set up a continental-style training school for Indian subordinate foresters in Dehra Dun in 1878. He also trained prospective foresters of the forest department of the USA, including Gifford Pinchot.¹²⁵ He retired in 1883 and wrote some major books on botany, the most important of which was Indian Trees (1907).¹²⁶ The primary objective of Brandis from his early days in Pegu in Burma was to recast Indian forests along European lines. Thinking back about his work setting up the Indian forest department, he wrote: The formation of the government forest domains in India and the organisation of their management, has been a large undertaking and the progress which has been made in this work could not have been accomplished had the experience gained in forest administration in Europe not been utilised; and in the future it will be necessary to maintain an intimate connection between forest administration in India and in those countries of Europe where scientific forestry is based upon the experience of centuries. Climate and the species of trees are different in India but the principles upon which systematic forestry is based, are the same in all countries, and the aim in the future must be, as it has been in the past, to build the system of forestry in India, not upon the ideas and theories of individual men, but upon the results which long experience has furnished in those countries of Europe where scientific forestry is oldest and best understood.¹²⁷

Like the foresters of Germany and France, Brandis argued that forests offered direct and indirect benefits. He wrote that forests benefited society by providing timber and other forest products to meet the needs of industry and agriculture. Forests also had an environmental utility—they ¹²⁵ Significantly, Brandis continued to advise Pinchot on the organization of a forest service there. See his 20-page letter dated 14–18 Feb. 1897 datemarked Bonn, Library of Congress, obtained from the Forest History Society. ¹²⁶ See Dictionary of National Biography, 1901–1917, 217–18 and A. Rawat, ‘Brandis: The Father of Organised Forestry in India’, in A. Rawat (ed.), Indian Forestry: A Perspective (New Delhi, 1993). ¹²⁷ Brandis, ‘Progress of Forestry in India’, 16–17.

84

The Empire of Nature

helped regulate climate and protect soils, thereby preventing destructive phenomena such as floods and torrents.¹²⁸ In his years in charge of Indian forests, Brandis systematically set about applying the principles of forestry developed within the continental tradition to the tropical forests of the Indian subcontinent. Echoing European foresters, Brandis stated that the objectives of forest management involved ensuring effective protection of forests against natural and human destruction; devising a good system to secure the regeneration of the forest, either naturally or artificially; the development of a wellconsidered and methodically arranged form of working; and the installation of good lines of communication to facilitate protection, the working of the forest, and the expansion of produce.¹²⁹ The aim of forestry, he wrote, was ‘to steadily improve their condition [the condition of forests], and never to cut more than the annual production by natural or artificial means will justify’.¹³⁰ Implicit in this mandate was the basic principle of German forestry—sustainable production and harvesting with the longterm needs of the economy at the fore. The essence of Brandis’s work therefore was to organize forestry in India and Burma along these lines. Brandis’s commitment to continental European forestry methods is evident from his earliest work in Pegu in the 1850s, where he developed a method known as the ‘Linear Valuation Survey’. In a system reminiscent of Beckmann and his army of marching assistants with coloured nails described in Chapter 2, Brandis and his men walked along certain predetermined lines—roads, ridges, or streams. As they walked, they carefully observed the forest 50 feet on either side of the line they traversed. The object of this exercise was to count the number of teak trees (chosen because it was the most remunerative of the local species) in different size classes in the area observed and, on the basis of this, extrapolate the total quantity of teak in the forest. The observations were carefully recorded by carving pieces of bamboo representing different size classes.¹³¹ Having thus obtained figures on the size composition of the teak trees of the Pegu forests, Brandis proceeded to calculate the rate of growth of the diameter of trees in each of the size categories. In addition, he estimated the proportion of trees of every class likely to attain the dimensions necessary to be grouped in the category above it. Armed with data on the size composition, rate of ¹²⁸ Brandis, ‘Progress of Forestry in India’, 25–6. ¹²⁹ Ibid. 15–16. ¹³⁰ Ibid. 15. ¹³¹ Carving information into pieces of bamboo ensured that it would not be erased in the event of rain or dew. D. Brandis, Report on the Pegu Teak Forests, 1857–60 (Calcutta, 1861). See also Rawat, ‘Brandis: The Father of Organised Forestry in India’, 86–7.

The Empire of Nature

85

diameter growth, and the probability of the survival and maturity of the forests, Brandis devised schedules for cutting and exploitation.¹³² Prior to the arrival of Brandis the forests of Pegu were ‘typically polyspecific, all-aged, “natural” wildwood, with the full tropical rainforest complement of weed-trees, stranglers, lianes, epiphytes, bamboo, canes and palms, and a dominantly broad-leaved undergrowth’.¹³³ What Brandis’s method achieved was to enable the forester to ignore these ‘arbitrary details of nature’ and concentrate on producing approximations of the extent of teak, the predominant commercial species. Like German and French forestry, it thus levelled across the inherent diversity of forests and produced an efficient scheme to exploit them. It also led eventually to the transformation of these forests into commercially marketable monocultures. Brandis applied his method in other parts of India where he worked, such as the North-East Provinces and Oudh, from whence it spread to various parts of the equatorial tropics.¹³⁴ Brandis was committed to the principle of sustained yield forestry in his approach to silviculture. He laid down strict rules that governed felling, and merchants, lessees, and contractors had to adhere to a minimum felling diameter set by the forest department. The process of felling had to be supervised by professional foresters on the ground to ensure that forests were not destroyed. Moreover, forests had to be ‘treated’ prior to felling to ensure the economy of labour, access, and supervision.¹³⁵ In addition to enunciating ground rules on felling, Brandis also formulated guidelines for the management of forests. He advocated regular repair, tending, and pruning. He also suggested the replacement of felled trees by dibbling seed or planting seedlings in the gaps, landings, and other forest openings. Where such methods of diffuse replacement failed, Brandis recommended the establishment of plantations of commercial species such as teak and sal.¹³⁶ Another aspect of the guidelines for management enunciated by Brandis was to mitigate factors that would be inimical to forest growth, such as grazing, fire, and vicious weeds.¹³⁷ Brandis’ silvicultural guidelines were calculated explicitly to prevent either under- or overutilization of wood. In his first working plan for the ¹³² Brandis, Report on the Pegu Teak Forests, 1857–60. See also Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 31–3. ¹³³ Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 31. ¹³⁴ See also Rawat, ‘Brandis: The Father of Organised Forestry in India’, 86–9; Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 33. ¹³⁵ Dawkins, ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest’, 27. Methods of treatment included climber cutting, the felling of irreversibly strangled trees, and the cutting of ‘gross-impeders’ and ‘otherwise undesirable trees’. ¹³⁶ Ibid. 28 ¹³⁷ Ibid.

86

The Empire of Nature

Pegu, he stipulated that the exploitation of forests in a given period should not exceed their increment. He thus laid down that the annual yield should be based on the amount of growth they put on.¹³⁸ This principle subsequently became the cornerstone of all Indian forest working plans.¹³⁹ Like their German counterparts, foresters in India were expected, in Brandis’s scheme, to evaluate the magnitude of the disturbances to the equilibrium of the forest caused by both natural and human causes. Having done so they were meant to prescribe means for restoring the equilibrium of growth and yield over time. In the period 1860–1900, Brandis and his successors went about implementing these principles of forest management. Forests across India were surveyed and inventories of forest species made.¹⁴⁰ Working plans and silvicultural operations were devised and implemented for the entire country along the guidelines established by Brandis.¹⁴¹ As in Germany manuals with tables indicating yield and volume of different species over time were compiled.¹⁴² Regimes for protecting forests from natural and human destruction were established.¹⁴³ Communications were improved and infrastructure for exploiting forests, such as roads, developed.¹⁴⁴ Forest industries were established to exploit various kinds of ‘Minor Forest Produce’, such as pine-resin, paper pulp, tanning materials, essential oils, lac, gum-resin, drugs and medicinal herbs, oil seeds, canes, and fibres.¹⁴⁵ The upshot of the adoption of all these measures was that Indian forestry by the turn of the century increasingly became a profitable enterprise for the state. Whereas revenue and expenditure respectively had been £360,000 and £220,000 in the period 1864–5 to 1868–9, they had climbed to £950,000 and £600,000 by 1882–3.¹⁴⁶

Schlich Wilhelm Schlich was born in 1840 and educated at Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, and at the University of Giessen, where he took a Ph.D. in 1866, the year he was appointed to the Indian forest service. In April 1881, he succeeded ¹³⁸ Brandis, Report on the Pegu Teak Forests, 1857–60. See also Rawat, ‘Brandis: The Father of Organised Forestry in India’, 93. ¹³⁹ M. Buchy, ‘Quest for a Sustainable Forest Management: A Study of the Working Plans of North Canara District (1890–1945)’, in Rawat (ed.), Indian Forestry: A Perspective, 141–62. ¹⁴⁰ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 126–34. ¹⁴¹ Ibid. 134–42, 166–204. ¹⁴² See S. H. Howard, Forest Pocket Book (n. p., 1927). ¹⁴³ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 145–66. ¹⁴⁴ Ibid. 142–5. ¹⁴⁵ E. A. Smythies, India’s Forest Wealth (London, 1925), chapter V, 80–116. ¹⁴⁶ Brandis, ‘Progress of Forestry in India’, 400.

The Empire of Nature

87

Dietrich Brandis as the inspector-general of forests to the government of India, and was responsible for the organization of the imperial working plans branch, which ensured the preparation of working plans on approved lines and their scrutiny by a central authority. He was the first honorary editor of the Indian Forester, a professional journal started in 1875. In February 1885 he was appointed to organize the forestry branch of the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill where he trained candidates for the Indian forest service until 1905, when under his recommendation the forestry branch moved to Oxford. While head of forestry at Cooper’s Hill and Oxford he was responsible for training no less than 272 of the 283 officers who joined the Indian forestry service during that period. Although he retired from his Oxford professorship in 1920 he continued to be an active contributor to forestry until his death in 1925.¹⁴⁷ A plaque by the Belgian artist Alphonse Mauquoy in a room named after him at the Oxford forestry department’s building notes that ‘To him, rather than to any other man, belongs the credit of the spread throughout the Empire of modern ideas on forest policy and silviculture.’ This recognition was due in no small part to his authorship, between 1889 and 1895, of the first three volumes of the Manual of Forestry. The Manual was the basic textbook for the candidates for the Indian forest service who from 1885 began to be trained at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill. Its publication marked the crystallization and institutionalization of the approach to forest management adopted by the Indian forest department over the preceding four decades. Being one of the first forestry manuals to be written in the English language it also served in many respects as the basic textbook of foresters in the empire and elsewhere in the English-speaking world during the turn of the century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. As an American forester put it in the 1920s: In the early days of education in forestry in the U.S. there was a dearth of technical books that could be used as texts, or to supplement oral instruction. American foresters of those early days found in Schlich’s Manual of Forestry about the only authoritative treatment of the subject in English.¹⁴⁸

Moreover, as a paradigm of forest management, the Manual went totally unchallenged. As late as two decades after it was first published, it formed ¹⁴⁷ R. S. Troup, ‘Schlich, Sir William’, in Dictionary of National Biography, 1922–1930 (Oxford, 1937). ¹⁴⁸ Ralph Sheldon Hosmer, ‘Progress of Education in Forestry in the U.S.’, Empire Forestry Journal, 2/1 (Apr. 1923), 92. See also the Oral History Interview with Hosmer conducted by Bruce C. Harding of the Forest History Foundation on 4 Nov. 1957, in which

88

The Empire of Nature

the basis of a Concise Manual of Sylviculture published and distributed by the Indian forest government for its employees.¹⁴⁹ Schlich’s Manual of Forestry thus offers an excellent insight into the nature and character of Indian and indeed empire forestry in the period 1850–1900. The essence of the framework enunciated in the Manual is contained in its first few pages, where Schlich grappled with the definition of ‘forest’. Rejecting a variety of definitions that ranged from descriptions of forests as areas containing wild growing trees and deer to those subject to special forest laws, he defined the forest in the following terms: an area which is for the most part set aside for the production of timber and other forest produce, or which is expected to exercise certain climatic effects or to protect the locality against injurious influences; such areas are frequently subject to special forest laws and legislations.¹⁵⁰

Implicit in this definition were the basics of the continental paradigm: a conception of the direct and indirect uses of forests and the idea of the forest as a timber mine. The three volumes of the manual gave this conception a philosophical and practical shape. Volume i of Schlich’s Manual was divided into two parts.¹⁵¹ The first, which took up almost 100 pages, was a treatise on the utility of forests. It mirrored the continental forestry paradigm on the importance and utility of forests, which were seen as important because they supplied timber, fuel, and other ‘minor’ produce; offered an ‘opportunity for the investment of capital and for enterprise’, and generated employment. They also reduced the temperature of the air and soil, regulated climate, increased the relative humidity of the air, increased rainfall, and regulated water supply. In addition, they helped reduce violent floods, prevented the occurrence of landslips, avalanches, and the siltation of rivers, and arrested the velocity of air currents and thus protected agricultural fields. Moreover, they assisted in the production of oxygen and ozone and thus helped improve the health of the country.¹⁵² The second part of volume i was on the fundamental principles of silviculture. Here again, the basic approach was explicitly modelled on he says that, prior to Schlich’s Manual, ‘there was very little in English about forestry’. The interview also draws out the European influence on British forestry (FHS: SAF # 107). ¹⁴⁹ Government of India, A Concise Manual of Sylviculture, for the Use of Forestry Courses in India (Calcutta, 1906). ¹⁵⁰ Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, i. 6. See pp. 5 and 6 for the various definitions of ‘forest’. ¹⁵¹ For a good description of the commissioning of Schlich’s Manual and the politics associated with it, see IOR L/PWD/8/129. ¹⁵² Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, i. 50–1.

The Empire of Nature

89

the continental forestry paradigm. Schlich wrote that the object of silviculture was to ‘yield produce of a definite description’, such as trees giving a certain kind of timber. Another purpose was to produce the ‘greatest possible quantity of wood, or other produce, per acre and year’. A third objective was to produce the ‘highest possible money return per acre and year’ and the ‘highest possible interest on the invested capital’. In addition to these economic ends, silviculture was also meant to enable certain indirect effects, such as regulating the drainage of a country and preventing phenomena like avalanches.¹⁵³ The second and third volumes of Schlich’s Manual proceeded to translate these fundamental principles into a set of practical instructions on forest management. Volume ii was a technical handbook on the formation and tending of woods. It dealt with topics such as choice of species, artificial and natural forms of forest regeneration, and the protection of forests.¹⁵⁴ Volume iii outlined the techniques involved in implementing the agenda of forest management. Its first part was on forest mensuration. It described the instruments used in forest mensuration, the methods of measuring felled and standing trees, the method of determining the age and volume of whole woods, and the analytical tools used to determine the increment. Its second part was on how to evaluate the cost and sale values of soils, the growing stock and rent of whole forests, and the financial results of a given forestry project. The third and fourth parts of volume iii were on the principles and practice of forest working plans, the basis of sustained yield forestry.¹⁵⁵ Between them, volume ii and the two main parts of volume iii embodied the three classical principles of German forestry. On the issue of forest management, therefore, Schlich’s Manual of Forestry, the epitome of forest practice in India and the rest of the British Empire and indeed in the English-speaking world in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, was an erudite explication of the continental European paradigm.¹⁵⁶ It is important to note here that the principal sources cited by Schlich in his Manual were ¹⁵³ Ibid. 99–100. ¹⁵⁴ W. Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, ii (London, 1891). ¹⁵⁵ W. Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, iii (London, 1895). ¹⁵⁶ For a good sense of the impact of Schlich’s Manual on the establishment of a training programme at the University of Oxford see Cd. 2523: ‘Correspondence Relating to the Training of Forestry Students.’ (London, 1905). See also OU FOR F 1/1–4; M 1/1–4; M 2/1–2; M 3/1–10; M 4/1–8; F 2/1–6; F 3/1–4; F 4/1–6. For the impact of Schlich’s Manual on the training of officers in the Forest Research Institute in Dehra Dun, India, see FRI O14; 33, 34, 35, 36, 71, 72. See also H. G. Champion. ‘Silvicultural Research in India: Its Organization, Problems and Methods’, Forestry (1975), 104–15.

90

The Empire of Nature

the ‘classics’ of forestry, the works of Hartig and his successors including Schlich’s own teacher, G. Heyer.¹⁵⁷ Moreover, volumes iv and v of the Manual were translations of two German books on forestry.¹⁵⁸

3.2.2. Indian Forestry as an Attitude to Nature The primary emphasis in the forest management agenda of Indian foresters in the second half of the nineteenth century was on conserving and planting what were perceived specifically as useful species. In places where species with no direct utility prevailed, it was sought to put them to use employing the best science possible.¹⁵⁹ Significantly, the issue of animal conservation figures very little in the writings of the members of the Indian forest department. Inasmuch as animals entered their official debates, it was either in the context of debates about farm–forest conflicts, in discussions about beasts of burden or in discussions about hunting and sport.¹⁶⁰ Members of the Indian forest department were closely in touch with the American conservationist George Perkins Marsh, the author of Man and Nature. A version of Man and Nature was issued with notes on forests and rainfall in Madras by A. J. Stewart, an Indian forester.¹⁶¹ The Marsh connection enables us to understand the attitude of the Indian foresters to the natural world better. Marsh was perfectly content with the idea of human domination of nature, provided it was careful and far sighted. More than a third of Man and Nature was about forests and forest ¹⁵⁷ Schlich was aware of what was going on in German forestry at that time. Of particular importance was the school of forestry that emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century under the direction of Karl Gayer, professor of silviculture in Munich. While it was very much within the general tradition of German forestry, it was opposed to monocultures and argued for forestry based on mixed forests and in accordance with the biological laws of nature. Gayer’s school was called the ‘Back to Nature’ movement. (Heske, German Forestry, 40). Schlich took up Gayer’s ideas while discussing the advantages of mixed forests (A Manual of Forestry, i. 180–3). His position in this discussion however indicates that he was by no means an unqualified advocate of the ‘Back to Nature’ approach. He argued, on the other hand, that pure woods were easier to manage than mixed woods (i. 178). ¹⁵⁸ The books were respectively on forest protection and forest utilization, originally written by two contemporary German foresters, Dr Hess and Dr Karl Gayer. ¹⁵⁹ See, for example, D. Brandis, ‘The Utilization of Less Valuable Woods in the FireProtected Forests of the CP, by Iron Making’, Indian Forester, 5/2 (1879), 222. ¹⁶⁰ Almost every issue of the Indian Forester during this period had an article or two on wild animals marauding into agricultural terrains, and occasionally on man-eating cats. The hunt was a major sporting pastime for foresters and their families. See M. M. Ledzion, Forest Families (London, 1991). ¹⁶¹ Marsh, Man and Nature.

The Empire of Nature

91

management. Based on a survey of European forestry practices, Marsh recommended a mix between preserving forests in their natural state where they were necessary to preserve soil moisture and plant cover, and the substitution of artificial for natural forests where they were necessary for timber.¹⁶² He was however concerned greatly with the complex interrelatedness of animal and vegetable life and warned that this was too complicated a problem for human minds to solve: ‘we can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble in to the ocean of organic life.’¹⁶³ Marsh therefore proposed, as a corrective to previous human carelessness, a ‘geographical regeneration’, a great healing of the planet beginning with the control of technology. He also proposed that the human custodianship of the planet was an ethical issue and not just an economic one.¹⁶⁴ The Indian foresters clearly accepted his advocacy of management. It is however not very clear whether they also accepted his moral argument. None of the writings of Brandis, Schlich, or anyone else, for that matter, raises ethical questions of this nature. Moreover, some members of the Indian forest service did not even accept Marsh’s contention that Man can have a lasting adverse impact on nature: Mr Marsh will hardly carry us with him when he states that ‘Nature is wholly impotent against his energies,’ for with Nature centuries are but moments, and after man has exerted all his destructive powers and produced a desert, Nature by his forcible exclusion will be enabled in time to recover her normal condition.¹⁶⁵

By the end of the nineteenth century the utilitarian conservation sentiment became a developmental ideology in its own right. Indian foresters at the turn of the century were particularly impressed by increasing support for forestry in America and were ardent supporters of the progressivist conservation movement of the United States which linked conservation with the gospel of efficiency.¹⁶⁶ ¹⁶² Lowenthal, G. P. Marsh—Venerable Vermonter, 261. ¹⁶³ Marsh, Man and Nature, 279. ¹⁶⁴ R. Nash, The Rights of Nature (Madison, 1989), 54–8. ¹⁶⁵ Anon, ‘Extracts from G. P. Marsh’, Indian Forester, 9/2 (1883), 82. ¹⁶⁶ A number of books written by Indian foresters in the period 1900–20 were dedicated to or made glowing references to leading American conservation figures. See e.g. T. Weber, The Forests of Upper India and their Inhabitants (London, 1910), a book dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt for his support of forestry. See also Sainthill EardleyWilmot, Forest Life and Sport in India (London, 1911), again dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt ‘Forester and Naturalist in admiration of his success in the conservation of the natural resources of his country’.

92

The Empire of Nature

3.2.3. Indian Forestry and Society Like their counterparts in Germany and France, colonial foresters in India developed a commitment to a strong, autocratic control over forests and forest enterprises. As was the case with forest management, the thinking of the Indian forestry community on the subject of control over forests was encoded in Schlich’s Manual which declared: History has proved that the preservation of an appropriate percentage of the area as forests cannot be left to private enterprise in India, so that forest conservancy in that country has for some time past been regarded the duty of the State.¹⁶⁷

The reason for this, Schlich argued, was that it was only the state that could appreciate the importance of the indirect benefits of forests and which could think in the long term.¹⁶⁸ This conception had its origins in two main influences. The first of these was the long history of experience in India and Burma of the impact of private enterprise on forests. As argued earlier in this chapter, a central thesis of the colonial scientist-conservationists of the first half of the century had been that the onset of private commercial interests in the realm of forest management inevitably led to a tragedy of the commons.¹⁶⁹ The thrust of the early ‘colonial foresters’ from Captain Watson to Cleghorn and Gibson had therefore been to exclude private operators from forests.¹⁷⁰ The early experience of Brandis in Burma had led him similarly to look at private firms with a great deal of suspicion. Much of his early life in Pegu and other parts of Burma in the late 1850s and early 1860s was therefore spent fighting mercantile firms, a battle that was only partially successful.¹⁷¹ The second main influence behind the Indian forestry community’s commitment to state control over forests in the second half of the nineteenth century was, predictably, the European tradition. A number of issues of the Indian Forester in the period 1875–90 reproduced sections of writings by French and German foresters on the issue of the importance of state forestry.¹⁷² The debate over the proposed forest bill in 1875, in particular, drew strongly upon both European history and the ideas on the importance of state control implicit in continental ¹⁶⁷ Schlich, A Manual of Forestry, i. 95. ¹⁶⁸ Ibid. 86–96. ¹⁶⁹ The term ‘tragedy of commons’ is used here in the sense of Hardin’s essay. See Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of Commons’, 1243–8. ¹⁷⁰ See Chapter 2. ¹⁷¹ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 73. ¹⁷² See e.g. ‘A Fragment from a German Writer on the Reasons why the State should Manage Forests’, Indian Forester, 3/1 (1876–7), 83–5.

The Empire of Nature

93

forestry.¹⁷³ It is however important to note here that there was considerable opposition to the adoption of continental forestry methods by some in the colonial administration.¹⁷⁴ These opponents, like those who protested the adoption of Prussian techniques in France in the nineteenth century, argued that traditional practices were adequate. Another manifestation of the commitment of the Indian forestry community to state control over forest management was the enactment of forest laws. The first Indian Forest Act was passed in 1865 and, based on it, a number of local rules were promulgated. Within a few years of its enactment, however, foresters began to complain that the 1865 Act did not give them and the state adequate control over forest lands. They argued in particular that it did not provide for the ‘definition, regulation, commutation and extinction of customary rights’ by the state.¹⁷⁵ A protracted debate on a new forest Act ensued. In 1878 a new forest Act was passed which extended to all provinces except Madras, Burma, the Hazara district in Punjab, Ajmer, Coorg, Berar, and Baluchistan.¹⁷⁶ By 1890, these provinces passed their own forest Acts modelled on the 1878 Indian Forest Act. These Acts divided forests into three main categories: reserved, protected, and village/communal. As in Germany and France, the Indian Forest Act gave foresters power to determine how forests were to be managed. All the forest Acts provided for control, not only of state-owned lands but over forests and lands not belonging to the state, ‘if such control appears necessary for the public weal, or if the treatment such forests have received from their owners injuriously affects public welfare or safety’.¹⁷⁷ In doing so, the Indian Forest Act defined and restricted rights in a manner very similar to what had happened in Germany and France earlier. Like their counterparts in Germany and France, the members of the forest department in India deemed the demands of the state well founded and those of the local people (settled agriculturalists and nomadic tribes who were perceived as wasteful, ignorant, and blinded by short-term interests) illegitimate. Practices such as grazing animals in forests were therefore seen as ecologically blind: The sheep and the goat tear up the herbage instead of biting it clean off. They throw themselves greedily on all kinds of plants when they do not eat them, they ¹⁷³ R. Guha, ‘An Early Environmental Debate: The Making of the 1878 Forest Act’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 27/1 (1990), 75. ¹⁷⁴ See for example the extensive correspondence including Grant Duff, Brandis, Alexander MacKenzie, and Capt. Awdry in the Grant Duff Papers (IOR MSS Eur. F. 234/62). ¹⁷⁵ Brandis, cited in Guha, ‘An Early Environmental Debate’, 67. ¹⁷⁶ Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 109. ¹⁷⁷ Ibid. 114.

94

The Empire of Nature

devastate the forest, ruin pasture lands, and cause damage greater and more irremediable than all other cattle put together. When they are very numerous, they ravage the country just as a flight of locusts would. They cleave the soil with their narrow pointed hoofs, render it thus more easily furrowed by the next rainfall, and thus promote the formation of ravines.¹⁷⁸

The local people, they felt, needed therefore to be educated about priorities in resource use: as a preliminary to the real conservation and administration of the forests on the countryside the people with their Oriental conservatism and apathy had to be gradually weaned from their old methods of utilising—wastefully utilising—the forests and educated to a recognition of the fact that the work being carried out was in their true interests.¹⁷⁹

From the point of view of the Indian forestry community, while forest resources were limited there was a great and growing demand and therefore competition for them. On the one hand there were the demands of the state. India was still a net importer of timber.¹⁸⁰ On the other, there was a great deal of pressure from the local population, in particular, for grazing their goats and cattle. Given this overall scarcity of resources, they felt that forest use ought to be prioritized. As scientific experts they believed that they were the only agents competent to do this prioritizing.¹⁸¹ As one of them put it: ‘all that in India we can hope to do is from a stand-point of necessarily superior knowledge, to ascertain facts, and define our restrictions and the areas within which they are enforced, with strict justice.’¹⁸² The issue of resource allocation, principally political in nature, began thereby to be posed as a technical problem. The Forest Act and standpoints such as the above were seen as technical solutions. Moreover, what was perceived as ecological ignorance also began to be seen as moral backwardness. The technical solutions—the Forest Act and education for the local populations—were therefore seen simultaneously as acts of moral improvement. Nowhere is this conception better illustrated than a poem written as a conversation between two policy standpoints during the conference on the 1878 Forest Act, which posits a ‘solution’ to the ¹⁷⁸ ‘Punjabi’, ‘Goats in the Forest’, Indian Forester, 2/1 (1874), 86. ¹⁷⁹ Stebbing, The Forests of India, i. 462. ¹⁸⁰ Ibid. ii. 235. ¹⁸¹ They often quoted well-known scientific experts to establish their point. See, for example, J. Mc Kee, ‘On Grazing’, Indian Forester, 1/1 (1872), 100 which quotes Charles Darwin on the evils of cattle grazing. ¹⁸² B. H. Baden-Powell, ‘Forest Conservancy in its Popular Aspect’, Indian Forester, 2/1 (1874), 1–15.

The Empire of Nature

95

environmental profligacy of the Bheel, a tribal community in central India.¹⁸³ The Gentle Bheel: A Conference Poem (H) I keenly feel that every Bheel Should have his wood and water free, That with his axe, and ne’er a tax He may take every forest tree. (W) But one may steal, tho’ not a Bheel, (H) Yes, true! but here’s my dodge so neat, I hang a ticket round his neck Or brand him (gently but complete) (W) Then with a squeal that branded Bheel Would make the forest tribute pay, Tree-brush and scrub, root stem and twig, He’ll fell; then where your forest(?) say! (H) The Hungry Bheel must make a meal, So out of the trees I’ll pick out nine, And say ‘my Bheel, that list is yours, And this my gentle Bheel is mine.’ And lest that Bheel again should steal, I’d teach him manners, give him fields; A college, schools, both high and low, Good roads, and all that science yields. (W) I also feel, I love the Bheel, But with your plan I disagree!! I’d shut up every forest tract And never let him see a tree, But as the Bheel must have a meal, On prickly pear I would have him feed; And seat him on the cactus top, If moral suasion he should need. And as the Bheel the want might feel Of clothes, I’d take a haversack And fill it up with seeds of all kinds, And place it gently on his back. And o’er the hills, so void of rills, That Bheel the seed should broadcast sow; ¹⁸³ I am indebted to an unpublished paper on ‘The Myth of the Environmentally Profligate Native’ by Richard Drayton for the term ‘environmentally profligate’.

96

The Empire of Nature thus trees would rise before our eyes And springs would gush and fountains flow. Then looking down the stream of time With mental eye like Dollinger, I see the Bheel, opuntia fed, Will bless the name of W-ii-nger.¹⁸⁴

3.2.4. Foresters and Other Colonial Officials Although the Forest Act gave the forest department overall legal authority, their actual clout in local contexts was, however, often restricted by members of the civil administration whose priorities were sometimes different from those of foresters. This restriction was in fact sanctified by governmental official policy. The Rules that governed the Indian Forest Act, for example, set out that: ‡ All Divisional Forest Officers and their subordinates shall in all but purely technical matters be subordinate to the Collector of the District, &c. ‡ No appointments to offices higher than that of the round guard shall be made by the Conservator . . . without consulting . . . the collector. ‡ In all matters relating to local supply or the rights and privileges of the people in or in respects of forests, orders shall be issued by the Collector alone and not by any Forest Officer . . . ‡ No forest compartment shall be closed, whether for planting or reboisement or for punitive purposes, except under the order or with the approval of the Collector. ‡ A breach of any of these rules carries the penalty of one month’s imprisonment and Rs. 500 fine.¹⁸⁵

The members of the civil administration, and especially local bureaucrats whose duty it was to collect revenue and maintain law and order, were perceived by the foresters as being ambivalent and not totally committed to forestry: in the official mind up to the highest, we find various degrees of disinclination towards vigorous conviction: and just as we find in the people the progress of ¹⁸⁴ Indian Forester, 2/2 (1874), 218. Opuntia is originally a plant of Opus (a town in Locris, Greece) which was known to send out roots from its leaves. Later, the name was assigned to a genus of branched, often treelike, cacti native to North and South America with flattened or cylindrical jointed stems, lateral, chiefly yellow, flowers, and fleshy or dry, often edible, fruits. It is also the name for the prickly pear cactus and the Indian fig, Opuntia ficus-indica. The following entry in the Oxford English Dictionary perhaps conveys the purported meaning of the authors of the poem: ‘1887 Gardeners’ Chron. 29 Oct. 520/3 Opuntias are used as fences, and the fruits are eaten by the poor Kaffirs’ (OED New Edition Online. Draft entry June 2004). ¹⁸⁵ Rules 2, 7, 8 and 9, section 75 (a), Indian Forest Act.

The Empire of Nature

97

conviction barred by self-interest, so is it with their rulers. Considerations of interest, such as the desire to have no complaints and have everything snug and quiet in the district, to shew a good revenue sheet by yielding forest produce . . . affect their capacity for the reception of a sure belief in forest economy.¹⁸⁶

The nature of the science of forestry which allowed no crucial experiments and in which truths were ‘not evolvable from abstract considerations of chemistry or atmospheric law’ but established only by repeated experience made it difficult for them to convince government officials who, they believed, even when not openly contradicting the established conclusion about the physical importance of forests, ‘nevertheless nourish a silent and half-smothered distrust, which results in their being apathetic, coldly negative and very easily persuaded to inactivity in regard to the subject’.¹⁸⁷ They therefore felt that forest officers not unfrequently find themselves in the position of people bound hand and foot and told to run. At one time surplus revenue is insisted on. At another the closing of forests and a strictly conservative treatment which in general forests is incompatible with the realisation of revenue, is directed.¹⁸⁸

The emergence of a homogeneous professional community of foresters thus resulted in conflicts over forest management within the colonial administration. The roots of these tensions lay in the difference in backgrounds and training between foresters and other members of the civilian administration. Whereas most members of the elite civil service were educated in classics and the humanities in institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, foresters were trained, as mentioned earlier, in technical schools like Nancy in France and the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill, which did not enjoy the same status in British society during that period. On the field, these differences in status were manifested, among other things, in differences in income and status between the civil and forest services. As of 1901, for example, a collector, the chief civilian official, with a charge of approximately 10,000 square miles, earned a monthly salary of Rs. 1,800–2,325. A conservator, the chief forestry official, with a charge 6–8 times that of the collector and with 5,000–6,000 square miles of forest, however, earned Rs. 1,200–1,600.¹⁸⁹ In addition to ¹⁸⁶ Baden-Powell, ‘Forest Conservancy in its Popular Aspect’, 10. ¹⁸⁷ Ibid. 1. ¹⁸⁸ Ibid. 11. ¹⁸⁹ F. Gleadow, ‘Translator’s Conclusion’, in A. Me’lard, Insufficiency of the World’s Timber Supply, trans. and applied to India by F. Gleadow (Allahabad, 1901), 39.

98

The Empire of Nature

differences in income, forest officers were also legally subordinate to their civilian counterparts: It will thus be seen that a senior Forest Officer in charge of a Division sometimes comprising more than one Collectorate, may be in any part of his charge practically subordinate to a mere boy civilian or a native deputy, and is actually at present less esteemed and feared than any revenue subordinate. In other words, a highlytrained and educated officer whose charge includes a dozen or more talukas, is practically subject to the authority as well as to the intrigues of each petty Revenue officer in charge of the taluka.¹⁹⁰

Another cause for conflicts between foresters and law-enforcing officials was that while the former were interested in efficiency in the forestry realm, the latter were preoccupied with concerns about political stability. In addition, civilian officials were generally more interested in agriculture than forests. As late as 1894, orders from the government of India stated that The claims of cultivation are stronger than the claims of forest preservation— whenever an effective demand for culturable land exists, and can only be supplied from forest areas, the land should ordinarily be relinquished without hesitation.¹⁹¹

Both, however, were held responsible for generating revenue. In this, there was a great deal of similarity between forestry and other systems of environmental management in India in the second half of the nineteenth century. In irrigation, for example, plans for agricultural improvement by irrigation engineers were not—and could not be—developed in the context in which the province’s administrators found themselves. They had to balance the powerful expediencies of revenue and commerce at every turn; they were buffeted by gusts of disapproval from the supreme government in Calcutta or in London; and they were haunted by the nightmare of political upheaval should they disturb unawares the agrarian society whose loyalty was so precariously secured.¹⁹²

By the last two decades of the nineteenth century, members of the Indian forestry community, from the top to the bottom, began to believe that the colonial administration needed to be educated about the importance of ¹⁹⁰ F. Gleadow, ‘Translator’s Conclusion’, in A. Me’lard, Insufficiency of the World’s Timber Supply, trans. and applied to India by F. Gleadow (Allahabad, 1901), 38–9. ¹⁹¹ British Library, Government of India, Resolution 22F, 19 Oct. 1894. ¹⁹² E. Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, i: The United Provinces under British Rule 1860–1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), 99–100.

The Empire of Nature

99

forest conservation. One important manifestation of this perception was the production of official histories of Indian forestry which, among other things, emphasized the increased revenue for the state brought about by the policies of the Indian forest department.¹⁹³ In order to get their agenda on forest management firmly recognized by all sections of the administration, the Indian foresters also began to organize themselves as a major pressure group. They systematically lobbied government in India and, on return to Britain, became leading figures in the campaign for British and colonial forestry there.¹⁹⁴ The attitude of Indian foresters to forest management and society in the second half of the nineteenth century mirrored those of their European ancestors and counterparts. Their principles led to the eventual transformation of Indian forests along the lines of the forests of Germany and France previously. Again there was, as in the European tradition, a strong affirmation of the legitimacy of the needs of the national economy and, in many cases, the diminution of the recognition of the rights and requirements of local agrarian populations. Predictably, the dismissal of the rights of local resource users was more pronounced among the generation of Indian foresters who had been trained at Nancy and the German forestry schools. Members of an earlier generation of foresters, especially Brandis, had held that the ‘business of the forester is to produce not only timber, but . . . a great variety of other produce, among which cattle fodder is most prominent’.¹⁹⁵ For their epigones, strongly imbued with the continental tradition, however, the demands of peasants and other rural resources were, as argued earlier, part of the problem of efficient resource management. The change in attitudes to local people and their needs arose partly out of a growing self-perception of colonial foresters as technical experts. This can be understood better by invoking the notion of technocracy, ‘the exercise of political authority by virtue of technical competence and expertise in the application of knowledge’, and examining its relation with politics.¹⁹⁶ In an article on the idea of technocracy, John Gunnell has argued that the impact of technological systems on politics can be analysed at three distinct levels: political power gravitating toward technological elites in circumstances in which political decisions involve ¹⁹³ See e.g. Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 204–15. See also Stebbing, The Forests of India, vols. i–iii. ¹⁹⁴ James, A History of English Forestry, 191–205. ¹⁹⁵ Brandis, ‘Progress of Forestry in India’, 25. ¹⁹⁶ J. G. Gunnell, ‘The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy’, Technology and Culture, 23/3 (1982), 392.

100

The Empire of Nature

specialized knowledge or technical skills; technology becoming autonomous and politics therefore becoming a function of systematic structural determinants over which it has little or no control; technology (and science) constituting a new legitimizing ideology that subtly masks certain forms of social domination. In each of these levels, argues Gunnell: there is a concern about the depreciation of the political realm, the subversion of traditional bases of authority, and the ascendancy of instrumental power over political rationality. More specific concern usually centres on the problem of the circumvention or atrophy of democratic or representative political institutions.¹⁹⁷

The emergence of a professional forestry department in late nineteenthcentury India led to increasing demands for political power in the realm of forest management by its members, the technical elite in this context. With this, technology, in this case scientific forestry, and the foresters’ belief in technological and moral (ecologically moral) superiority over the local population, began to constitute a new legitimizing ideology. An important consequence of this was the growing demand by the forestry community to enforce rigorously the provisions of the forest laws and their increasing willingness to confront the civil administration on this. By the turn of the century, the forester as technocrat had thus become a very important figure in the politics of forest resource use in India.¹⁹⁸ It is noteworthy, however, that the emergence of the forester as an important player in colonial environmental politics did not mean actual power for the forester.

3.2.5. Empire Forestry, 1850–1900: The Wider Scenario The appointment of Indian foresters to set up forestry in other parts of the empire led predictably to the transfer of ‘Indian’ ideas on forest management and on the relationship between forestry and society to these areas. In every context where Indian forestry was transferred, forests began to be managed according to continental European principles.¹⁹⁹ ¹⁹⁷ Gunnell, ‘The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy’, 397. See also L. Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 133–72. ¹⁹⁸ Of the total land mass of 944,923 square miles under the British in India by the end of 1881–2, the forest department directly controlled 117,648 square miles and had some say in the management of another 476,664 square miles of private and other forest lands. The area under cultivation was 350,611 square miles (Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 121). ¹⁹⁹ See e.g. T. P. Ofcansky, ‘Kenya Forestry under British Colonial Administration, 1895–1963’, Journal of Forest History, 28 (July 1984); E. O. Egboh, ‘British Control of the Forests of Lagos Colony and Protectorate, 1897–1902’, Journal of African Studies, 6/2

The Empire of Nature

101

Again, in each of these contexts, lobbying by foresters resulted in the enactment of legislation setting out the legal basis for forestry reserves and providing for appropriate restrictions forbidding cutting, grazing, or trespassing without permit. More significantly, in a number of colonial contexts, the forestry community increasingly confronted the state for greater political autonomy and, often, for retaining basic policies.²⁰⁰ Significantly, the agendas, concerns, and dilemmas of colonial foresters were by no means unique to the British Empire. In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a debate on forest use ensued in the United States of America which, as in India and the rest of the British colonial world, faced six main questions: Are forests worth preserving? How should the forests be managed, and who should do it? Who owns the forest? How much forest is left? How should the forest be protected? How should the forest be used? ²⁰¹ On each of these questions, members of the American forestry community, some of whom had been influenced by Indian forestry and trained on the Continent, increasingly adopted perspectives similar to that taken by their counterparts in Europe and in the British Empire.²⁰² To quote Bernard Fernow, one of the founders of forestry in the United States and Canada: If now we take a look at the relation which private and communal interests hold towards the forest resources of a country, we must first of all realize the dual nature of the forest, namely as a furnisher of useful material as which it is an important factor in human economy and as a condition of the earth’s surface, and as such exercising certain important functions in the climatology, hydrology and salubrity of a country. The first of these two qualities, namely the capacity of furnishing material supplies is the main object of interest to the individual: it is the timber for which the private forest owner prizes the forest, and the amount of money which can be realized from its sale; and as long as virgin supplies last, he will exploit them in such a manner as appears to him most profitable and brings him immediate returns for his labors. This exploitation must be of the crudest . . . In this direction, i.e. in the matter of economic use of resources the community is almost (1979); id., Forestry Policy in Nigeria, 1897–1960 (Nsukka, 1984); Carron, A History of Forestry in Australia; Sim, Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony, 84–92. ²⁰⁰ See e.g. Ofcansky, ‘Kenya Forestry under British Colonial Administration, 1895–1963’, 139. Also Grove, ‘Chiefs, Boundaries and Sacred Woodlands’. ²⁰¹ M. Williams, Americans and their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge, 1989), 395. ²⁰² See ibid. 395–465. Gifford Pinchot, a major figure in the American forestry movement, had been greatly influenced by Dietrich Brandis and on his suggestion had studied forestry at the Nancy forest school (G. Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York, 1947)). It is important to note that the American forestry tradition was not influenced by the writings of George Perkins Marsh until early in the 20th century.

102

The Empire of Nature

powerless to protect its future interests, as long as it is bound to rely upon the competition of private enterprise for the exploitation of resources.²⁰³

In North America, as in India and the rest of the British Empire, foresters increasingly began to grow as an important lobby within the administration. For a variety of reasons, including the close personal relationship between Gifford Pinchot, the ‘father’ of American forestry, and President Roosevelt, the American forestry community was more successful in convincing its government to support its objectives.²⁰⁴ By the turn of the century, therefore, British colonial foresters, as pointed out earlier, began increasingly citing the American case as an exemplar. Their agenda was to implant in the empire a regime of progressive conservationism within a context of technocratic politics. 3.3. CONCLUSIONS To conclude by summarizing the central argument, the European tradition of scientific work on the social, economic, and environmental impact of forest destruction holds a vital clue to the emergence of the campaign for forest conservancy in the British Empire. The colonial scientists campaigning for forest conservation in the first half of the nineteenth century were educated in Edinburgh and the leading centres of learning in continental Europe, and their de facto membership of an international network of scientists, forged by their association with botanical gardens and especially with the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, exposed them to the various debates raging among the scientific community at that time.²⁰⁵ They were particularly cognizant of the growing body of scientific research and opinion on the environmental effects of deforestation. This awareness, combined with evidence of the environmental and economic effects of deforestation in different parts of the empire, led them to launch a systematic campaign for forest conservancy. The campaign was pursued with explicit reference to developments in continental Europe. Its purpose was to convince colonial governments to adopt protective regimes of environmental management such as those that had developed in Europe previously. ²⁰³ B. E. Fernow, unpublished MS, Fernow Papers, Cornell University (20/1/561). ²⁰⁴ Williams, Americans and their Forests, 416–21. ²⁰⁵ For evidence of the correspondence between colonial scientists advocating forestry and the Kew establishment, see W. R. Dawson (ed.), The Banks Letters: A Calendar of the Manuscript Correspondence (London, 1958).

103

The Empire of Nature

The agenda of forest management of the colonial scientists campaigning for conservation reflected those of the European scientists concerned with deforestation and the ideals of social and economic development latent in colonial science during this period. It sought to convince sceptical colonial governments and officials about the economic utility of forests. It aimed further to erect a regime of forest management that optimized resource use while maximizing the range of products harvested from forests. It saw forests as providing commodities for a wide group of users including the colonial state, industries, and agrarian populations. An important aspect of this multifaceted conception of the economic importance of forests in the agendas of the colonial scientist-conservationists was a strong commitment to curbing waste. Forest destruction, and consequently waste, it was argued, was caused by a host of natural and human factors, including fire, insects, and disease on the one hand, and shifting cultivation, exploitation by private contractors justified by laissez-faire economics, and the reckless attitudes of both indigenous and European peoples, including members of the colonial administration, on the other. The environmentalist ideology underlying the campaign for forest conservancy in the British Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century had two components. First, it had a clear conception of what conservancy meant in terms of attitudes to nature. It is useful while addressing the issue of ideology to invoke a distinction made by John Passmore between ‘conservation’ and ‘preservation’. What the conservationist opposes, according to Passmore, ‘is not the harnessing of nature for man’s economic purposes but carelessness and wastefulness in doing so . . . Conservation (is) “careful husbandry”. ’²⁰⁶ Preservation, on the other hand, is: the attempt to maintain in their present condition such areas of the earth’s surface as do not yet bear the obvious marks of man’s handiwork and to protect from the risk of extinction those species of living beings which man has not as yet destroyed.²⁰⁷

All the scientists campaigning for forest conservation in the British Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century were, in terms of the above distinction, conservationists. As Hugh Cleghorn put it: the question as between the maintenance and removal of forests appears to us to be a question of compensations. Wherever the population requires that every portion of the soil be made to yield its quota of human food, there the destruction of forests is to be desired, and the disadvantages to which want of wood for ²⁰⁶ Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, 74.

²⁰⁷ Ibid. 101.

104

The Empire of Nature

social and general purposes may lead, must be compensated for, as they doubtless will be, by the ingenuity which is born of necessity. But there are localities in nearly all countries to which the tide of population can never flow, but where forest can flourish, and where it ought to be maintained.²⁰⁸

Another aspect of the environmentalist ideology in the campaign for conservancy was the attitudes to human communities implicit in it. Particularly important here was the growing perception among the colonial scientific community that scientists, as opposed to others, including various categories of local populations, settlers, and administrative officials, knew best how to manage forests. While all those who were not members of the scientific community were deemed ignorant and held responsible for deforestation, blame was specially placed on certain types of forest practice, such as shifting cultivation. It must be noted here, however, that there was no explicitly detectable bias, positive or negative, about local peoples and practices during this period. The predominant concern was to satisfy various resource needs, of both the government and the settled agrarian populations. With the appointment of scientists as forest conservators in India in the 1840s and 1850s, the history of British colonial forestry took a decisive turn. On their recommendation, the Indian government began to look towards Germany and France for expert help on how to manage forests. The agendas that these experts brought with them were very similar to those in Germany and France and, significantly similar to that in the United States, which also adopted the continental forestry tradition. In each of these cases, there was a strong commitment to building a regime of natural resource management that could cater efficiently to the economic needs of the empire. As an attitude to nature, the agenda of British colonial forestry, like its continental parent and American counterpart, was unambiguously utilitarian; conservationist, as opposed to preservationist. In addition to adopting the forest management ethos of continental forestry, British colonial forestry in the second half of the nineteenth century also inherited its attitude to other forest resource users, especially agricultural populations. Foresters in India and the rest of the empire during this period were like their continental ancestors in that they held a clear bias against such communities, whom they viewed as ignorant, environmentally profligate, and wasteful. In seeking objectively to define the forest for the purposes of scientific management, they therefore ²⁰⁸ Cleghorn et al., ‘BAAS Report on Tropical Forest Destruction’, 79.

The Empire of Nature

105

devised a system of curtailing traditional rights, which in time developed into a subdiscipline of forestry—forest law. The advent of the continental system of forest management in the British Empire thus resulted, to use Lewis Mumford’s terminology, in the introduction of an authoritarian technics in the realm of forests.²⁰⁹ A critical element of the attitude of colonial foresters to local populations was the perception that their claims were illegitimate because of their ostensible scientific and technological backwardness. In an important book on the culture of colonial science and technology, Michael Adas has argued that machines (and, more broadly, science and technology) were used by European colonizers ‘as the measure of men’.²¹⁰ It is tempting to apply such an analysis to the case of British colonial forestry. Looked at from the perspective of the history of the development of forestry in the European (and especially French) context, however, it is evident that the process of judging human communities by their scientific and technological prowess began with the setting up of the forestry corps in France. The origin of the process of judging human communities on the basis of their scientific and technological prowess was thus, at least in the realm of forestry, much earlier than the date of the first contact between the colonial forester and his subjects, and in a context—western Europe—that was far away and removed from the colonies. The influence of the continental tradition on colonial forestry has important implications for the conception of ‘imperial’ or ‘colonial’ state forestry. To begin with, the agendas of ‘colonial’ forestry in this period were brought forth by a community of technocrats who attempted to implement what they had imbibed during their professional training in the continental forestry tradition. Indeed, it took some persuasion to convince the colonial state to adopt policies in keeping with the recommendations of the professional foresters. The modes of production and the social relations defined by forestry in the British Empire were thus not direct offshoots of cultural or economic imperialism, as asserted by many historians of forestry in the British Empire.²¹¹ Although colonial forestry proved to be of strategic importance for the colonial economy, yielding profitable returns that furthered empire, the ‘environmental imperialism’ therein was a result of the transplantation into a colonial realm of the ²⁰⁹ L. Mumford, Technics and Civilization (London, 1934). ²¹⁰ M. Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY, 1989). ²¹¹ See especially Guha, ‘Forestry in British and Post-British India’; id., The Unquiet Woods; Guha and Gadgil, This Fissured Land.

106

The Empire of Nature

social and political contexts that had defined forestry in Europe in the first place. The transplantation of continental forestry in India was thus very similar to the effect of German forestry on France earlier and that of Indian forestry on the rest of the empire subsequently. Technology was only transitively a product of colonial expediency; it provided, as Daniel Headrick has argued, a context for colonial politics, while at the same time enhancing the impact of colonialism.²¹² Again, colonial foresters were not mere ‘servants of the state’; they were carriers of culture of a technology that had its origins in another setting. An important corollary is that discussions about whether or not colonial forestry constituted a watershed in the environmental history of the British Empire are trivial in the sense that as a regime of resource management, scientific forestry was designed to be a major watershed, even in continental Europe, its place of birth.²¹³ A second implication of the influence of continental tradition on forestry in the British Empire is that it seriously questions the conception of ‘state’ forestry. The emergence of a professional forestry community trained within a defined tradition marked a significant disjuncture in the history of colonial forestry in that it brought with it a rigid tradition of praxis with respect to natural resource management. This meant that although the ethos of empire foresters in the second half of the nineteenth century had some affinities with that of the preceding regime run by colonial scientist-conservationists, it was distinct in that it was marked by a coherence of perspective and purpose on what to do with colonial forests stemming from the tradition of continental forestry. This argument is particularly significant as a qualifier to attempts by certain historians to characterize the development of forestry in the nineteenth century without recognizing the impact of the continental tradition.²¹⁴ A more important implication of the emergence of a professional community is that although forestry was sponsored by the colonial state, the agendas for forest management made by them were often opposed by other governmental agencies. This led, as argued earlier, to important conflicts between the forestry community and the state. The bone of contention was political authority for the forester. In debates within the ²¹² D. R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism (Oxford, 1988), 5. ²¹³ See Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest, for a discussion of this problem. ²¹⁴ See e.g. Grove, ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, where he encompasses in one continuous explanation the emergence not only of forestry regimes but of concern with species extinction and the enactment of laws on animal conservation across the 19th century.

The Empire of Nature

107

colonial administration, this was manifested in demands by foresters for greater political autonomy, a plea for freedom to devise and implement policy in the realm of the forest. Central to such demands by the colonial forestry community was their belief that, as technical experts, they were the only people within the colonial administration competent to administer the imperial forest estate. For members of the colonial administrations, on the other hand, the efficient management of forests was only one of many governmental priorities, not the least of which was to maintain social and agricultural stability. An important consequence of this polarization was an attempt by the empire community as a whole to lobby governments at the centre and the periphery to recognize the importance of forestry. They therefore used their growing status as scientists to widen the existing governmental perspective on forests and their utility. They also used their scientific expertise to demonstrate the utility of supporting continental forestry and allowing foresters to take over all decision making on forest use. They were partially successful in this in the aftermath of the First World War. Their campaign during and after the war and the implications of it for pan-colonial forestry in the twentieth century are the subject of the next two chapters.

4 The Empire Strikes Back 4.1. INTRODUCTION By the turn of the century, forestry had joined the bureaucracy, the army, and the railways as a permanent fixture in the British imperium. The empire forestry community had grown both in size and in confidence, having demonstrated the ability to generate revenue for the colonial state. It had also begun to discover a new sense of professional identity, and promote the cause of modern forestry with an evangelical zeal.¹ In the meanwhile, forest management in mainland Britain was mired in tradition. For the landed classes, the principal cultural significance of forests stemmed from the harbour they provided for game, especially foxes and birds. The historical importance that the British elite attached to vert and venison is evident in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary: 1455 Rolls of Parlt. V. 319/2 The oversight of verte and venyson, in all the Parkes. 1577 HOLINSHED Chron. II. 459/2 The k[ing] . . . appointed foure iustices . . . to be as surueyers aboue all other Foresters of vert & venison. 1598 J. MANWOOD Lawes Forest xvii. 102b, That which tendeth to the hurt and annoyance of the Vert and the Venison. 1612 SIR J. DAVIES Why Ireland, etc. (1747) 164 The great plenty both of Vert and Venison within this land. 1700 TYRRELL Hist. Eng. II. 820 Every Forester in Fee shall . . . Attach Pleas of the Forest, as well concerning Vert as Venison. 1772 Junius Lett. lxviii. (1788) 347 If a man was taken with vert, or venison, it was declared to be equivalent to indictment. 1835 J. P. KENNEDY Horse Shoe R. xxxvii, He gave much of his time to the concerns of vert and venison. 1840 Penny Cycl. XVI. 175/1 The master-keepers’ and groom-keepers’ duty is to preserve the vert and venison in their respective bailiwicks and walks.²

This fascinating etymological history, attributed to Junius, says a great deal—not only about attitudes to woods and game, but also about the ¹ James, A History of English Forestry, 194–6. ² Oxford English Dictionary Online Second Edition, 1989. Entry for vert ‘coupled with venison. (The common use.)’.

The Empire Strikes Back

109

Figure 4.1. Conference train, Second Empire Forestry Conference, Canada.

social relationships between the landlords and the peasants. Although commoners, in theory, enjoyed the right to graze their animals on the forest floor, these relations were, in practice, fraught with conflict and tension. Customary rights were often denied by the upper classes seeking to maintain their exclusive privileges for recreation and sport. Moreover, from the eighteenth century onward, encroachments in the woodlands were met with severe punishment.³ The consequent lack of access to crucial forest products and grazing lands forced many to leave their homes. Forests, therefore, represented both injustice and disinheritance. According to a group of Canadian geographers cited by James Winter, so angry were some poor people about the exclusive rules over access to woodlands imposed by some landowners that they made it a point, when they went as settlers to countries such as Canada, deliberately to fell trees in revenge.⁴ Forests, in any event, were, for the British elite, more than merely resources for timber. In a tradition that arguably crystallized around the mid eighteenth century in the plantations of Thomas Brudenell, Lord Bruce, and his chief landscape consultant, Lancelot ‘Capability’ ³ Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 198–211. ⁴ James Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1999), 96–7.

110

The Empire Strikes Back

Brown, and which continued thereafter, woodland management, for the aristocracy, meant the marriage of the groom (utility) with the bride (beauty).⁵ It is important to point out that the groom, in the British context, bore little resemblance to his continental European counterpart. As James Winter points out: Standardization was not essential to craft work and early mechanical industry, especially since shipbuilders, wagon makers, and furniture craftsmen required ‘bends’ and ‘knees,’ as well as other eccentrically shaped pieces.⁶

In contrast to the modern forestry systems of the Continent, the British landed classes relied largely upon a management practice called coppice— with standards that involved partial cutting, regrowth, and subsequent harvest. The traditional systems of forest management in Britain thus catered to a variety of users of wood, ranging from the domestic to the industrial and the naval, while at the same time preserving game. During the second half of the century, however, a new movement began, aimed at totally reorienting British attitudes to woodland management. Initially, the key players were a number of self-appointed advocates who promoted the cause of forestry, while at the same time criticizing, with great rhetorical flourish, the attitudes of the traditionalists who resisted change in forest practices. One such was the prolific John Croumbie Brown, who, having returned from South Africa, wrote in 1884: In Britain, game was the object of preservation, arboriculture the method, the tree the unit, and amenity the priority; whereas, across the channel, the woods are the object of preservation, silviculture the means, the forest collective the unit, and the national economic good, the priority. It is true to abandon tradition and do as the others do.⁷

Similar contrasts between British and continental attitudes continued to be made throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and even in the opening decades of the twentieth. For example, John Simpson wrote in 1908 that the Germans were not burdened by such ‘false sentiments and false aesthetics’. The ‘half-military organization of the German forestry system’, he argued further, helps ‘considerably to promote economy and to avoid waste’.⁸ Meanwhile, the Royal Scottish and the Royal English Arboricultural societies, established respectively in 1854 and 1880 with patronage from ⁵ James Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment, 84. ⁶ Ibid. 87. ⁷ Brown, Introduction to the Story of Modern Forest Economy, 1–2. ⁸ Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault, 88–9.

The Empire Strikes Back

111

some landlords interested in increasing revenue, had sought to modernize British forest management practices. The earlier date of origin of the Scottish society is not accidental. Scotland, which had considerable wastelands, offered landlords opportunities to experiment with new species and methods of increasing revenue. To this end, they fervently strove to set up, among other things, a modern forestry school. As a result of their lobbying efforts, and those of their English counterparts later in the century, a parliamentary special committee was appointed in 1885 to examine the matter. Parliament was dissolved before it could complete its deliberations, but a subsequent committee strongly advocated the setting up of a forestry school in its final report published in 1886.⁹ Despite the fervency of these recommendations, no action was taken by the government to implement them. The only concrete forestry programme established during the late nineteenth century was the one at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill in 1885—and this school was funded by the India Office to service the needs of the Indian government.¹⁰ However, the Cooper’s Hill school received numerous requests from British landowners to send their sons to study there. The empire had begun to strike back. Around the turn of the century, against the backdrop of the growing movement to modernize British woodlands, expatriate colonial foresters, on furlough or retirement, helped guide, train, and co-ordinate the activities of enthusiasts in the mother country. In doing so, their relationship with the ‘amateur’ foresters in Britain was very similar to that between amateurs and professionals in other scientific domains, such as plant ecology, during the late Victorian period. In that context, amateur, but wealthy, science enthusiasts had provided financial and logistical support to trained professional savants, in exchange for formal instruction and a chance to partake in the practice of science.¹¹ In the case of forestry at the turn of the century, the amateurs were often landlords with active, material interests in the scientific management of their woodlands. Foresters from the empire also became sought after as experts by various governmental agencies in Britain. H. C. Hill, a former conservator of forests in India, for example, wrote the working plan for the Forest of Dean in 1897.¹² E. P. Poppert, who like Hill had been conservator of forests in India, became the first consulting forester employed by ⁹ James, A History of English Forestry. ¹⁰ Ibid. 189–93. ¹¹ See e.g. P. D. Lowe, ‘Amateurs and Professionals: The Institutional Emergence of British Plant Ecology’, Journal of the Society of Bibliography of Natural History, 7 (1976), 517–35. ¹² James, A History of English Forestry, 194.

112

The Empire Strikes Back

the Crown.¹³ Sir Wilhelm Schlich, the former inspector-general of forests in India, was, as mentioned in Chapter 3, almost solely responsible for developing the forestry curriculum at the Royal Indian Engineering College where Indian forestry probationers were trained from 1885. Schlich was also instrumental in establishing the influential Oxford forestry school, and lectured widely, advising landowners on forestry matters and preparing working plans for several large estates.¹⁴ With the increasing acceptance of expatriate professionals as experts in the United Kingdom, forestry had metamorphosed from a provincial ‘tool of empire’ in India to a bustling profession, with an active lobby in the metropolis.¹⁵ The growing influence of expatriate foresters also resulted in a paradigm shift in how forest management began to be perceived in Britain. At the outset, ex-colonial forestry experts convinced the landed classes that the system of continental European forestry offered the best method of managing woodlands. Soon, the various working plans of British woodlands, prepared by the experts from the empire, began to resemble their counterparts in France and Germany. Moreover, a number of German forestry texts were translated into English, with the aim of propagating continental forestry practices in the British Isles.¹⁶ By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, continental forestry had begun to gain legitimacy among some important policy makers in Britain. It had also begun to grow roots throughout the colonial world, where forest departments were systematically established. These departments were supported by a network of dedicated forestry training and research institutions, including provincial training colleges for subordinate staff, and the Imperial Forestry Institute at Oxford. Over and above these ‘brick and mortar’ institutions was a pan-colonial venue—the Empire Forestry Conferences. For four decades following the end of the First World War and the beginning of the process of decolonization, the Empire Forestry Conferences literally served as the parliament for the British colonial forestry community. As Appendix 3 indicates, the conferences ¹³ James, A History of English Forestry, 194. ¹⁴ Schlich Papers, IOR MSS. Eur. F/157. See also IOR L/PWD/8/202; L/PWD/8/279. ¹⁵ The term ‘Tool of Empire’ is used in the sense defined by Daniel Headrick in Tools of Empire. ¹⁶ Among the important translators were W. R. Fisher, an assistant professor of forestry at Cooper’s Hill, who translated Der Forstschutz, a book on forest protection by Dr Richard Hess, and Die Forstbenutzung, a book on forest utilization by Dr Karl Gayer. See Schlich’s Manual of Forestry (vols. iv and v). Other significant translators included John Nisbit, professor of forestry at the West of Scotland Agricultural College, Fraser Story, editor of the Empire Forestry Review, E. A. Nobbs, E. E. Fernandez, and A. Smythies. Each of these foresters was a product of the Indian forest service. See James, A History of English Forestry, 195–6.

The Empire Strikes Back

113

periodically brought together the upper echelons of forest departments from every region of the empire. They were the only institutionalized fora in which empire foresters could systematically compare notes, take stock, and collectively plan strategies for scientifically managing the forests of the empire. The conferences also afforded the empire forestry community the opportunity to lobby colonial political establishments for power and control over the shaping of local and regional policies regarding natural resource use. Indeed, given the presence of the leading forestry experts of the empire, they assumed an aura of prestige, and an invitation to host them was seen by many colonial governments as a matter of honour.¹⁷ The conferences, thus, provide an excellent window to observe the big, overarching debates on colonial environmental policy in the first half of the twentieth century. They are ideal sites for gleaning a comparative understanding of the pan-colonial forestry agenda. They are also indicative of the natural resource management priorities of the senior echelons of the empire-wide forestry profession. Besides, they afford a glimpse into the role played by professional scientific communities in the shaping of colonial governance. Broadly speaking, the agenda of the Empire Forestry Conferences may be classified under two categories: forest policy, and forestry science and management.¹⁸The objective of this chapter is to describe systematically the debates that ensued under the policy rubric. It has two parts—the political contexts in which the conference agendas were set, and the actual debates on forest policy. The next chapter will carry forward the discussion by focusing on the debates on forestry science and management at the conferences. 4.2. THE CONTEXTS OF THE EMPIRE FORESTRY CONFERENCES In 1895, Chancellor Bismarck gave the visiting British Prime Minister Gladstone an oak sapling—at first glance, a rather odd present to one head of state from another.¹⁹ Needless to say, the gift was full of symbolism. ¹⁷ See the correspondence between the Standing Committee and the governments of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada (Minutes of the Meetings of the Standing Committee on Empire Forestry, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919– 1 Aug. 1935 and F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May 1945). ¹⁸ I use the term ‘forest policy’ strictly in the way the forestry community used it. The term ‘forestry science and management’, however, is my expression to designate a broad range of activities relating to the science of forest growth and management. ¹⁹ Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 197.

114

The Empire Strikes Back

Prussia prided itself on helping devise many of the practices that constitute modern forest management. Gladstone, on the other hand, was well known as a promoter of tree-felling exhibitions, a British tradition stemming from the view ‘that to cut down trees was to strike a blow for progress.’²⁰ Against this backdrop, the events that unfolded at the Guildhall in London barely two decades after Gladstone’s visit—on 7 July 1920 to be exact—were quite revolutionary. Gathered under one roof, at the heart of the capital, and with governmental sponsorship, were the leading practitioners of scientific forestry in the British Empire, along with a host of senior politicians and civil servants. Their task—to discuss a strategy for the effective conservation of the forests of the British Empire. Two years later, on 25 July 1922, a similar scene was re-enacted, this time in distant Ottawa.²¹ The growing influence of expatriate colonial foresters undoubtedly provides a part of the explanation of this transformation in British attitudes to forestry. However, the timing was a result of a more ‘cosmic’ event—the First World War. The war forced colonial governments, bureaucracies, and politicians seriously to rethink science policy in Britain and the empire. At the same time, it created the perception of a forestry crisis, with important security implications.

4.2.1. Changing Attitudes to Science Policy The opening speeches in both London and Ottawa, delivered by leading politicians and senior civil servants, had one resonant theme—‘the lesson of the First World War’. Speaker after speaker claimed that the war had demonstrated the urgent necessity for taking serious action on colonial forestry. The Lord Mayor of London, while welcoming the first conference, declared that Britain would find itself in ‘dire straits’ unless forestry was given urgent attention.²² Lord Milner, of the Colonial Office, similarly ²⁰ Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 197. See also Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault, 92, where there is a photograph of Gladstone in 1878 admiring a boiler saw at work. ²¹ The first Empire Forestry Conference was held in London from 7 to 23 July 1920. The second Empire Forestry Conference was held in Canada from 25 July to 7 September 1922. The conferences were held subsequently in Australia and New Zealand in 1928, South Africa in 1935, London in 1947, and Canada in 1952. The conferences continue to be held (albeit with the term ‘commonwealth’ substituted for ‘empire’), and constitute one of the biggest international fora for discussion on forestry-related matters. ²² The Lord Mayor of London, ‘Welcome Address to the First British Empire Forestry Conference’, First British Empire Forestry Conference: Proceedings, Statements (London, 1920) (henceforth First Empire Forestry Conference), 1.

The Empire Strikes Back

115

referred to the ‘great shake-up’ of the war.²³ Again, W. L. MacKenzie King, the Prime Minister of Canada, in his speech opening the second conference, emphatically stated that the war had clearly exposed the British ‘weakness and shortcoming’ with regard to forests and forestry.²⁴ To these high-profile speech makers, the ‘forestry crisis’ was a barometer of a wider problem. As early as the turn of the century, there was the perception, in some quarters, that the resources of the empire were languishing and not being systematically put to use to serve imperial ends. Joseph Chamberlain, who was the Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1895 to 1903, for example, had attempted to deploy science and public investment to make more productive the ‘underdeveloped estates’ of the tropical empire.²⁵ Moreover, beginning in 1887, a series of Colonial and Imperial Conferences were organized in a bid toward effecting greater imperial consolidation, although the main thrust of their agendas was defence.²⁶ Imperial consolidation was by no means a matter of consensus. On the contrary, two radically opposed points of view cutting across party lines—those of the laissez-faire free traders and the Imperial Visionaries—jostled to control Britain’s imperial economic policy during the 1920s.²⁷ This was against the backdrop of the perceived weaknesses of Britain relative to its competitors. Indeed, the First World War was being widely interpreted as having demonstrated that Britain was unable to meet its manpower, financial, and economic needs from existing local and imperial resources. In particular, it was seen as having revealed what was described as the ‘empire’s dangerous dependence’ on foreign manufactures and markets.²⁸ During the conflict, Britain found itself critically dependent on countries such as Germany for a range of vital raw materials and ²³ Lord Milner, ibid. 12. ²⁴ W. L. MacKenzie King, ‘Welcome Speech’, Second British Empire Forestry Conference: Proceedings, Statements, Miscellaneous (Ottawa, 1927) (henceforth Second Empire Forestry Conference), 5. ²⁵ Michael Havinden and David Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960 (London, 1993), 70–90. See also Stephen Constantine, ‘Britain and the Empire’, in Stephen Constantine, Maurice W. Kirby, and Mary B. Rose (eds.), The First World War in British History (London, 1995), 254. ²⁶ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 70–114. See also Robert V. Kubicek, The Administration of Imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office (Durham, NC, 1969) and Constantine, ‘Britain and the Empire’, 255. ²⁷ Ian Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919–1939, (London, 1972), 36–88. See also Ian Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy, 1917–1939 (London, 1974), 23–85; and Stephen Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 1914–1940 (London,1984), 9–61. ²⁸ Constantine, ‘Britain and the Empire’, 263.

116

The Empire Strikes Back

synthesized products.²⁹ Moreover, the exclusion of Germany from trade with Britain at the onset of the war had a profound influence upon the economic health of the empire. Prior to the war, a great deal of British colonial exports had been to Germany. All of British West Africa’s huge production of palm kernels, for example, had gone to that country. The war forced the creation of new markets for British colonial products. Agencies such as the Imperial Institute were therefore charged with actively developing new markets in Britain for these products.³⁰ In this context, members of the war governments of the British Empire began to argue that Germany’s dominance in many branches of industry was the result of government-sponsored research and development. They claimed, further, that the concentration there of certain critical sectors of industry had placed Britain at a disadvantage in its war effort. These arguments reinforced the claims of those who, prior to the war, had been advocating state-activated development for both economic and military security. Many specialist and popular periodicals, as well as pressure groups and official inquiries, endorsed this position. In doing so, they launched a vigorous critique of what they regarded as antiquarian anti-science attitudes among certain dominant sections of the British ruling classes. A case in point is an opinion editorial published in the New Statesman on 5 June 1926, which, significantly, found its way into the clippings file of J.H. Oldham, a civil servant, missionary, and a leading advocate of African affairs. The article, entitled ‘Science to the Rescue’, argued, using coal mining as the case in point: We are ‘up against economic facts,’ Lord Grey tells us. The coal costs so much to produce and is worth so much less when it is sold; and to this fact we must yield. There is no answer unless we turn to science, in which our statesmen and economists and capitalists are not interested, having learnt about chemistry at school, once and for all, that its proper name is ‘stinks’ and that a man of science is a bloke, as distinguished from a gentleman.³¹ ²⁹ M Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (London, 1985); C. Barnett, The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (London, 1986); S. Pollard, The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1990 (4th edn. London, 1992); D. S. L. Cardwell, The Organization of Science in England (London, 1957); D. C. Coleman and C. MacLeod, ‘Attitudes to New Techniques: British Businessmen, 1800–1950’, Economic History Review, 39 (1986), 588–611. ³⁰ Charles William Forman, ‘Science for Empire: Britain’s Development of the Empire through Scientific Research, 1895–1940’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1941),’ p. 180–91. See also I. Varcoe, ‘Scientists, Government and Organized Research: The Early History of the DSIR, 1914–16’, Minerva, 8 (1970), 192–217. ³¹ Lens, ‘Science to the Rescue’, New Statesman (5 June 1926), 193. J. H. Oldham Papers, RHO MSS. Afr. S. 1829, Box 1, file 2, fo. 4.

The Empire Strikes Back

117

Having gone on to say that the only solution to the ‘national crisis’ lay in obtaining more value from Britain’s coal through research and development, the editorial launched a barely disguised critique of the Oxbridge orthodoxy: The chemist looks at this cheap and dirty black stuff with fascinated admiration and awe. It is a product of life and is crammed with the inimitable achievements of that master chemist. You may burn it as you might burn the contents of the Bodleian Library, and you will get something out of it accordingly. In either case your fuel is really a priceless collection of manuscripts, ignorantly thought of as merely so much combustible carbon and hydrogen. In such terms, the Bodleian would not fetch many shillings per ton. The scholar who would be aghast in the one case is quite serene in the other, for when it comes to deciphering the natural manuscripts of coal he is quite illiterate, poor fellow. Only the scientific bloke whom we call a chemist—using the same term for those who dispense drugs to doctor’s prescriptions, a significant fact marvelled at by a great German chemist many years ago—only he knows what sacrilegious waste is consummated in the burning of coal. When we contemplate the miners to-day, we see that in such a holocaust we waste not merely the lives of giant ferns of long ago but the life and blood of hosts of men today.³²

Such arguments were reproduced in a variety of fora. The influential, if maverick, botanist and city planner Patrick Geddes, for example, wrote, in a well-publicized and reviewed book produced by the sociological society, that Britain had produced the great pioneers of the new industrial age and: Nor is their type exhausted; our physicists, chemists, mechanicians, and so on are at least holding their own. So the difficulty is not with them, but in that robust immunity to science, and even to its applications, which still characterises our public and its so-called ‘Educated and Governing Classes’ alike; in a word, the Palaeotechnic mind. Such backwardness is, of course, still all too common everywhere; but still with us it is entrenched to a degree which makes us the very wonder of surrounding peoples; not simply of Germans and Americans, but of those we are pleased to think ‘small,’ or even ‘backward’ nations.³³

The weight of such cumulated and orchestrated opinion led eventually to an increased governmental acceptance of economic strategies that contained a role for science—both in Britain and within the imperial realm.³⁴ Significant resolutions in this regard were those of the Imperial War Conference of 1917 and on empire migration in 1918, which ³² Ibid. ³³ Patrick Geddes, in P. Abercroumbie, V. Branford, C. Desch, P. Geddes, C. W. Saleeby, and E. Kilburn Scott, The Coal Crisis and the Future (London, 1926). ³⁴ Constantine, ‘Britain and the Empire’, 263. See also Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 115–39.

118

The Empire Strikes Back

mooted the idea that British and imperial producers needed to be provided with expert scientific assistance.³⁵ In the words of Viscount Milner, the Colonial Secretary at the close of the war, the application of science to the development of colonial resources was the ‘most urgent and vital’ question facing those territories.³⁶ Ultimately, political establishments across the empire, from the Colonial Office and Whitehall to the corridors of power in places such as New Delhi and Pretoria, began to perceive the need to organize and extend scientific research for a more systematic exploitation of the empire’s resources. Support for colonial scientific research was thus seen as being crucially important for the very well-being of the empire. A number of initiatives promoting colonial science were consequently launched and the colonial scientific departments enlarged. Moreover, a systematic study and survey of imperial scientific research was commissioned.³⁷ In the meanwhile, a refurbishment of the British scientific infrastructure got underway. In 1915, an Advisory Council on Scientific and Industrial Research was established. It was composed of eminent scientists and industrialists and held accountable to a small committee of the Privy Council.³⁸ It is important to note here that the Privy Council was composed of present and past holders of high governmental office, together with other persons of distinction. Originally the king’s advisory council, its main business was the transaction of certain formal acts of state. Its leading ministerial member was the Lord President of the Council, who was a senior member of the government with no departmental duties but was available for any job the Prime Minister assigned him. Such an arrangement provided the Advisory Council with a constitutional basis for its existence and a Cabinet minister to look after its interests, while at the same time leaving it free to think and act largely independent of ministerial control.³⁹ In 1916, a separate Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) was created. It was guided by the Advisory Council on Scientific and Industrial Research and operated under the loose supervision of the Lord President and the Privy Council Committee ³⁵ Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919–1939, 143–74. ³⁶ Forman, ‘Science for Empire’, 180–1. ³⁷ Forman, ‘Science for Empire’ 180–1; P. Alter, The Reluctant Patron: Science and the State in Britain, 1850–1920 (Oxford, 1987); D. E. H. Edgerton and S. M. Horrocks, ‘British Industrial Research and Development before 1945’, Economic History Review, 47 (1994), 213–38; and I. Varcoe, Organising for Science in Britain: A Case Study (Oxford, 1974). ³⁸ Philip Gummett, Scientists in Whitehall (Manchester, 1980), 23. See also Alter, The Reluctant Patron, 201–13. ³⁹ Ibid. 23.

The Empire Strikes Back

119

on Scientific and Industrial Research.⁴⁰ An important mandate of the department was to relate its work to the overseas empire, with particular emphasis on improving the supply of tropical raw materials for British industries.⁴¹ A year after the creation of the DSIR, the Dominions Royal Commission, which had been established as early as 1912, filed its report. It advocated the creation of an Imperial Development Board, charged with the task of investigating the production of the needed materials or their substitutes from within the empire. It recommended that the functions of this board be confined exclusively to advising on matters of trade and commerce, without interfering with colonial policy. The goal of the board, it suggested further, ought to be to consider the means for placing the empire in a position that would enable it ‘to be independent of outside control’ with respect to raw materials and commodities essential for its safety and well-being. To this end, it advocated a three-pronged survey to determine the ‘matters of the world’s requirement within the empire, matters of the empire’s requirement produced in the empire and matters of the empire’s requirement produced outside the empire’.⁴² It recommended that the Imperial Institute carry out the necessary research for such a board. Traditionalists in the government sceptical of any Imperial Economic Union resisted the specific proposal to establish such a board, preferring instead to let ad hoc bodies deal with issues. However, the question of state support for colonial scientific research raised by the Dominions Royal Commission was taken up by others, especially the committee headed by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, which was appointed to advise on post-war commercial and industrial policy.⁴³ The Balfour committee recommended that special bodies be constituted to handle the commodities important for the economic development of the empire. It argued that these bodies could gradually grow into the sort of organization proposed by the Dominions Royal Commission. This view was adopted by the government, and, as a result, special organizations, such as the Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau, the Empire Flax Growing Committee, ⁴⁰ Ibid. 24. See also Roy M. MacLeod and E. Kay Andrews, ‘The Origins of the D.S.I.R: Reflections on Ideas and Men, 1915–1916’, Public Administration, 48 (1970), 23–48; Varcoe, ‘Scientists, Government and Organised Research, id. Organising for Science in Britain’. ⁴¹ Forman, ‘Science for Empire’, 195. ⁴² Ibid. ⁴³ Suzann Buckley, ‘The Colonial Office and the Establishment of the Imperial Development Board: The Impact of World War 1’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2/3 (May 1974), 308–17.

120

The Empire Strikes Back

and the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, were established in the early 1920s.⁴⁴ In addition, a Department of Overseas Trade was created and vested with the task of developing foreign as well as imperial trade, in particular with exploring possible markets and sources of raw materials in the colonies. Moreover, in 1926, the Empire Marketing Board was established.⁴⁵ Other governmental initiatives towards supporting colonial scientific research included the appointment in November 1920 of a committee headed by Lord Chalmers to look into the possibility of more co-operation between British universities and colonial research projects. In its report in April 1921, the committee recommended that British universities train more scientists to investigate colonial problems.⁴⁶ In addition to the creation of such institutions, sums were appropriated for scientific research throughout the empire. This was over and above the many existing grants for particular research agencies and bureaux. Money was also set aside at various times for organizations such as the Colonial Research Fund, the East African Guaranteed Loan, the Empire Marketing Grant, and the Colonial Development Fund. Committees were constituted to decide where and how these funds ought to be spent.⁴⁷ Moreover, the dominions too saw the need for treating research in all parts of the empire as one unit. In India, the Indian Board of Scientific Advice, a body composed of the heads of the Indian government’s scientific departments, established direct relations with the DSIR.⁴⁸ Once these new post-war scientific research agencies began functioning, planners in Britain turned their attention to the organization and systematization of the entire research structure. The 1920s were an era when colonial research began to be co-ordinated and organized into a general system of imperial scientific services. Whereas imperial science policy before the war had consisted in unconsciously creating ad hoc bodies for scientific research, as and when the need was felt, the post-war era saw the systematization of these institutions in a deliberate effort to create a unified and effective imperial scientific service. The prevailing economic conditions furthered such an effort. In the five years, 1924–9, the revenue of each colony increased at an average 25 per cent. This meant that more money in the treasuries was available for scientific research ⁴⁴ For a comprehensive discussion of these and other ad hoc measures, see Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 140–59. See also Forman, ‘Science for Empire’, 182. ⁴⁵ Stephen Constantine, Buy and Build: The Advertising Posters of the Empire Marketing Board (London, 1986), 1. ⁴⁶ Forman, ‘Science for Empire’, 179. ⁴⁷ Ibid. 218. ⁴⁸ Ibid. 196.

The Empire Strikes Back

121

and that the colonies could sponsor the creation of bigger scientific departments.⁴⁹ Among the most important efforts of co-ordination in the 1920s was the organization of a series of empire scientific conferences. At the outset, imperial conferences were convened on forestry, entomology, botany, and mycology. Subsequently, conferences began to be organized on a host of other topics, such as cotton- and sugar-growing problems, and agricultural and soil research.⁵⁰ The recommendations of these meetings were supported by the non-scientific conferences of the empire. The Imperial Economic Conference of 1923, for example, passed a resolution favouring greater co-operation in the common scientific and technical problems of the territories. Again, the Imperial Conference of 1926 was the first of the general imperial conferences to consider the organization of research among the primary subjects for discussion.⁵¹

4.2.2. The First World War and Forestry During the second half of the nineteenth century, Britain developed a voracious appetite for overseas timber. Imports trebled between 1864 and 1899, when they amounted to about ten million tons. This was in addition to the imports of softwood for making paper.⁵² By 1914, 93 per cent of wood products on the domestic market were imported.⁵³ By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, Britain was almost exclusively dependent on imported timber, a commodity vitally necessary for the production of weapons, ships, planes, scores of other war industries, the construction of camps and trenches, and coal mining. But perhaps more vitally, shipping space urgently needed for carrying food and military supplies had to be used to import wood. Timber accounted for 11.6 per cent of total imports per annum during the period 1903–13.⁵⁴ When the war broke out, 13 per cent of British tonnage space was being devoted to importing timber, a space equal to that occupied by grains, and larger than the combination of all other food, cotton, and wool imports.⁵⁵ With the onset of the war, large areas of woodland began to be felled in Britain in a desperate effort to reduce imports. Despite this, the shortage ⁴⁹ Ibid. 229. ⁵⁰ Ibid. 230. ⁵¹ Ibid. 251. ⁵² B. W. Clapp, An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1994), 107. ⁵³ Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault, 93. ⁵⁴ Final Report of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Committee on Reconstruction, Cd. 8881/1917–18 (Acland Report), 22. ⁵⁵ Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault, 94.

122

The Empire Strikes Back

was so acute that in 1916 Britain started buying standing forests in France to supply the needs of its army in the field.⁵⁶ Forests were secured in the Jura and in northern and eastern France, and some Canadian lumberjacks were transferred to France to exploit them. In early 1917, a Scottish landowner and forestry advocate, Lord Lovat, was appointed by Lord Derby, the Secretary of State for War, to work the French forests to supply Britain’s war needs.⁵⁷ Lovat, who will figure considerably in this story, was one of the leading landowners to begin experimenting with afforesting the Scottish wastelands.⁵⁸ The fact that Britain faced an acute timber crisis—which was proving a wartime liability—was not lost on many observers. A future member of the Forestry Commission argued that the crisis in the supply of timber almost brought the Allied war effort to a halt in the first half of hostilities. He wrote further: If the French themselves had in the past shewn as little foresight as we have done in the matter of timber, I think it is true to say that the defence of the Western Front would have been impossible, whatever men or guns had been at our disposal.⁵⁹

The war thus resulted in the recognition of the importance of forestry among many in the British elite. This recognition, in turn, led the British government toward initiating a series of policy initiatives. In July 1916, a Sub-Committee on Forestry was set up under Lloyd George’s Reconstruction programme.⁶⁰ This committee was perhaps the most important to be constituted after Campbell Bannerman’s liberal ministry had, in 1909, appointed a Royal Commission on Afforestation and Coastal Erosion and, subsequently a developmental commission to overhaul the administration of Crown forests.⁶¹ Its task was to consider and report ‘upon the best means of conserving and developing the woodland and forestry resources of the UK, having regard to the experience gained during the war’.⁶² The sub-committee was set up under the chairmanship of F. D. Acland, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Agriculture under ⁵⁶ Sir Francis Lindley, Lord Lovat: A Biography (London, 1935), cited in L. F. Goodstadt, ‘The Work and Influence of the Forestry Commission, 1919–1959’ (MA thesis, University of Manchester, 1960), 1. ⁵⁷ Lindley, Lovat, 212–13. ⁵⁸ Ibid. 156–60. ⁵⁹ Sir John M. Stirling Maxwell, ‘Afforestation’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 33 (1917), 103, cited by Goodstadt, ‘The Work and Influence of the Forestry Commission’, 1–2. ⁶⁰ Lindley, Lovat, 252. ⁶¹ Winter, Secure from the Rash Assault, 99. ⁶² Acland Report, 3.

The Empire Strikes Back

123

Lord Selborne. The Acland committee, as it became known, had thirteen other members.⁶³ The core group, however, consisted of Sir Wilhelm Schlich, Sir Roy Robinson, Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, and Lord Lovat. Schlich, was of course, one of the most best-known figures in scientific forestry in the United Kingdom. R. L. Robinson had been head of the Joint Forestry Branches of the Board of Agriculture and the Office of Woods, and had had a distinguished career in Adelaide and Oxford Universities studying pure science and forestry. F. D. Acland had been chairman of the Home Grown Timber Committee, which was set up to reorganize the supply of timber to meet the needs of the war, and had also been secretary to the Board of Agriculture. J. S. Maxwell had pioneered the introduction of methods of establishing trees on land normally considered unplantable. Last, but by no means least, Lord Lovat had for long been interested in rural social problems and linked their solution to afforestation.⁶⁴ The Acland Report, which became in effect the ‘working plan’ of British state forestry until 1945, was largely written by these four gentlemen. Robinson drafted the technical part of the report, Acland, the historical summary and introduction, Maxwell, the land settlement chapter, and Lovat, the general plan outlined in the report. Significantly, the members of the Acland committee had had long personal associations and formed a small cabal of closely knit advocates for the modernization of Britain’s forests. It is therefore noteworthy, but certainly not surprising, that apart from one memorandum from each of the forestry societies, no evidence was taken. The official rationale was that ‘it was felt that sufficient information was already available in previous government reports, in the transactions of the forestry societies and from the practical experience of its members’. The latter is particularly significant, because all four were landowners who, from about the turn of the century, had collectively lobbied for afforestation in Britain, and particularly for a centralized agency to undertake such a charge. For more than a decade, their lobbying efforts had been largely fruitless, having been effectively opposed by a number of powerful individuals. The appointment to the committee, in the context of a national resource crisis, therefore meant an opportunity finally to act upon long-held beliefs. The Acland Report pointed out that less than 8 per cent of the timber consumed in the UK was grown at home. It claimed however that the ⁶³ James, A History of English Forestry, 210. ⁶⁴ Goodstadt, ‘The Work and Influence of the Forestry Commission’, 3–4. See also Lindley, Lovat, 252.

124

The Empire Strikes Back

types of wood most in demand could be obtained from species easily grown in Britain. It stated further that it was practicable to suggest replacing imported wood with that grown in British forests for most of the uses to which timber was put. Moreover, it felt that with increasing consumption abroad and diminishing forests, the UK could not rely on timber imports for its requirements. On the contrary, it could expect to face a severe problem with the development of a crisis in world supply. The report argued further that dependence on imported timber was a grave source of weakness in war and that supplies of timber were precarious even during times of peace, and, for large part, lay outside the empire. It concluded that afforestation would increase the productiveness of large areas of the British Isles, which, it claimed, were then little better than waste. Accordingly, it went on to recommend the establishment of a Forestry Commission in Britain to co-ordinate and oversee the development of forestry in Britain.⁶⁵ The recommendations of the Acland Report were accepted by the government. In addition to being largely uncontroversial, the idea of state afforestation had the initial advantage of the prime minister’s support. Lloyd George, who had been responsible, as the chancellor of the Exchequer, for funds being made available to forestry under the Development and Roads Act of 1909, was a strong public advocate of forestry.⁶⁶ Ultimately therefore, not only did the government accept the report from the Ministry of Reconstruction, it also carried it into law. In November 1918, a Cabinet Minute set up an Interim Forest Authority to undertake the preliminary work which would enable the Forestry Commission swiftly to carry out the Acland Programme once the commission had been set up by the statute. On 29 November 1919, the Forestry Commission came into existence, with Lord Lovat at the helm. Lovat’s first accomplishment was to steer the commission through the threat posed by what later became known as the Geddes axe, named for the Geddes committee on national expenditure, which, among other things, had recommended the abolition of the Forestry Commission. Lovat’s success lay in his ability to enlist the support of his network of friends in the Cabinet, including Edwin Montagu, then secretary of state for India.⁶⁷ The use of similar networks of friends, including Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the Exchequer, and the deft appointment to the commission of members of the Labour Party, enabled Lovat to ensure the ⁶⁵ Goodstadt, ‘The Work and Influence of the Forestry Commission’, 8. ⁶⁶ Ibid. It must be noted here that Lloyd George was an important figure in the governmental support for science during this period. See Alter, The Reluctant Patron, 209. ⁶⁷ Clapp, An Environmental History of Britain, 109; Lindley, Lovat, 255.

The Empire Strikes Back

125

financial survival of the commission through other challenges, such as the change of governments that ensued.⁶⁸ The emergence of the Forestry Commission in Britain, led by a powerful landlord and supported by a network of well-connected elites, meant that foresters, perhaps for the first time, had acquired a degree of political clout.⁶⁹

4.2.3. The Origins of the Empire Forestry Conferences It was during the deliberations of the Interim Forest Authority that the idea of the Empire Forestry Conferences was born. On 14 May 1919, Robson Black, the secretary of the Canadian Forestry Association, wrote to Sir John Stirling Maxwell, who, as mentioned earlier, had served as a member of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee, and subsequently as a member of the Interim Forest Authority and the Board of Trade. In the letter, Black mooted the idea of setting up an Imperial Forestry Association and periodic Empire Forestry Conferences, an idea which, he claimed, his association had discussed with its counterparts in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. He argued that such a forum would help the exchange of information and ideas on colonial forestry, besides helping clear up misconceptions on matters such as the quality and uses of various exportable woods within the empire.⁷⁰ That such a suggestion should have come from the Canadian Forestry Association is hardly surprising, for one of its first accomplishments, in its early years, was the organization of the Canadian Forestry Convention, held in the Railway Committee Room of the Canadian parliament, 10, 11, and 12 January, 1906. At that conference, the then Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Wilfred Laurier, had remarked: A great deal of harm has already been done, harm which I am afraid, in many respects, cannot be recalled. But it is not yet too late, and the harm which we know has taken place is and ought to be an incentive to us to do our best in the endeavour to check it and to give more attention to forestry problems. . . . Our ancestors, when they came to this continent, found it an unbroken forest from the shores of the Atlantic to the Mississippi valley . . . They had to clear their homes from the forest, but instead of attacking the forest with care and tenderness, they looked upon it as an enemy to be got rid of with the axe, with fire, and with every mode of destruction . . . The forest had no friends whatever, because ⁶⁸ Lindley, Lovat, 257–8. ⁶⁹ See also G. B. Ryle, ‘History of the Forestry Commission’, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 459. ⁷⁰ Mr Robson Black, Secretary, Canadian Forestry Association, to Sir John Stirling Maxwell, Board of Trade, Edinburgh, Scotland, 14 May 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935.

126

The Empire Strikes Back

to clear off a few acres of land they would set fire to miles upon miles of the noblest trees that ever lifted their lofty heads to the heavens.⁷¹

Laurier’s remarks were, in part, a reflection of the growing interest in forest management among the British expatriate elite. They were also in keeping with the spirit of the progressivist conservation ideal that had by then gained ascendancy in the United States, and North America more generally. Indeed, present at that conference was none other than Gifford Pinchot, who minced no words in setting out the broad thrust of such an approach to forests and forestry, an unabashedly conservationist, as opposed to preservationist, attitude to nature: Finally, the end and aim of all this work is a very definite one. I have said a hundred times that I have no interest in a forest that is not of use. If our forests are to stand unused there, if all we get out of them is the knowledge that we have them, then, so far as I am concerned, they disappear from my field of interest. I care nothing about them whatever. But use is the end of forest preservation, and the highest use. The great object of this whole movement, as the President has repeatedly said, is the making and maintenance of prosperous homes. Our forest reserves are part of the great equipment of our country for the good of its citizens, and just so far as we use these forests to promote family life, to produce prosperity for the nation, to make and maintain prosperous homes, just so far shall we think ourselves successful.

Such a perspective was attractive to colonial policy makers, some of whom, like the then Canadian governor-general, Earl Grey, had begun to argue, based on personal experience, for more sustainable approaches to the exploitation of forest resources: I have seen myself in India, in Asia Minor, in Greece and in Italy, extensive tracts of territory once inhabited by a strenuous, prosperous, numerous population, and now reduced to the misery of a barren desolation through the unregulated deforestation of their lands by a blind and selfish generation who had no regard for posterity, and no eyes for anything but their own immediate requirements. . . . Gentlemen, there are no more melancholy reflections than those suggested by the sight of a country once rich and equipped with all the majesty and panoply of power, which had become a waste and a stony desert through the reckless improvidence of its own people.⁷²

The proposal to convene an Empire Forestry Conference, then, was an idea whose time had come. But the speed with which the members of the Interim Forest Authority, and the British government, more generally, ⁷¹ Website of the Canadian Forestry Association (www.canadianforestry.com/eng/ history/html/0main.htm). ⁷² Ibid.

The Empire Strikes Back

127

seized upon the proposal was remarkable. Barely a fortnight after Black wrote his letter, the authority accepted his proposal and recommended that it be taken further.⁷³ Needless to say, the enthusiasm of the authority was not surprising, for many of its members had formerly served in the overseas empire, and had evinced strong interest in the state of forests and forestry. On 6 June, replying to a letter from Acland on this issue, the Department of Overseas Trade accepted the idea of convening an Empire Forestry Conference, and deputed W. J. Glenny, the director of the UK Division, to represent it in the proposed organizing committee.⁷⁴ An informal committee was subsequently constituted to discuss the organization of the conference. It consisted initially of the usual suspects—Sir John Stirling Maxwell, Lord Lovat, and Roy Robinson of the Interim Forest Authority, and other forestry enthusiasts: Major Courthope and the Duke of Buccleuch of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, and Glenny.⁷⁵ The committee was subsequently expanded to include representatives from the Timber Supply Department of the Royal English Arboricultural Society.⁷⁶ On 4 July, less than eight weeks after the initial Canadian proposal, a preliminary meeting was held to discuss the idea of the Empire Forestry Conference. In this meeting, the delegates recalled that the Forestry Sub-Committee Report had emphasized the importance of the imperial aspect of forestry. They argued that the idea of the Canadian Forestry Association was seriously worth pursuing and felt that there would be no treasury objection to such an enterprise.⁷⁷ Within less than a fortnight, another meeting was held, this time to plan the proposed conference. The majority of those who attended were the very same people who had actively lobbied for the forestry commission in Britain—Acland who acted as the chairman, Stirling Maxwell, who represented the Timber Supply Department, and Lovat and Robinson who represented the Interim Forest Authority.⁷⁸ In addition to these were Major Courthope representing the Royal English Arboricultural Society, Mr Hart representing the India Office, and Mr Scott the Department of Overseas Trade. ⁷³ Minutes of the 26th Meeting of the Interim Forest Authority, 29 May 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ⁷⁴ Department of Overseas Trade to Miss Baker King, 6 June 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ⁷⁵ R. L Robinson to the Duke of Buccleuch, 1 July 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ⁷⁶ Minutes of the 28th Meeting of the Interim Forest Authority, 3 July 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ⁷⁷ Minutes of the Informal Meeting on the Proposed IFC held in London on 4 July 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ⁷⁸ Minutes of meeting held on 15 July 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935.

128

The Empire Strikes Back

The planning meeting began by discussing logistics. It was decided that the Colonial Office would issue invitations, the Forestry Commission organize the conference, and the treasury fund it. It was resolved, next, to invite all the forest services and societies ‘whose chief job was to promote the welfare of forestry’. These agencies included associations of firms trading in forest products, representatives of forest departments from the different parts of the empire, and eminent individuals who had contributed to empire forestry. The agencies were the Royal English Arboricultural Society, the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, the Land Owners’ Association, the Surveyors’ Institution, the Land Agents’ Society, and the Scottish Factors’ Society; the English and Scottish Timber Federations, the Institute of Scottish Architects, and the Imperial Technical College; the Department of Overseas Trade; the Timber Supply Department; the Board of Trade; the India, Colonial, and War Offices; and the Interim Forest Authority. The individuals invited included representatives from Newfoundland, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, African Crown colonies, other Crown colonies, and certain important individuals, e.g. Sir James Ball and Sir Wilhelm Schlich. In choosing these individuals, care was taken to ensure that members of the conference were in general ‘the officers actually in charge of forest administration in various parts of the Empire’.⁷⁹ The thrust of the planning meeting was, however, on building an agenda for the conference that would enable foresters and other officials to determine what the central management priorities for the imperial forestry estate ought to be. Given the importance of statistical knowledge about the state of forestry resources, it was decided to use the conferences to compile data on the area and types of forest, the variety of species, and their uses. The next agenda item to be finalized concerned patterns in the ownership of forests, and the balance between production and utilization in different parts of the empire. A related set of questions on the agenda were about the nature of the utilization of forest resources—such as the features of trade, imports and exports of timber and wood pulp, and other forest industries. Last, but by no means least, was the question of the logistics of forest management. Important here were the state of forest finance, administration, management, publications, research, education, institutionalization, and standardization. The latter included empire forest legislation, education, the co-ordination and publication of empire forestry literature, ⁷⁹ Minutes of meeting held on 15 July 1919, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935.

The Empire Strikes Back

129

the compilation of annual reports of various forestry departments, and the standardization of methods of experimentation and research. Having set the above agenda, the committee decided to adopt a conference format that included discussions and excursions, and four committees deliberating respectively on resources, utilization, policy, and proposals for action.⁸⁰ In adopting these resolutions, the committee basically endorsed the proposals made by R. L. Robinson in his circular to the committee on 11 July.⁸¹ By 24 February 1920, invitations to the conference had been dispatched.⁸² Four months later, the conference met in London, and after what was seen as a major success, reconvened two years later in Canada. The second conference, which was convened to complete the task the first conference had set out to do, had an agenda similar to the first. Both conferences were chaired by Lord Lovat.

4.2.4. Science, Colonial Development, and Conferences, 1928–1952 If the agendas of the early Empire Forestry Conferences were shaped by the shake-up of the First World War, the context for the subsequent meetings during the inter-war years was provided by the debate over Britain’s ‘mandate’ in the colonies. This debate was, in turn, influenced by the need felt by policy makers to tackle the growing unemployment problem in the United Kingdom in the 1920s. Vocal in the debate was an influential section of the colonial bureaucracy in Britain, including Lord Milner, Leopold Amery, William OrmsbyGore, and J. H. Thomas.⁸³ The Imperial Visionaries, as they became known, believed that an increase in primary production in the tropical dependent empire would result in the growth of the British economy.⁸⁴ Underlying their vision was the idea that the colonial and colonized worlds were complementary to each other. At the Imperial Economic Conference of 1926, for example, Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, stated that ‘one of the most striking features of modern industrial development is the marriage of tropical production to the industrial production of the temperate zone. ⁸⁰ Ibid. ⁸¹ Ibid. ⁸² F. D. Acland, ‘Statement to the Forestry Commission’, Minutes of the Fifth Meeting of the Forestry Commission, 24 Feb. 1920, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ⁸³ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 140. ⁸⁴ Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919–1939, 40. The key officials involved were ‘the Imperial Visionaries’, led initially by Lord Milner and L. S. Amery.

130

The Empire Strikes Back

They are essentially complementary regions, and owing to their character and the character of their inhabitants they are likely to remain so.’⁸⁵ The Imperial Visionaries argued that this complementarity would ensure that colonial development provided a long-term cure for unemployment in Britain.⁸⁶ Similar views began to be expressed in a variety of contexts. To take one example, the Report of the Committee on the Staffing of the Agricultural Departments in the Colonies rationalized its recommendation for an expansion in staffing by arguing that there would be a ‘rich return to the individual colonies in shape of increased revenue and the consequent increase in the supply of raw materials will help restore the financial position of the empire as a whole’.⁸⁷ Such views were contested throughout the 1920s by the treasury, and by several individuals, within and outside the government.⁸⁸ However, in a climate of political despair, with rampant unemployment and societal anxiety, supplemented by labour strikes, the Imperial Visionaries kept hammering home their contention that colonial development was indeed the long-term solution to the woes in Britain. Accordingly, they introduced a bill, the Colonial Development Act, which they defended ‘as a practical step to help both operatives and industry in this country, and at the same time to start a flow of permanent trade by opening up undeveloped countries’.⁸⁹ The amount of money was not large, and the entire project was mired in ad-hoc-ism.⁹⁰ However, the broad outlook persisted through the 1930s and the early 1940s, in the context of the growing shadow of the Great Depression.⁹¹ The Colonial Development Advisory Committee, for example, argued that virtually any development in the colonies—from railways to public health—would help both Britain and the colony itself.⁹² By the 1940s, the concept of colonial development began to be expanded to include the welfare of colonial subjects, in addition to the health of the British economy. In part, this expansion had to do with thwarting the negative propaganda stemming from criticisms abroad, ⁸⁵ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 169. ⁸⁶ Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 189. ⁸⁷ Report of the Committee on the Staffing of the Agricultural Departments in the Colonies (London, 1920), 8–10. ⁸⁸ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, chapter 7. ⁸⁹ Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 189–90. ⁹⁰ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, chapters 8 and 9. ⁹¹ Ibid. chapters 9 and 10. ⁹² This emphasis on indirect benefits to Britain explains why the committee paid relatively little attention to the proportion of their grants to be spent in the UK. Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 167.

The Empire Strikes Back

131

especially in Europe and America, of the British ‘slum empire’.⁹³ There were other reasons too, including worries, within Britain, about the morality of colonialism.⁹⁴ These concerns were compounded by an increasing fear, following the rise of nationalist movements, and the onset of the resource-sapping Second World War, that the survival of the colonial economy and the empire was at stake. An illustration of such fears is the following statement made by the secretary of state in 1940: if we are not now going to do something fairly good for the colonial empire, and something which helps them to get proper social services, we shall deserve to lose the colonies and it will only be a matter of time before we get what we deserve.⁹⁵

Against this backdrop, the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, described by one observer as ‘perhaps the first unselfish act in British Imperial history’, was passed in 1940, and, in the aftermath of the Second World War, new definitions of colonial developmental responsibility began to be articulated in Britain. Among these was the idea of the dual mandate, preserving British imperial interests while promoting a comprehensive policy of ‘progress’, linking economic development with political stability.⁹⁶ The growing governmental commitment to colonial development during the 1930s and the 1940s also translated into the adoption of a deliberate policy of soliciting scientific advice. During this period, the Colonial Office sought to ensure that administrators in the colonial periphery got sound technical advice on various issues, such as resource management, organization, and communication.⁹⁷ Commissions such as Ormsby-Gore (1924), Hilton Young (1928), and the Hailey Survey of 1934–7 emphasized the need for closer co-operation in research between the several territories comprising the regions of Africa, and between the European powers responsible for these regions.⁹⁸ ⁹³ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 202–3. See also Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 260. ⁹⁴ References to the Fabian Colonial Bureau documents, IMP. ⁹⁵ J. M. Lee and M. Petter, The Colonial Office, War and Developmental Policy: Organisation and Planning of a Metropolitan Initiative, 1939–1945 (London, 1982), 40. ⁹⁶ Ibid. 243–56. ⁹⁷ See e.g. Hailey, An African Survey. ⁹⁸ E. B. Worthington, ‘Regional Research in East Africa: A Draft Development Plan’, Aug. 1947, RHO MSS Afr. S. 1425, 4/82, p. 1. For an excellent account of colonial research in Africa and its priorities, see Helen Tilley, ‘Africa as a “Living Laboratory”: The African Research Survey and the British Colonial Empire: Consolidating Environmental, Medical and Anthropological Debates, 1920–1940’ (D. Phil thesis, Oxford, 2001).

132

The Empire Strikes Back

At the same time, British expatriate scientists began systematically to lobby for the recognition of their expertise and for more money to be spent on building cadres of professionals in their respective fields. For some of them, such recognition was crucial in light of what they saw as a strategic competition with the United States, which, they feared, was extending its influence in the tropics by the mid 1940s.⁹⁹ The majority were, however, frustrated by the government’s lack of proactive support for science, as the following comment by E. B. Worthington on science in East Africa illustrates: Everywhere in East Africa, except perhaps in the Groundnut Scheme, there is a feeling of frustration among scientists in more or less degree. This was touched upon in the Heilbron–Simonsen report and is largely caused by uncertainty about the future. Some of the dissatisfaction is concerned with terms of service, but more important is the recognition by many scientists of the magnitude of the problems facing East Africa and the apparent inability of Governments to solve them. The frustration is much less marked among administrative officers and those technical men who are concerned primarily with administrative aspects of their subjects. The prevalent scientific feeling is that, in spite of large talk, science and the scientific viewpoint are not adequately represented in the deliberations of Governments, and there are practically no officers in high places who understand adequately the research workers point of view.¹⁰⁰

An important consequence of the public expression of such views and the intense lobbying within the halls of government was the reorganization of the Colonial Office. Permanent subject advisers to the secretary of state were appointed to provide an effective link between the specialist departments in the colonial governments and professional bodies in the United Kingdom. The personnel appointed as advisers were usually those with a great deal of experience in the field. By 1938, advisers had been appointed in the fields of medicine, agriculture, labour, and law.¹⁰¹ In addition to the appointment of subject advisers, the reorganization of the Colonial Office also involved the creation of departments that specialized in particular subjects and geographical territories.¹⁰² During the 1930s and much of the inter-war years, colonial developmental policy at the centre ⁹⁹ See, e.g., RHO MSS Afr. S. 1425, Worthington 7/3. ¹⁰⁰ Worthington, ‘Regional Research in East Africa: A Draft Development Plan’, Aug. 1947, RHO MSS Afr. S. 1425, 4/82, p. 2. ¹⁰¹ Lee and Petter, The Colonial Office, War and Developmental Policy, 33–5. It is important to note here that by the late 1930s forestry had become an issue of political concern in parliament. See, for example, Question 87 on 22 June 1937 by Mr Parker (RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 332 Box 17, file 2). ¹⁰² Lee and Petter, The Colonial Office, War and Developmental Policy, 33.

The Empire Strikes Back

133

sought to bring together the three elements of the colonial bureaucracy that had hitherto little experience at working together—the geographical departments, the subject departments, and the expert advisers.¹⁰³ The passage of the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts of 1940 and 1945 provided a further fillip to the process of the consolidation of colonial research. To take one example, in East Africa, the Colonial Research Committee in March 1944 proposed a scheme that mooted the creation of an East African Research Council with executive powers and authority to spend money voted for research by the African territories, and from the Colonial Development Fund. Although this particular plan did not meet with a favourable reception at the Colonial Office—even when modified by reducing the executive functions of the proposed council—a number of subsequent visits and conferences cleared the air. In March 1946, a team concerned with agriculture consisting of Sir Frank Engledow, Sir Harold Tempany, and Professor Munro visited East Africa. Subsequent initiatives resulted in definite proposals, some of which were approved. They included those by Professor P. A. Buxton in 1945 on the reorganization of the tsetse fly and trypnosomiasis research; by Professor McSwiney in September 1946 on medical research; by Sir Ian Heilbron and Professor Simonsen in September 1946, on industrial and related research; by Dr Worthington in April 1944 on inland fisheries; by Mr Hickling in July to August 1946 on fisheries generally; by Mr Robertson, December 1946 to February 1947, on forestry; and by Dr Keen, March to July 1947, on agriculture.¹⁰⁴ Meanwhile, the process of science policy planning continued in the territories with the preparation of ten-year development plans, which envisaged specific roles for scientific research to meet colonial development goals. Implicit in these plans was the recognition of the need to nurture scientific agricultural expertise and provide for the envisaged expansion in staffing. The expenditure involved in the provision of such expertise was rationalized by arguing that a ‘rich return to the individual colonies in the shape of increased revenue plus consistent increase in the supply of raw materials will help restore the financial position of the empire as a whole’. For their part, colonial scientists began to press home the argument that science policy could specifically address colonial development, and lobbied for fifty-year plans.¹⁰⁵ In doing so, they contended

¹⁰³ Ibid. ¹⁰⁴ Worthington, ‘Regional Research in East Africa: A Draft Development Plan’, Aug. 1947, RHO MSS Afr. S. 1425, 4/82, p. 2. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid.

134

The Empire Strikes Back

that ‘a wealth of material awaits research and upon the knowledge gained depends the future of East Africa’.¹⁰⁶ This future, they argued, depended on ‘achieving a satisfactory relation between the rates of population increase and production increase, in order to provide an economic basis on which the standard of living in the region as a whole can rise rather than fall’.¹⁰⁷ Such perceptions of the role of science in colonial development were not restricted to East Africa, but fairly widespread across the continent, and the empire at large. It is important to note here that ‘development’ was understood, by most colonial scientists, to connote the eradication of pests and diseases, the provision of adequate nutrition, and the creation of efficient regimes of natural resource management.¹⁰⁸ Colonial foresters did not lag behind their counterparts in the other scientific services when it came to lobbying. As far back as January 1920, E. B. Stebbing, formerly of the Indian forest service, and then head of the Forest School at Edinburgh University, had met with Ralph Furse, the recruiting officer at the Colonial Office.¹⁰⁹ During that meeting, Stebbing pressed hard for the appointment of a scientific adviser to the Colonial Office in forestry. He argued that there was a real need for a central forest adviser based in England who would be able to advise government on the latest in forestry. Stebbing argued further that there was need for better salaries and guaranteed jobs to attract the best students.¹¹⁰ There was a specific reason why Stebbing chose Furse to make such a pitch to the Colonial Office. During the autumn of 1920, in the immediate aftermath of the first Empire Forestry Conference, Furse had been appointed to serve, as the Colonial Office Representative, on the Interdepartmental Committee that had been set up to establish the Imperial Forestry Institute—an appointment that changed his attitude toward forests and forestry. In his own words: To me this episode was a liberal education . . . I could watch the methods of men like Clinton and Lovat, trained in public affairs, politics and business; accustomed to take decisions, to be concise, businesslike, and commonsensical . . . I began to see the importance of forestry, hitherto a closed book to me . . . I dimly ¹⁰⁶ ‘Scientific Facts that Demand Closer Study’, East African Standard (30 Apr. 1948). ¹⁰⁷ Ibid. ¹⁰⁸ See e.g. Sir William Mc Lean, ‘Colonial Development—1940–1955’, Memo number 21 A, Apr. 1955, Fabian Colonial Bureau Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 365, Box 67, file 1. ¹⁰⁹ Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/2, fos. 1–114. ¹¹⁰ Memorandum on the Colonial Forest Service, recording an interview with Professor E. B. Stebbing, Head of the Forest School, Edinburgh University, Jan. 1920 Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/2, fo. 26.

The Empire Strikes Back

135

began to realize, too, the immense possibilities of scientific forestry in the life and economy of many colonies with their huge areas of natural forest, and how little had been done for their conservation and management . . . for the next twenty years . . . I devoted much of my time and energies to nursing and helping the sorely neglected Colonial Forest Departments in ways which often went far outside the scope of my proper duties.¹¹¹

Given this background, Furse was quick to agree with Stebbing. In a memorandum to the Colonial Office, he pointed out that there had in the past been a number of precedents for the appointment of such expert advisers. He referred especially to Wilhelm Schlich, who was appointed in such a capacity by the India Office, Sir David Drain, director of Kew, who had been appointed to the Colonial Agricultural Service, and Sir Francis Watts, to the governments of the West Indies. Last, but by no means least, he concurred with Stebbing’s observation that better salaries and guaranteed jobs were needed in order to attract the best students.¹¹² Furse was not alone in making such a recommendation. In 1920, the Colonial Office appointed an interdepartmental committee on imperial forestry education, which concluded, among other things, that training foresters was a matter of priority.¹¹³ Not long afterward, Furse noted that treasury officers were up to date about the importance of training men and organizing tropical forest products along scientific lines.¹¹⁴ Furse himself held discussions with Col. H. S. Graves of the US forest service, then dean of Yale Forest School, and Professor S. J. Secord, about potential US demands for tropical wood—in a bid to explore the export potential of British colonial forest products.¹¹⁵ Moreover, en route to the third Empire Forestry Conference, Furse stopped in the colonies that lay in the route to Australia and New Zealand in a bid to inventory the state of forests and forestry therein. As a result of lobbying by foresters and their supporters in the Colonial Office, the government began to explore the costs and benefits of extending financial support to the forestry profession. On 12 May 1928, Leopold Amery, then Secretary of State, sent a circular dispatch on forest recruitment from Downing Street to the governments of the Federated ¹¹¹ Ralph Furse, Acuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London, 1962). ¹¹² Memorandum on the Colonial Forest Service, recording an interview with Professor E. B. Stebbing, Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/2, fos. 1–114. ¹¹³ London HM Stationery Office, 1921, Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/3, Item 1. ¹¹⁴ Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/2, fos. 101–6: Notes of Interviews at the Treasury, etc. Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/3, fo. 11. ¹¹⁵ Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 2/1, fos. 1–34.

136

The Empire Strikes Back

and Unfederated Malay States, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda Protectorate, Tanganyika Territory, Nyasaland, British Honduras, British Guiana, Trinidad, Cyprus, Ceylon, Mauritius, Fiji, Northern Rhodesia, and Palestine. The circular asked whether they were willing to pay for new forest officers and their training.¹¹⁶ Amery’s memo was in response to one of the recommendations of the Colonial Office Conference of 1927.¹¹⁷ The Memorandum on Forestry therein, as well as its Summary of Proceedings, had recommended as follows: It was held very desirable that, with a view to securing officers of suitable qualifications, Colonial Governments should endeavour to supply the Colonial Office annually with a minimum estimate of their requirements for five years ahead. Moreover . . . it was urged that it was extremely desirable that Colonies with larger Forest Departments should be willing to absorb between them a few supernumerary probationers from time to time, if and when the estimates of smaller Forest Departments proved in excess of actual requirements. The Conference expressed general agreement in these two recommendations.¹¹⁸

In essence, the argument built on those made by Stebbing in his interlocution with Furse—that the absence of clearly available jobs deterred good candidates from taking up forestry. In addition to recruitment, another major initiative on forestry undertaken by the Colonial Office was the establishment, after much discussion of a recommendation of the second Empire Forestry Conference, of a Standing Committee on Empire Forestry. The first meeting of the Standing Committee was held on 23 February 1926.¹¹⁹ The committee served as an advisory body in the centre by communicating the recommendations made at the periodic Empire Forestry Conferences to the Colonial Office and to governments in the colonial periphery. Its main function was to organize and co-ordinate the conferences. During the period between the First World War and the beginning of the process of decolonization in the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Empire Forestry Conferences, and their mouthpiece at the centre, the Standing Committee, were the single most important source of advice to the Colonial Office, and indeed colonial governments, on forestry matters. The Standing Committee saw the Empire Forestry Conferences, which it helped organize, as proceeding in stages. The agenda of each ¹¹⁶ Circular dispatch from L. S. Amery, Downing Street, to the aforementioned colonial governments, 12 May 1928, Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415. ¹¹⁷ Proceedings of the Colonial Office Conference, 1927, Cmd. 2883. ¹¹⁸ Appendix XV of Cmd. 2884, especially the remarks on p. 172, and the summary of proceedings, p. 62. ¹¹⁹ PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935.

The Empire Strikes Back

137

conference was drawn up consciously to build on that of the one preceding it. By staging the conferences sequentially in different parts of the empire, it hoped to review cyclically the main issues of colonial forestry in specific regions and the empire as a whole.¹²⁰ It was concerned in particular with thoroughly discussing the issues that the empire forestry community held important. The committee therefore collated the various ideas about topics for discussion in the conferences that emerged in other fora in which colonial foresters deliberated on matters concerning empire forestry. In the run-up to the third conference, for example, it drew up a list of issues to be discussed therein on the basis of suggestions received from the Forestry Special Sub-Committee of the Imperial Conference of 1926, the InterState Forestry Conference held in Melbourne in 1927, and the Imperial Institute in London.¹²¹ The committee also attempted to facilitate discussion in the Empire Forestry Conferences by standardizing the manner in which participating foresters were to report on specific issues.¹²² It is important to note that although there was representation from certain governmental agencies—especially the India and the Colonial Offices—the Standing Committee, which formally prepared the conference agendas, consisted largely of professional foresters or established forestry advocates. The first committee, for example, was composed of the usual suspects—Lord Lovat (chairman), Lord Novar, representing the Council of the Empire Forestry Association, R. L. Robinson of the Forestry Commission, Professor R. S. Troup, the director of the Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford, Major Ralph Furse, the recruitment officer of the Colonial Office and a major supporter of colonial forestry, Mr E. J. Turner of the India Office, Fraser Story, formerly of the Indian forestry service and the editor of the Empire Forestry Journal, who served as secretary to the committee, and E. H. Finlayson, the director of the Canadian forest service.¹²³ The composition of the Standing Committee— in the sense of the agencies represented in it—did not change much during the entire period of its existence.¹²⁴ ¹²⁰ Standing Committee files, PRO F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May 1945. ¹²¹ Minutes of the Second Meeting of the Standing Committee on Empire Forestry, held on 8 Feb. 1927, and the Third Meeting held on 15 June 1927, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ¹²² Minutes of the Third meeting of the Standing Committee held on 15 June 1927, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ¹²³ Minutes of the First Meeting of the Standing Committee on Empire Forestry held on 23 Feb. 1926, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935. ¹²⁴ Minutes of the Meetings of the Standing Committee on Empire Forestry, PRO F18/87, 29 May 1919–1 Aug. 1935 and F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May 1945.

138

The Empire Strikes Back

Given the central role played by the Standing Committee in the organization of the Empire Forestry Conferences, it is reasonable to argue that the choice of the agendas therein was made principally by the colonial forestry community and its supporters. Moreover, the manner in which the agendas of the Empire Forestry Conferences were formulated by the Standing Committee reveals a commitment on its part to seek and include the views of the colonial forestry community as a whole. For empire foresters, the high profile of the conferences, and the fact that they were the principal window of colonial governments on matters related to forestry, meant that they were an opportunity to put across their views systematically to colonial governments and the public at large.

4.3. FORESTERS AND COLONIAL FOREST POLICY To return to the opening speeches of the first two conferences, the utterances of foresters and public servants in those fora reflected two distinct attitudes to imperial forestry. For its political patrons, the significance of the first two conferences lay in their potential to address what was now an issue of strategic importance. For them, the conferences had two immediate objectives, to prepare a ‘doomsday book’ of the forest resources of the British Empire as a whole and to begin a process of discussion and debate that would lead to the emergence of strategies adequately to develop and conserve empire forest resources in the long run.¹²⁵ It is important to note here that the Empire Forestry Conferences were afforded the Royal Charter. They were also recognized by the Imperial Conference, 1926, wherein it was also decided, on 19 October 1926, to set up a Forestry Sub-Committee to consider Empire forestry questions and to report to the conference thereon. Significantly, that committee consisted of the usual suspects—Lovat (chairman), J. Stirling Maxwell, R. L. Robinson, and R. S. Troup—in addition to officers representing the treasury, the Dominions Office, the DSIR, the Imperial Institute, the Scottish Board of Agriculture, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland, Canada, New Zealand, India, and the colonies and protectorates.¹²⁶ Not surprisingly, ¹²⁵ Lord Lovat, ‘Opening Address to the First Empire Forestry Conference’, First Empire Forestry Conference, 4. ¹²⁶ Forestry Sub-Committee Report, Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 2/8 Item 1, p. 1.

The Empire Strikes Back

139

it noted that there was a consensus that the ‘outlook with regard to the world’s supply of softwoods’, as well as hardwoods, was ‘distinctly unsatisfactory’.¹²⁷ It argued, further, that ‘there are few subjects concerning the general well-being of individual parts of the Empire, and of the Empire as a whole, which require more earnest consideration by Statesmen than this subject of the rational use and development of forests’.¹²⁸ The committee recommended that Australia and New Zealand be the site for the third Empire Forestry Conference in 1928. It drew up a desired agenda and a pro forma of the kinds of personnel it felt should attend.¹²⁹ Next, it passed a resolution on empire settlement, urging the development of ‘schemes of settlement in connection with state forestry and afforestation, or of developing adequate afforestation schemes in existing agricultural areas’.¹³⁰ Last, but by no means least, the committee argued for the creation of an Imperial Forestry Bureau and the consolidation of Empire forest products research.¹³¹ The ready acceptance of the proposals made by the Interim Forestry Authority by the government is thus indicative of its increasing willingness to solicit and heed expert scientific opinion. Indeed, at the very time it agreed to convene the conferences, the government reacted favourably to Stebbing’s aforementioned proposal to serve as a central forest adviser based in England.¹³² For the members of the British and imperial forestry community, this new governmental attitude to scientific advice meant a chance to promote and legitimize their perspective on how colonial forests were to be best managed. To this end they adopted a pragmatic and forward-sounding slogan—Prospice, Perspice—for the Empire Forestry Association.¹³³ At the same time, they sought to discredit the attitudes toward forests that they perceived as being held by civil servants and administrators in Britain and the empire. The Opening Address to the first conference by Lord Lovat, then chairman of the Forestry Commission of Britain, is a good example of the latter motive. Lovat stated bluntly that Britain was ‘the least interested of all nations in forestry science’ but, ‘of all nations, the most effective in the destruction of forest resources’. It was the last European ¹²⁷ Ibid. 2 ¹²⁸ Ibid. ¹²⁹ Ibid. ¹³⁰ Ibid. ¹³¹ Ibid., Item 1. See appendix IV, which details the work being done in this regard across the empire during the period 1923–6. ¹³² Memorandum on the Colonial Forest Service, recording an interview with Professor. E. B. Stebbing, Furse Papers, RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 415, Box 1/2, fo. 26. ¹³³ ‘Prospice’ is the Latin imperative of prospicio, which means ‘to look forward, look ahead’. ‘Perspice’, similarly, means ‘look to the future’.

140

The Empire Strikes Back

state to adopt a forest policy. It had the smallest area of state forest in Europe, the least area of wood per head of population, and, with one exception, the most poorly wooded country in proportion to area of land. Lovat argued that this ‘attitude of indifference’ with regard to forestry was peculiarly Anglo-Saxon and that it was ‘not local or periodical’ but a ‘permanent and racial’ characteristic. He argued further that whereas in the Middle Ages forestry laws on the Continent were being built up on national and constructive lines, forest laws in Britain had been based on ‘injustice, cruelty and repression’. It is important to point out here that Lovat, as a landlord, was unusual in that he apparently took considerable interest in the welfare of the crofters on his estate.¹³⁴ Lovat went on to claim that the British were ‘at heart forest vandals who look on all woodlands as their prey’, and that it was such a mindset that resulted in the ‘careless, indifferent and wasteful’ attitudes to forests adopted by British officials in Britain and the empire and consequently, in forestry in parts of the world occupied by Britain being ‘haphazard and unsatisfactory’.¹³⁵ It is plausible to argue that in making such a bold statement, Lovat was perhaps venting his frustration at attitudes he had generally encountered among the British elite throughout his long career as a forestry advocate. At the core of the alternative framework being articulated by Lovat and his colleagues was a commitment to a particular paradigm of forest resource development and conservation—whose origins lay in continental Europe. Forests, in this view, were ‘grown for use and not for mere ornament . . . Forests are national assets only so far as they supply the raw material for industrial development.’¹³⁶ This paradigm, reminiscent of that advanced by Gifford Pinchot in the United States, was articulated explicitly in the first conference by R. S. Troup, a former Indian forest service officer and then the professor of forestry at Oxford. Troup began by sketching a linear model of the development of human relationship with forests, arguing that the human–forest interaction in civilized societies usually went through three distinct phases—destruction, conservation, and economic management.¹³⁷ Conservation was a ‘wise and necessary measure’ but it was ‘only a stage towards the problem of how best to utilise the forest resources of the empire’. The ultimate ideal was economic management, ¹³⁴ Lindley, Lovat, 153–65. ¹³⁵ Lord Lovat, ‘Opening Address to the First Empire Forestry Conference’, First Empire Forestry Conference, 3–5. ¹³⁶ Sir Mayson H. Beeton, ibid. 185. ¹³⁷ Prof. R. S. Troup, ibid. 136.

The Empire Strikes Back

141

epitomized by working plans, which regarded forests as capital assets, fixed annual yields in such a manner as to exploit ‘to the full the interest on this capital without encroaching on the capital itself ’, and aimed for equal annual yields so as to stabilize the market and provide regular supplies of timber to industry. Anything removed was to be made good by regeneration.¹³⁸ Such attitudes, as argued in Chapter 2, had their roots in continental Europe in the eighteenth century. They were also part of a wider world view of forestry professionals internationally during the period of the first two conferences.¹³⁹ It was a mindset that regarded forestry as a tool to provide resources for global industrialization. These new attitudes dovetailed well with the objectives of the political patrons of imperial forestry. For the participating foresters, the deliberations of the first two conferences thus assumed an important strategic significance. They afforded a chance to drive home the imperial importance of forestry to their political bosses, in a context in which the latter were receptive to hearing about ideas to boost the British economy via colonial development and trade. They also afforded an opportunity to take the first step towards producing a master plan for the development and optimal use of empire forest resources. Although the colonial forestry community had several practical issues to discuss relating to the physical management of forests and their ecologies, a great deal of time in the conferences was spent on the question of how to gain effective control over the imperial forest estate. The concern over the domain of jurisdiction stemmed from the perception that foresters on the ground had limited authority, especially when their policies had the potential to stir anti-government sentiments among local populations.¹⁴⁰ This limited authority was further exacerbated by the fact that foresters were subordinate to the more prestigious civil services, who, in addition to yielding power and making the big decisions over colonial land use, also enjoyed better salaries and benefits. Both these grievances, to recall the previous chapter, had a long history, going back to the early days of institutionalized forestry in British India. The Empire Forestry Conferences thus offered an opportunity to vent these frustrations and to lobby for better conditions for work. ¹³⁸ Ibid. 137–8. It is interesting to note that similar views were held on the ground. See e.g. the diaries of A. J. Argyle, assistant conservator of forests in Malaya (RHO MSS. Ind. Ocn. S. 168 1–3). See also Chipp’s notes and diaries—which show how strongly conservation was related to economic considerations (RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 311). ¹³⁹ See e.g. Fernow, A Brief History of Forestry. ¹⁴⁰ Such perceptions had a long genealogy. See Chapter 3 for a description of similar views in the context of British India during the Victorian era.

142

The Empire Strikes Back

4.3.1. Forest Policy at the Empire Forestry Conferences The conviction that forest use must be controlled and regulated by the state was a core belief held by the British colonial forestry community virtually from the onset of scientific forestry in India. As forest departments were set up in different parts of the empire, the question of authority—the issue of the agency most suited to manage forests—was among the first issues raised by foresters. Yet, although non-foresters in colonial establishments, especially civil administrators, increasingly accepted the need for scientific forestry, they did not delegate the kind of comprehensive authority sought by the foresters. For them, forest management was only one element of the wider problem of colonial land use, and the demands of the empire forestry community had to be balanced against those of others, such as agriculturists and agricultural officers.¹⁴¹ The discussion on the question of control in the first and second conferences arose against this backdrop. The context was identified by a number of speakers. The deposition of Edward Battiscombe, the East African representative, is an example. Battiscombe argued that the apathy of the government, the antagonism of white settlers, and lack of propaganda meant that there was virtually no continuous forest policy in British East Africa. The government, with its concern to ‘develop the country’, was committed to giving out as much land as possible to potential developers. The settlers, in turn, could not see why the forests should not be felled. Indeed, they often demanded commercial reasons to refrain from cutting down the forests under their control: We set out to know all about forests and we frequently come up against the settlers. We boast as authorities, naturally, and they frequently argue, ‘How can you be authorities when you can not tell me how much money I can get out of a certain forest?’¹⁴²

To compound such conflicts, there was no provision in the Forest Act for any policy at all. A change in a governor therefore meant a change in policy. The Malayan representative gave a somewhat similar story. He claimed that, as with East Africa, there was a lack of definite policy. On the contrary, there was a ‘casual parochialism’, each resident wishing to develop the state to generate the biggest revenue. Again, because the people did not know why there was a forest department and what its policy was, they ¹⁴¹ See the discussion in Chapter 3. ¹⁴² E. Battiscombe, First Empire Forestry Conference, 9, 70.

The Empire Strikes Back

143

resisted interference, which ‘naturally’ arose when land was reserved. Moreover, the civil officers of the government did not have a clear understanding of why there was a forest department. There was in fact a feeling among the civil service that the forest department were land grabbers. Besides, forest officers were themselves unaware what the priorities were. There was, for example, confusion on questions such as whether the primary productive species to be planted ought to be rubber or timber, and what the target for exploitation should be.¹⁴³ The discussion on the issue of the need for state-controlled forestry was driven by one basic ideal—of a co-ordinated and continuous forest policy, a policy that thought in the long term, and which was willing to take risks and make investments for the future. According to this belief, only the state, and in particular state foresters, had the responsibility and the commitment to implement this vision. The debate on the question of control in the first and second Empire Forestry Conferences enabled the participating colonial foresters to use their credibility as experts to reiterate this vision, and forcefully argue for it. During the course of the debate, three issues came up: the question of why the state must take responsibility for forest policy; the question of the material conditions needed to realize the ideal of state forestry; and the issue of the mode of state intervention.

Why State Forestry? The argument for state forestry was made clearly by P. H. Clutterbuck, a forester from India, who initiated the debate on the issue of state and forests. Clutterbuck began by arguing that the state must take responsibility for forest policy. State forestry would ensure that, once reserved, no forest could be cut down without the most careful scrutiny and the most valid reasons. State involvement in the making of forest policy would also mean that forest products would be better exploited. This would be so because the state was the only agency that could take the risks involved in introducing new forest products. The Indian experience was testimony to the utility and importance of a forest policy directed by the state. Had it not been for state action in India, he said: extensive tracts of valuable forest land would have been converted into worthless waste land, and in place of a forest property of almost unlimited potential value we should now possess nothing but the degraded remnants of what was once a magnificent heritage.¹⁴⁴ ¹⁴³ G. E. Cubitt, ibid. 72.

¹⁴⁴ P. H. Clutterbuck, ibid. 65.

144

The Empire Strikes Back

Moreover, whereas in the past the Indian state did not give funds to the forest department for the barest necessities, it now looked upon forest development as a highly profitable investment. Indeed, rational forest policy in India had produced a huge financial surplus.¹⁴⁵ The broad perspective articulated by Clutterbuck was given greater shape by Wilhelm Schlich, who argued that state control on forests was also needed to secure against timber scarcity and famine. Drawing upon history, he argued, further, that other attempts to do this, such as private agency, had failed. The state was needed also to determine how much was to be produced and to ensure that the projected goals were translated into reality. Moreover, the state was needed to limit the action of the private individual and further the interests of the proprietors of the forests.

The Conditions for State Forestry All the foresters who took part in the discussion reiterated the views expressed by Clutterbuck and Schlich. Their overarching concern, however, was the question of how to realize the ideal of a co-ordinated state forest policy. First, there was the question of how to induce the governments of various states to constitute forest authorities and, more importantly, to heed their advice on forest policy. Indeed, as late as 1920, many parts of the empire did not have a state forestry agency.¹⁴⁶ Besides, there was the issue of how to change the perspectives of officials from the political administrations, including those who were otherwise broadly sympathetic with forestry, but who had some reservations on this issue. It was argued that such officials were worried about potential conflicts for colonial administrations consequent to jurisdictional disputes between foresters and civil servants. One such potential conflict concerned the question of how to arbitrate between differing expert scientific advice that would stem from such authority. As W. D. Ellis, the Colonial Office representative to the first Empire Forestry Conference, put it: Twenty-five years ago you sent out a sensible man, and he worked by rule of thumb . . . but various branches of science now have a great deal to say to government, and you are confronted on all sides with experts in medicine, in agriculture, in forestry, and a number of other sciences. But then unfortunately he finds that the experts on different subjects do not agree . . . so the Governor finds himself in danger of being torn into pieces by wild experts, and he sends an appeal to the Colonial Office, and then the Colonial Office has to scratch its head and think what is to be done.¹⁴⁷ ¹⁴⁵ Clutterbuck, First Empire Forestry Conference, 64–5. ¹⁴⁶ C. E. Lane-Poole, ibid. 75. ¹⁴⁷ W. D. Ellis, ibid. 73.

The Empire Strikes Back

145

Ellis stated, however, that there was a need to set up an expert committee of foresters at the Colonial Office who could arbitrate and maintain continuity of policy. While falling short of an affirmation of the stand taken by the foresters in this debate, Ellis’s statement did reinforce demands that had been made previously by foresters such as Stebbing, who, as mentioned earlier, had lobbied for exactly this in his correspondence with Ralph Furse.¹⁴⁸ A second aspect of the issue of realizing a co-ordinated state forest policy was the question of the status of foresters. In a lighter vein, the problem was reminiscent of the plight of the character James Florey—a timber merchant who found himself at the bottom of the social hierarchy in an English club in an outpost in Burma in George Orwell’s Burmese Days:¹⁴⁹ generally speaking, in an oriental country, where everybody’s cook knows his master’s salary, salary and status are the same and the small and salaried official is not in the same position as those with the larger salaries. Incidentally, the small salaried official does not get a good cook.¹⁵⁰

In reality the problem was not just of salaries, but of the status of foresters within the civil service hierarchy. Other issues included the question of funds to implement forestry agendas and of political power to ensure the adoption of these agendas.

The Mode of State Forestry Schlich articulated the dominant perspective on the question of the mode of state involvement and intervention. The state, according to this view, ought to select areas and to declare them a reserve forest and not allow the people to go inside. Unless this is done the reservation has no meaning. To proceed to select the permanent state forest is the first and foremost duty of a Government with regard to forestry.¹⁵¹

Schlich argued that such a coercive approach to forest management was not only necessary, but imperative, and that it was a responsibility of the state. He argued further that since the state alone could determine what areas were required, it ought to enact forest laws to lay down certain guidelines which ought to govern forest use. The Indian Forest Act of 1878 was an example: it determined land use and regulations for utilization, ¹⁴⁸ Ibid. ¹⁴⁹ See e.g. George Orwell, Burmese Days: A Novel (London: Penguin, 2001). ¹⁵⁰ Cubitt, First Empire Forestry Conference, 188. ¹⁵¹ Ibid. 69.

146

The Empire Strikes Back

gave the state power to acquire land for forestry, and provided for the formation of a fixed and sufficient staff to manage the areas which had been declared state forests. Schlich stated that every part of the empire ‘must do the same thing’.¹⁵² Such an outlook had many supporters, particularly foresters representing Asian and African parts of the empire, who, spurred on by attitudes about race stemming from the Victorian era or earlier, claimed repeatedly that prudent policy involved the imposition of state control, as opposed to democracy, consultation, or propaganda. The statement of Mr Thompson, the representative from West Africa, is a case in point. Propaganda is a thing that takes a long time to establish . . . in places like that where the people are not civilised enough to understand the situation, the Government should take it under their control more than they do at present.¹⁵³

The Malayan representative, Mr Cubitt, made a similar comment: ‘the people are inarticulate; there is no question of co-operation with the people.’¹⁵⁴ Nor surprisingly, foresters representing white settler regions like Canada took a slightly different position on the issue of the mode of state forestry. Unlike parts of Asia or Africa, settler societies such as Canada had a political context that did not allow a coercive approach to forest management. If anything, conditions in Canada were closer to that in the USA, where foresters had since the 1880s adopted a complex strategy including education, propaganda, and careful lobbying. C. Leavitt, who represented the Canadian forest department, thus argued that in such a context, education and propaganda were the best way of realizing statist objectives,¹⁵⁵ a point that his compatriot Ellwood Wilson made eloquently: ‘co-operation, rather than coercion, is the best way for a state controlled forest department to deal with the people . . . Education of people in all walks of life is important, and is the basis for reform and progress.’¹⁵⁶ The concluding statement by the chairman of the session, R. L. Robinson, effectively summarized the discussion and set the tone for the resolutions that were to follow. He argued that forests were national assets and a state held its forests ‘not as an absolute property which it can dispose of at will, but as a trust, and it is only when the conditions of the trust have been formulated that rational forest management becomes possible’.¹⁵⁷ The conditions of this trust were laid down explicitly in the ¹⁵² Sir William Schlich, ibid. 68. ¹⁵³ H. M. Thompson, ibid. 81. ¹⁵⁴ Cubitt, ibid. 72. ¹⁵⁵ C. Leavitt, ibid. 7 ¹⁵⁶ Ellwood Wilson, ibid. 66. ¹⁵⁷ R. L. Robinson, ibid. 82.

The Empire Strikes Back

147

resolutions adopted by the conferences. The first, on forest policy, stated that the empire as a whole and individual governments had both a stake and a responsibility to lay down a definite forest policy. The stake was sustained yield of all classes of timber, the economic utilization of timber and other forest products, and maintaining and improving climatic conditions. The responsibility was to establish a ‘properly constituted and adequate forest service’.¹⁵⁸ The second resolution, on constitution and status, went into more detail. It began by emphasizing the need to secure elements of stability in the constitution of forest policy. It argued that where it had not been done already, a forest policy ought to be spelled out clearly in a forestry Act or ordinance. This Act, it stated, ought to provide for the reservation of land primarily suited for forestry for the purpose of economic management and development and provide an assurance of funds to the forest authority sufficient to carry out the accepted policy for a number of years. Further, it ought to grant to members of the forest service the status of civil servants with provision for pension; provide for the appointment as the chief officers of the forest service persons having a high standard of training in forestry; appoint senior officers to advise governments on forest policy; and ensure that the advice they provided was adopted.¹⁵⁹ The third resolution was about publicity. It stated that it was the duty of the forest authority in every part of the empire to adopt methods of education and publicity in order to inform people about the aims of forest policy and to ‘induce’ them to ‘co-operate towards its successful fulfilment’.¹⁶⁰

The Forest Policy Debate in the Subsequent Conferences The broad tenor of the forest policy debate of the first two conferences was continued in the subsequent meetings. However, although the issue of forest policy was discussed at every Empire Forestry Conference, it was the third and fourth conferences (1928 and 1935) that saw the greatest degree of engaged debate. The premiss of this debate was the ‘forestry creed’, adopted by consensus. The creed, first proposed by Lord Robinson, one of the chief advocates of forestry in the United Kingdom, had four essential elements. First, it defined the object of forest policy as being sustained yield and economic utilization. Secondly, it emphasized systematic data collection, on the assumption that stable forest policies could be founded only on ¹⁵⁸ Resolutions, ibid. 215; Second Empire Forestry Conference, 369. ¹⁵⁹ Resolutions, First Empire Forestry Conference, 217; Second Empire Forestry Conference, 369. ¹⁶⁰ Resolutions, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 369.

148

The Empire Strikes Back

sound information about the nature and extent of available resources. Thirdly, it subsumed under the rubric ‘Constitution and Status’ three issues: the definition of a forest policy in an act of legislation; the reservation of land for forestry purposes (including the classification, demarcation, and definite dedication of land); and an assurance of finance for forestry by the state. Fourthly, the forest creed highlighted the importance of professionalization: members of the forestry profession had to be recruited on the basis of technical merit, trained in professional forestry institutions, and provided with security of tenure and status equivalent to civil servants.¹⁶¹ Empire foresters unanimously ratified their commitment to the forestry creed at every conference.¹⁶² However, the inter-war years posed a challenge. The changing political contexts in the empire had begun to thwart the implementation of their ‘creed’. One of these contexts was the increasing tendency towards provincial devolution—the transfer of administrative control to individual states or provinces. The impact of such measures on forestry was the creation of provincial forest departments with independent forest policies. This meant that there was increasingly less co-ordination between different provinces on forest policy matters. The fragmentation of forest departments also meant that, being smaller, they were much more at the mercy of the whims of individual provincial governments. The foresters at the Empire Forestry Conferences testified that this state of affairs prevailed in nearly all parts of the empire, with South Africa being almost the sole important exception.¹⁶³ For empire foresters, the fragmentation of their departments meant that the basic principle of their ‘creed’—total control over decision making on forestry matters—was therefore becoming unrealizable on the field. As one forester speaking at the fourth conference put it: However ardently foresters may desire the powers of a dictator for putting their world to rights they are not going to get and hold those powers. In other words they are not going to get what they want. In any event, Parliament with its machinery and safeguards is or tends to become even in the most backward parts of the Empire the ultimate authority in all matters. It can make and unmake the forester at will.¹⁶⁴ ¹⁶¹ Lord Robinson, The Third Empire Forestry Conference: Proceedings, Resolutions and Statements (n.p, 1928), 84. ¹⁶² ‘Resolutions’, ibid. 236–8; The Fourth Empire Forestry Conference: Proceedings, Resolutions, Statements (n.p., 1935), 356; The Fifth Empire Forestry Conference: Proceedings, Resolutions, Statements (London, 1947), 264–5; The Sixth Commonwealth Forestry Conference Proceedings, Resolutions, Statements (n.p., 1952), 354–61. ¹⁶³ Roy Robinson, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 86. ¹⁶⁴ Ibid.

The Empire Strikes Back

149

The process of subordination and, often, loss of authority over forest reserves resulted in a great deal of frustration among the empire forestry community.¹⁶⁵ In some cases, foresters felt so defeated that they resorted to suicide.¹⁶⁶ Another issue that began to loom large in forest policy discussions in the conferences, especially in the fourth (1935), was the Great Depression. Significantly, the conferences themselves were hit hard by the depression. The South African meeting, for example, had been postponed from 1933 to 1935, and after considerable correspondence between October 1938 and July 1939, India agreed to host the conferences on the condition that they were restricted to Dehra Dun and held for only thirty days.¹⁶⁷ It is important to note here that although the impact of the Depression on colonial conservation policies has become a topic of historical research recently, this body of literature has tended to concentrate on the policies of environmental management that emerged in response, as opposed to the consequences of the Depression for the colonial forestry community and its institutions.¹⁶⁸ That this historiographical gap is significant is indicated by the plethora of editorial comments and articles by foresters during the period bemoaning an increasing governmental lack of interest in forestry and proposing ways of countering it.¹⁶⁹ The debate in the fourth Empire Forestry Conference reflected precisely such a concern amongst the colonial forestry community. The premiss underlying the debate was that forestry had been among the colonial agencies to be hit the hardest in the wake of governmental cutbacks. As Roy Robinson, who gave the keynote address on forest policy at the fourth conference, put it: the great economic depression hit forestry very hard. The first reaction of almost all Governments was to cut appropriations all around. In the case of Forest ¹⁶⁵ For a good discussion of the impact of provincial devolution, albeit in one case, that of Canada, see Gabrielle Blais, ‘The Archival Legacy of the Canadian Forestry Service’, Journal of Forest History, 32/3 (July 1988), 150–6. ¹⁶⁶ A notable example of an important official who committed suicide was E. H. Finlayson, the head of the Canadian forestry service and a key player in the first four Empire Forestry Conferences. See R. Peter Gillis, ‘Ernest Herbert Finlayson and Canadian Forestry, 1912–1936’, unpublished MS. ¹⁶⁷ Standing Committee on Empire Forestry: minutes of meetings, PRO F18/201, 8 Aug. 1943–7 May 1945. ¹⁶⁸ See e.g. D. Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought: The Colonial State and Soil Conservation in East Africa during the 1930s’, African Affairs, 83/332 (1984). ¹⁶⁹ See, for example, almost any issue of the Empire Forestry Journal during this period. See especially Sir Roy L. Robinson, ‘Foresters and the Economic Crisis’, Empire

150

The Empire Strikes Back

Services trained foresters were dismissed, the scale of operations was reduced, carefully thought out projects were arrested in mid-career and so on.¹⁷⁰

Another important issue of contention in the debates over the question of control during the forest policy deliberations of the third and fourth conferences was the subsumption of forest departments under agriculture departments for administrative purposes in some parts of the empire. Foresters argued that such a step was a major mistake. In the Cape Colony, for example, they pointed out, although the forest department was to have been run by senior officials of the agricultural department, senior agricultural officers often subdelegated forestry issues to subordinates. As a result, senior men in the forest department were given instructions by junior members of the agricultural department. Moreover, when agricultural departments faced budgetary problems, the first sections to suffer financially were those that dealt with forestry.¹⁷¹ In emphasizing the need to separate administratively the forestry and agricultural departments, foresters pointed out that the chief reason for the success of Indian forestry was that it had had an independent forest department from the outset.¹⁷² Colonial foresters began to see in tendencies such as provincial devolution, the subordination of forestry under agriculture, and the response of governments to the Depression a drastic erosion of the cardinal principle of their ‘forestry creed’, which demanded a strong governmental commitment to give them control over the management of forests. The colonial forestry community therefore used the Empire Forestry Conferences to mount a fervent campaign to retain control over forested lands.¹⁷³ The starting point of their campaign was a strong and collective reaffirmation of their creed. In the third conference, for example, foresters urged that central governments, where they existed, ought to ‘exercise a considerable measure of control’ over the local governments on certain matters, especially the ‘matters of vital significance’, such as broad policy, legislation, and working plans. They argued further that the question of forests must lie outside the range of party politics, as it was ‘a national, as Forestry Journal, 10 (1931), 180–1; Editorial, ‘Forestry and Economy Cuts’, Empire Forestry Journal, 11/2 (1932), 187; Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, ‘Forestry and National Economy’, Empire Forestry Journal, 11/2 (1932), 15–17; and Editorial, ‘Further “Cuts” in Forestry’, Empire Forestry Journal, 12/1 (1933), 1–2. ¹⁷⁰ Sir Roy Robinson, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 85. ¹⁷¹ C. E. Legat, ibid. 83. ¹⁷² P. H. Clutterbuck and W. W. Gay, ibid. ¹⁷³ See, for example, the statements of Trevor, Lane Poole, Finlayson, Keet, Kain, and Galbraith at the fourth Empire Forestry Conference (Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 333–41).

The Empire Strikes Back

151

opposed to a provincial or parochial concern’.¹⁷⁴ Moreover, they resolved that it was of paramount importance for central governments to lay down and adhere to a definite and permanent general policy and that it was the task of central governments to exercise control over legislation, management, and the alienation of land dedicated to forestry, in addition to providing for research and the training and recruitment of superior staff.¹⁷⁵ The fourth conference saw similar sentiments being expressed.¹⁷⁶ In addition to making such demands, the colonial forestry community sought to develop greater cohesion and, thereby, bargaining power. One leading forester thus stated: I do not wish to appear to stress unduly the suggestion that forest policy is a battlefield between politicians and foresters. To do so would be contrary to my whole theme. But I do make the point that unless there is agreement between foresters as to what they want, that unless they present a united front the fight is inevitably lost before it is even joined. There cannot be complete agreement among foresters on technical points any more than there can be complete agreement among experts in other walks of life, but there can be complete loyalty to the cause of forestry, there can be broadmindedness and there can be determination to work together at all hazards.¹⁷⁷

Empire foresters also sought to gain greater visibility as a way of gaining a political base for their policies and priorities. The keyword used was ‘propaganda’. Forest departments across the empire were directed to reach out to the public using a multi-media campaign, on the model of the Canadian forest department’s campaign of the 1920s.¹⁷⁸ At the Empire Forestry Conferences, foresters themselves were encouraged to ‘make friends’—‘not just write memoranda but follow up through personal contacts’.¹⁷⁹ Underlying such advice and directives was a belief in the politics of lobbying. Engaging in ‘consistent and honest’ propaganda, advocates of this approach argued, would be the best tactic to get their policies adopted: The great depression has shown that above all things there can, under democratic government, be no absolute security in the finance of forestry undertakings. If the ¹⁷⁴ R. D. Richmond, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 75–6. See also the statements of Lord Clinton, Lane Poole, Ralph Furse, Ghent, Cubitt, Grant, Howard, Legat, and Clutterbuck (pp. 74–84). ¹⁷⁵ ‘Resolutions’, ibid. 236–8. ¹⁷⁶ Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 84–9, 333–8. ¹⁷⁷ Roy Robinson, ibid. 87. Such sentiments were echoed by other foresters. See, for example, the statements of Trevor and Finlayson during the same debate. ¹⁷⁸ See ‘Canada’s Forests and Forest Propaganda’, Empire Forestry Journal, 2 (1922), 164–5. ¹⁷⁹ Roy Robinson, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 87–8.

152

The Empire Strikes Back

pressure is great enough a minister of forests will raid any convenient ‘henroost’. We must be prepared to help him while insisting to the limit that our breeding birds are preserved to us. That is the line that the Forestry Commissioners adopted in England and I think we are now beginning to reap the reward.¹⁸⁰

The idea of engaging in deliberate propaganda constituted an important thrust in forest policy through to the 1940s. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, for example, the Standing Committee for Empire Forestry sought to compile information on the contribution of colonial forest departments to the war effort.¹⁸¹ In a letter to Roy Cameron of the Department of Mines and Resources, Land, Parks, and Forests in Ottawa, for example, Robinson wrote that ‘we feel that has a very interesting and important story to tell and one which if properly told will bring about a better appreciation of the value of forests and incidentally of forester’s work.’¹⁸² Following up, H. R. Blandford, the secretary of the Empire Forestry Association, wrote to Roy Robinson a couple of months later that ‘I have been in communication with Messrs. Faber and Faber about the popular publication running to about 200 pages with about 50–60 illustrations.’¹⁸³ The response of colonial forest departments to the idea of such a propagandistic document was euphoric. ‘When the history of the forest departments’ war effort comes to be written,’ wrote S. Howard, inspectorgeneral of forests, India, ‘it will be a romance.’¹⁸⁴ In addition to the issue of control, the debates on forest policy at the third and fourth Empire Forestry Conferences concentrated on aspects of land utilization. Of particular importance was the issue of the regulation of forests in privately owned lands. It was claimed during the third conference that private forests in many parts of the empire were being destroyed and that steps to acquire them were being thwarted by legislative assemblies.¹⁸⁵ Foresters argued that such events were seriously detrimental to the countries concerned because forests situated in mountains and catchment areas were hugely important for the maintenance of water supply, especially in countries with warm climates. They thus urged governments to include provisions in their policies to prevent the ¹⁸⁰ Roy Robinson, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 88. ¹⁸¹ Proceedings of the Meeting of the Standing Committee on Empire Forestry, 2 Feb. 1944, PRO F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May1945. ¹⁸² Roy Robinson to Roy Cameron, Dept. of Mines and Resources, Lands, Parks, and Forests, Ottawa, 9 Feb. 1944, PRO F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May 1945. ¹⁸³ H. R. Blandford to Roy Robinson, 4 Apr. 1944, PRO F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May 1945. ¹⁸⁴ S. H. Howard to Roy Robinson, 25 Feb. 1944, PRO F18/201, 8 Aug. 1938–7 May 1945. ¹⁸⁵ S. H. Howard, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 82.

The Empire Strikes Back

153

destruction of forests in certain designated areas.¹⁸⁶ Tanzania was cited as a model example of a country that had already done so. Legislation in that country, it was pointed out, prevented the destruction of more than a quarter of any forest over 250 acres unless an intention existed immediately to afforest. It also provided forest officers with access, for purposes of inspection, to private properties containing forests. Further, it gave the conservator of forests control over the felling of forests in catchment areas in cases where in his opinion, public water supplies were being jeopardized by fellings.¹⁸⁷ In making such suggestions, foresters were however cognizant of the general attitude to private property prevalent among British administrative officials, for whom, they claimed, the idea of interfering with the control of private property was against their ‘inherent ideas and traditions’.¹⁸⁸ They therefore sought to word their resolution in a manner that would be palatable to such officials. The resolutions on forest policy at the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth Empire Forestry Conferences unanimously ratified the various arguments made during the debate on forest policy at the third and fourth conferences. They thus urged that forest legislation should be enacted by governments and ought to provide for the protection of water supplies for human consumption and agricultural and other purposes; the prevention of erosion; the control of shifting cultivation, whether on private or public lands; and, most importantly, the control of forested lands, including communal and private, by forest departments. The resolutions urged further that provisions ought to be made for the dedication and afforestation of areas near centres of consumption and to meet agricultural requirements— and that forestry departments should not be amalgamated with agricultural departments for administrative purposes. Finally, they emphasized the importance of educating politicians, officials, and the general public on the importance of forests and forestry and urged that elementary instruction on the subject be given in primary and secondary schools.¹⁸⁹ 4.4. CONCLUSION The idea for staging the Empire Forestry Conferences emerged against the backdrop of the First World War. In a context in which the colonial governments had begun to show interest in sponsoring scientific research ¹⁸⁶ Ibid. ¹⁸⁷ D. K. S. Grant, ibid. 81. ¹⁸⁸ Lord Robinson, ibid. 85. ¹⁸⁹ See e.g. ‘Resolutions’, ibid. 236–8, and ‘Resolutions’, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 356.

154

The Empire Strikes Back

on the efficient use of empire resources, colonial foresters, supported by a small but influential cohort in Britain, proposed the establishment of fora that would enable them to audit and co-ordinate the making of policy. Their proposal was swiftly accepted by the government and led to the convening of the Empire Forestry Conferences. The agendas for these conferences were made by the foresters and reflected their desire to influence the making of colonial forest policy. The process leading up to the establishment of the Empire Forestry Conferences is reflective of the growing influence of professional scientific communities on governmental policy within Britain and in the empire. Here, the role played by British and expatriate foresters is reminiscent of that played by other scientific communities—such as geology, botany, physics, and medicine—during the same period.¹⁹⁰ In each case, scientists lobbied the government by promising to help contribute to the growth of the economy and improve efficiency in production. At the same time, they sought financial investment, prestige, and status. If there is one area where the story of forestry is different, it is in the manner in which the discipline and profession diffused into Britain via the empire. Unlike the other scientific fields mentioned, where the expertise involved had been grown and nurtured from within British institutions, forestry was a reluctant import—a German seed, acclimatized, so to speak, in British India, and then transplanted into the United Kingdom. The agents of change were a very small group of influential landlords, who adeptly mobilized their political connections, on the one hand, and the expertise supplied by foresters returned from service in India, on the other. In convincing the former, they argued, initially, in the aftermath of the First World War, that winning large-scale modern wars must involve modernizing the natural world. Subsequently, during the inter-war years and after, their rhetoric shifted to one that argued that scientifically managed forests would result in helping national and regional economies grow, and, thereby, cope with the crisis of employment and well-being. Both these arguments were part of a wider rhetoric about modernization and efficiency that had got under way in Britain with the onset of the movement for national efficiency around the turn of the century.¹⁹¹ ¹⁹⁰ See Chapter 1 for a description of this role. ¹⁹¹ Alter, The Reluctant Patron. See also G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971). For a comparative perspective, see John Peter Rasmussen, ‘The American Imperialist Elite: A Study in the Concept of National Efficiency (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1962).

The Empire Strikes Back

155

In working with the latter—the colonial forestry community—the small group of usual suspects enabled a well-trained but diffuse, though eager, colonial scientific corps to organize, build a centre of calculation— the Empire Forestry Conferences—and take the next step toward attaining a wider, pan-colonial professional identity.¹⁹² In turn, the forestry community gladly embraced such patronage, and used the forum of the conferences to campaign for the central demands, which stemmed from the view that they were a body of specialists best capable of economically managing forests—colonial and British. As argued in Chapter 3, this view had begun to emerge in British India during the late Victorian period. By the inter-war years, the outlook had metamorphosed to become the bedrock of a technocracy, whose foundational myths included a strong critique of existing British attitudes to ecology. Pax Britannica, foresters thus argued with strong moral overtones, had, prior to the work of their professional ancestors, been an ecological disaster with explicit economic ramifications for the British Empire. Implicit in this critique was the contention that had it not been for the efforts of the empire forestry community, the scale of the problem would have been greater. In pursuance of their almost envangelical goals, the empire forestry community sought to use the conferences to lobby for control over empire forests and for power over the management of forest lands. An important aspect of their agenda was the felt need for state-controlled forestry. Empire foresters unanimously argued for forest policy to be run by the scientific foresters in agencies sponsored by the state. To propagate this ideal, the foresters strongly used their growing credibility as experts—in a context in which scientific expertise had begun to emerge as an important factor in British economic and colonial developmental policy. Colonial forest officers specifically sought to use the increasing clout of the conferences, stemming from their profile as scientific experts of the empire, to get politicians and civil administrations across the empire to accept their perspective on how colonial forests were to be best managed. The thrust of the deliberations on policy indicate an increasing tendency on the part of empire foresters to organize and become a pancolonial lobby group. They also show a growing commitment by empire foresters to pressure-group politics. Significantly, the rise of forestry experts coincided with a wider attitude on colonial governance and, especially, a growing official discourse on ¹⁹² The term ‘Center of Calculation’ is used here in the sense defined by Bruno Latour in Science in Action.

156

The Empire Strikes Back

colonial development which reluctantly provided legitimization to experts. The negotiated imperialism of the Victorian era soon began to give way to a patronizing science-based imperialism. Owing to its ostensibly ‘progressive’ ideology—enshrined and encoded within the Colonial Welfare and Development Acts—this new developmentalism helped redeem what were once seen, especially by the burgeoning nationalist movements, as instruments of coercion and exploitation.¹⁹³ In the process, ideas promoted by technocracies, such as forestry, became emmeshed within and inseparable from the discourse on modernization and state building. At the centre of the emergent technocratic politicking, however, was a fundamental and deep-rooted commitment to certain basic principles of forest management held by colonial foresters, which, as argued earlier, stemmed from the continental roots of British colonial forestry. Implicit in this paradigm was a strong commitment to economic development. The paradigm also had a strong cultural aspect. Part of its normative appeal for its protagonists, the empire forestry community, lay in its advocacy of material progress through an ostensibly universal technology which enabled, to use the words of Alexander Spoehr, not just the exploitation of ‘single landscapes, separately’, but the ‘pooling and redistributing the products of all types of environment’.¹⁹⁴ In order to realize this vision on an empire-wide scale, colonial foresters explicitly argued for state control of forest management on grounds that the state alone was capable of taking the initiatives and risks involved. Their particular target was private forestry of any kind, regardless of whether such forestry was managed by white settlers or other local peoples. Such an attitude to privately run forestry was in turn part of a wider distrust of any attempt to run forestry along either ad hoc or laissez-faire lines, a distrust that had its roots partially in the cameralist origins of forestry in Prussia and subsequently in the rampant destruction of forests in various parts of the empire prior to the emergence of forest departments. Significantly, there was no fundamental change in the perceptions of colonial foresters on what constituted the principles of forest policy during the first half of the twentieth century. The debates on forest policy at ¹⁹³ A fascinating account of this process is provided in Patrick Geddes’s letters to Lewis Mumford on Mahatma Gandhi’s attitudes to forestry. See Frank G. Norak (ed.), Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes: The Correspondence (London, 1995). The issue of the transition of colonial agendas to the post-colonial context is discussed in Chapter 6. ¹⁹⁴ A. Spoehr, ‘Cultural Differences in the Interpretation of Natural Resources’, in Thomas (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, i. 95.

The Empire Strikes Back

157

the Empire Forestry Conferences during this period were largely an attempt at articulating and elaborating on the core ideas described in the earlier paragraphs—which the foresters developed into a ‘forestry creed’. The debates at the Empire Forestry Conferences were an attempt to defend this ‘creed’ practically in the wake of several challenges, such as the Depression and provincial devolution, both of which had resulted in state policies that tended to de-emphasize the priorities and agendas of foresters, and the wider subordination of forestry to agriculture. It is important to note here that there was, throughout the debates on policy, a tension between paradigmatic generality and the broad agenda of modern forestry, and the need for pragmatic location and context-sensitive specificity. Foresters however sought to resolve local issues in a pragmatic manner without losing sight of their bigger disciplinary and professional perspective. This observation is significant in light of recent attempts by some scholars to paint colonial forestry practices as purely site specific and, in doing so, deny the wider ideological continuities across both region and time.¹⁹⁵ Last, but by no means least, the debates on policy at the Empire Forestry Conferences point to a conflict between foresters and other communities that constituted the colonial state, a conflict that had been brewing from the days when modern forestry first began in the empire. At the heart of this conflict were three factors—land, money, and status. As argued repeatedly earlier, implicit among the forestry community was the desire to assume control over the enormous empire of forests and be recognized as the only agency responsible for deciding and regulating how that empire was to be run. Despite growing governmental support for the forestry agenda, foresters were frustrated that they were not receiving what they believed was their due. Some of this frustration was undoubtedly borne out of the fact that forestry initially received a relatively small slice of the colonial research and development cake. In the Colonial Development Act of 1929–39, for example, only 15 of the 641 schemes funded were related to forestry.¹⁹⁶ The resolutions on legislation and publicity, therefore, were strong statements to the effect that foresters must be given more resources and, definitely, more control. The debate on forest policy is also indicative of important fissures between the colonial forestry communities. In particular, there were differences, in the views of foresters on the issue of whether education or coercion was the best method of state intervention while enforcing ¹⁹⁵ This argument will be pursued in greater detail in the next chapter. ¹⁹⁶ Havinden and Meredith, Colonialism and Development, 164.

158

The Empire Strikes Back

forestry policies. Here, the political context in which the forester worked determined his perspective: there were marked differences between foresters from Canada and other dominions, tropical dependencies, and settler-dependency mixes. Collectively, these fissures—between foresters and the state on the one hand, and to a lesser extent between colonial foresters themselves, on the other—show that the domain of imperial forestry was as stratified as it was homogeneous. While there were indeed, generally speaking, broad, imperial priorities, there was, at the same time, a constant tug-of-war among professional communities. The picture created by the ideal-type ‘state forestry’ used by most environmental historians today therefore needs to be expanded, taking cognizance of the perpetual contests over policy and perspective within the colonial state and within the empire-wide forestry community.¹⁹⁷ Nowhere were such contests more manifest than in the specific ecological debates on forestry and land management—and it is these that Chapter 5 addresses. ¹⁹⁷ The term ‘ideal-type’ is used in the sense developed by Max Weber in ‘Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy’, in Edward Shils and Henry Finch (eds.), Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1949), 50–112.

5 The Imperial Environmentalist Being big occasions attended by leading colonial officials, the Empire Forestry Conferences were, to a considerable degree, political events and provided foresters with opportunities to lobby for their agendas and promote their professional status and interests. However, when the glitter and bustle of the opening plenaries—studded with a star cast of leading politicians—faded, the conferences assumed a different role, of engaging in a detailed stocktaking discussion of empire forestry practices and problems. There was a reason why the conferences took such a course. During the process of constructing the agendas for the Empire Forestry Conferences, the Standing Committee had sought precisely such a comparative, crossregional discussion of the state of empire forestry. In pressing for such an agenda, they had argued that the varying ecological and societal conditions prevalent across the vast empire posed a number of challenges as regards the implementation of silvicultural, production, protection, and utilization policies. Further, they had pointed out that there was, as of then, no empire-wide consensus on some of the vexing human-ecological issues such as shifting cultivation and soil erosion. The overwhelming sense among the agenda setters was that a lot of wheels were being reinvented, and that all concerned would profit from learning about their respective approaches to empire forestry problems. The conferences, in their view, offered an opportunity for foresters to listen to diverse experiences on the management of the colonial forests. They also helped clarify differences over a number of issues and forge a common agenda. Moreover, they enabled a protracted cross-regional discussion on how to adapt their paradigmatic framework on forest management to the different ecological and socio-economic and political conditions prevalent in the empire. If the debates on forest policy discussed in the previous chapter are indicative of the growing technocracy and political savvy of the empire

160

The Imperial Environmentalist

forestry community, the deliberations on forest management provide a crucial insight into their ecological agendas. Moreover, the discussions on shifting cultivation and soil conservation helped provide a vivid picture of how foresters approached complex human-ecological problems. The conference proceedings also reveal a great deal about the wider environmental attitudes of the forestry community—toward nature and resource, toward local peoples, and to science, technology, and development. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the forest management agendas and environmentalist ideologies of colonial forestry as expressed at the Empire Forestry Conferences during the first half of the twentieth century. In keeping with the broad structure of the conference deliberations, the discussion here will comprise two parts: the ‘classical’ problems associated with paradigm articulation, and the policy dilemmas posed by agro-forestry challenges such as shifting cultivation and soil erosion.

5.1. PARADIGM ARTICUL ATION

5.1.1. The ‘Classical’ Problems¹ As the agenda setters for the first conference began to deliberate on the slate of questions to put on the table before the participants, they set the principal task as that of developing a consolidated picture of colonial forestry. In broad terms, there were two aspects to this task—an imperial environmental audit, and institution building to enable colonial forestry to grow and mature as a discipline. At the time that the first Empire Forest Conference was conceived, there was a definite shortfall in forest products across the empire. India, Australia, and South Africa, for example, did not meet their own demands of softwoods, each depending on Canada for their requirements. Similarly, hardwood supplies were on the decline in West Africa and India could barely meet the hardwood needs imposed upon it by a ravenous empire. During the discussions at the conferences, the review of the existing statistical data also revealed that there was considerable uncertainty over how much and what types of forests there were in different parts of the empire. Indeed, there was very little reliable information ¹ The word ‘classical’ is used in the sense of a ‘static, long-established, well recognised and highly valued approach on which particular policies in the future might be based’ (Blaikie, The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries, 53). In this particular context, ‘classical’ refers to the German forestry paradigm.

The Imperial Environmentalist

161

on how much woodland existed, what forest types there were, and what their rate of decline was.² The foresters participating in the discussions therefore unanimously agreed that it was urgently important to generate adequate information. Accordingly, they resolved that the foundation of a stable forest policy for the empire depended on the collection, co-ordination and dissemination of facts with regard to the existing forest resources of the empire, the opportunities for their utilisation, their rate of growth and regeneration, the balance between increment on the one hand and utilisation and wastage on the other, and the requirements of the empire for all forest products.³

Another resolution went on to stress the importance of systematic surveys, which, it claimed, would serve the dual role of providing the basis of forest policies locally and reviewing the forestry position of the empire as a whole.⁴ In addition to addressing the issue of information uncertainty, the deliberations at the first and second conferences also pondered the question of whether existing forest use practices were sufficient to ensure sustainable production and efficient utilization. The resultant debate on forestry practices centred around two issues—the methods of production, and the problems of utilization. In both instances, the thrust of the discussion was on comparing notes and discussing best practices. The deliberations on production focused on the question of whether artificial or natural regeneration was more economic and practicable. While there were some, like Professor Troup from north India and H. M. Thompson from Nigeria, who preferred artificial regeneration, others, such as A. J. Gibson from India and G. E. S. Cubitt from the Federated Malay States and the Straits Settlements, did not agree. Their disagreement stemmed largely from the ecological differences between the places they came from: while natural regeneration, in some places, yielded the kinds of woodlands desired by the foresters, it did not in others. The upshot was that there was no conclusive evidence at the conferences that could settle the issue. The foresters therefore made a case for the need for more information and research.⁵ Likewise, on utilization, discussants agreed that there was very little ability among imperial forest departments, as yet, to exploit and develop ² First Empire Forestry Conference, 156–81. ³ Resolution on Forest Surveys, ibid. 216. ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ Ibid. 105–15; Second Empire Forestry Conference, 114–64.

162

The Imperial Environmentalist

their timbers and to put them on the market. On an issue as important as forest terminology, for example, both technical names and trade names were extremely variable across the empire, leading to a great deal of confusion.⁶ Moreover, empire-wide trade in forest products was itself in its infancy, thereby not creating the conditions for the adequate and efficient use of empire forests. Another problem was that forest departments saw themselves largely as producers and had historically developed an antipathy to private utilizers of forests, particularly private forest industries. Many delegates argued that such an outlook hampered efficient utilization. Last, but by no means least, there was a great shortfall in trained staff. Indeed, those that did exist did not enjoy much status in the imperial hierarchy.⁷ Based on the above analysis, the delegates at the conferences passed three unanimous resolutions on the question of utilization and trade. They resolved that timber and forest products manufacturing organizations ought to be consulted in making forest policy and that terminology and trade names needed to be standardized.⁸ Next, they agreed that the requirement for timber and other forest products needed to be met from within the empire itself and that active steps needed to be taken throughout the empire to organize and foster trade in forest products.⁹ They also decided that colonial governments in different parts of the empire should be asked to conserve and augment their resources of softwoods, hardwoods, and other forest products.¹⁰ In addition to information, production, and utilization, the conference also took up the question of how waste mitigation was being approached in different parts of the empire. The discussions on waste in the first two conferences predictably dwelt on the three issues that had preoccupied foresters since the onset of scientific forestry: fire, insects, and disease. The session on fire did much to inflame the passions of the discussants. Since outbreaks often had severe economic consequences, there was complete consensus that fire was the ‘forester’s greatest enemy’¹¹ and, when uncontrolled, evil.¹² Delegates argued that fire control was ‘pure insurance against loss through fire of capital stock in soil and ⁶ First Empire Forestry Conference, 156–60. ⁷ Ibid. 156–83, 275–8, 288–97; Second Empire Forestry Conference, 91–113, 278–99, 370, 411. ⁸ First Empire Forestry Conference, 218. ⁹ Resolution on Empire Trade in Forest Resources, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 372. ¹⁰ Resolution 2, ibid. 370. ¹¹ Owen Jones, Forestry Commissioner, Victoria, Australia, ibid. 175. ¹² C. G. Trevor, Conservator of Forests, UP, India, ibid.

The Imperial Environmentalist

163

timber’.¹³ Such arguments were similar to the attitude held by mainstream foresters trained in the continental tradition elsewhere. For example, in the United States in the late nineteenth century, Gifford Pinchot had proclaimed that ‘like the question of slavery, the question of forest fires may be shelved for a time, at enormous cost at the end, but sooner or later it must be faced’.¹⁴ It is interesting to note that even John Muir, the apostle of preservation in America, and a person often described as an advocate of wilderness, had described fire damage as ‘ten times worse than that caused by logging’. In their search for the causes of fire, the discussants at the conferences quickly arrived at a consensus that ‘Man’ was at the core of the ‘fire problem’. In Australia, more than 70 per cent of fires were caused by human carelessness: settlers’ fires, the camper, and the grazier who burned off old grass to generate tender grass for his flock. In Canada, 90 per cent of the fires were caused ostensibly by human agencies: railways, campers, settlers burning slash, and lumbering. In India, it was not only human carelessness but also deliberate incendiarism, caused during periodic outbursts against the regime. Everywhere, the problem was the ostensible ignorance and apathy of the common man, a ‘pertinent commentary on our present state of civilization’.¹⁵ It is important to point out here that in deploying such rhetoric and reasoning, the British colonial foresters at the conferences were very much in tune with the mainstream attitude among foresters trained in the continental European tradition. To take one example, Bernard Fernow, a Prussian forester, writing in the context of the American forestry debate, described fires as the ‘bane of American forests’, and blamed civilian populations, whom he accused of possessing ‘bad habits and loose morals’.¹⁶ The similarities in outlook between British colonial foresters and their counterparts elsewhere continued in the discussion on how fire ought to be managed. Like their counterparts in the US forest service, who, embracing the spirit of the progressivist era, had declared that ‘firefighting is a matter of scientific management, just as much as silviculture or range improvement’,¹⁷ the delegates at the conferences spent some time discussing fire as a technical problem, exploring measures such as fire breaks, fire lines, watch towers, and patrols. However, the discussion on fire ¹³ Report of the Committee on Fire Protection, ibid. 38. ¹⁴ Stephen Pyne, World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth (Seattle, 1997), 184. ¹⁵ D. R. Cameron, Dominion Forest Service, Canada, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 178. ¹⁶ Pyne, World Fire. See also Williams, Americans and their Forests. ¹⁷ Pyne, World Fire, 186.

164

The Imperial Environmentalist

control very quickly turned to the question of what to do with common people, whom, as pointed out earlier, the foresters held fundamentally responsible for outbreaks. Although delegates explored legislation as a possible solution, many foresters argued that the difficulties posed by enforcement were considerable. Accordingly, they stressed the importance of educating people, and of enlisting governments in this cause. The deliberation on insects and disease was on necessity different from that on fire, because the ostensible offenders were not common people but bugs and pathogens. The discussants in the session on forest insects, Dr J. W. Munro, an entomologist of the Forestry Commission, Dr J. M. Swaine, an entomologist of the Department of Agriculture of the Canadian government, and Mr C. G. Trevor of the Indian forest service, each stated emphatically that the knowledge of the causes of insect outbreaks in forests was no better in the 1920s than it had been in the 1830s, when forest entomology first began to make significant strides in Germany. To complicate matters, approaches developed in Europe had failed in other ecological conditions, such as in India. Moreover, entomologists could not by themselves hope to devise strategies to combat forest insect outbreaks: collaboration with silviculturalists and mycologists and an ecological approach were essential. There was therefore a critical need felt to institutionalize a collaborative programme of fundamental research, involving foresters, entomologists, and mycologists. Munro, Swaine, and Trevor also made a strong case for organizing an empire-wide information exchange on forest insect pests and their control. Other speakers on forest disease similarly emphasized the need for more research, especially of a collaborative nature.¹⁸ In the conferences that followed in the wake of London and Ottawa, debates on the ‘classical’ issues of forestry—production, utilization, and protection—continued to hold a primary place on the agenda. The deliberations, however, consisted, in large measure, in technical brainstorming. As in the first two conferences, they focused on two main issues: surveys of resources¹⁹ and silvicultural techniques, including artificial and natural regeneration, techniques of afforestation, and working plans.²⁰ The main thrust was on examining specific issues relating either to innovations in technique or to problems posed by particular geographical and ecological contexts. The conferences also exposed leading forestry experts in different ¹⁸ The discussions on insects and disease, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 216–30. ¹⁹ Third Empire Forestry Conference, 1–3, 236–8. ²⁰ Ibid. 122–3, 171–85, 201–11, 218, 253–81; Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 137–58, 301–25; Fifth Empire Forestry Conference, 144–51; Sixth Commonwealth Forestry Conference, 140–4, 179–86, 187–90, 111–30, 170–3, 194–206, 231–44.

The Imperial Environmentalist

165

parts of the empire to problems in areas other than their own. Field tours, an intrinsic part of the conferences, were therefore an important aspect of the proceedings. They enabled overseas foresters to study unfamiliar technical problems first hand. The debates on the ‘classical’ forestry problems also explored the issue of utilization further. The questions considered included the supply and marketing of timber, including timber nomenclature;²¹ timber quality and its relation to silviculture;²² and efficiency in utilization, including protection, the minimization of waste, and better harvesting methods.²³ Also discussed were issues relating to organization and institutionalization, especially for education, research, training, and exchanging information.²⁴

5.1.2. Organization and Institution Building for Research The deliberations on research and training in forestry at the first and second conferences identified three main topical issues. The first of these concerned the growth of trees, the question of how the natural growth factors could be improved and maintained and the cost of production reduced without impairing the capital value of the growing stock of the forest. The second main issue was forest engineering and economics, including knowledge in valuing logging operations and reducing waste by understanding what was wrong with systems of utilization. The third problem was forest utilization, with most foresters decrying the fact that it had erstwhile been neglected. An agenda for research was therefore proposed, which included investigations into the quantities, uses, and identities of different types of timber; research into cheaper and more abundant timber substitutes; studies on the value of the various timbers lying unused in different parts of the world; and research into the chemical properties of various woods as part of a wider search for energy alternatives given the growing depletion of coal and oil supplies.²⁵ ²¹ Third Empire Forestry Conference, 103–20, 212–17, 241, 284, 307; Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 75, 249–60; Fifth Empire Forestry Conference, 254–357; Sixth Commonwealth Forestry Conference, 216–21. ²² Fifth Empire Forestry Conference, 196–202; Sixth Commonwealth Forestry Conference, 245–68. ²³ Third Empire Forestry Conference, 86–90, 121, 133–8; Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 184–98, 326–33, 347–50; Fifth Empire Forestry Conference, 190–6, 212–18; Sixth Commonwealth Forestry Conference, 76–155, 268–92. ²⁴ Third Empire Forestry Conference, 52–60, 90–3, 144–70; Fourth Empire Forestry Conference: 73, 261–79; Fifth Empire Forestry Conference, 151–71, 207–11, 244–7; Sixth Commonwealth Forestry Conference, 305–22. ²⁵ Prof. Groom, First Empire Forestry Conference, 141; Dr A. W. Borthwick, First Empire Forestry Conference, 196 and Second Empire Forestry Conference, 306–10; and M. A. Grainger, First Empire Forestry Conference, 152.

166

The Imperial Environmentalist

Together, these agendas of research and training had a common object, to develop ‘the most efficient means of supplying in the best form possible forest products applicable to the needs of man’.²⁶ The resolution on forest research adopted at the second conference endorsed this broad agenda. It stressed the need for research and education in silviculture; statistical investigations into the rate of growth and volume of production which would provide the data essential for rational and economic forest management; forest botany, including ecology and mycology; forest entomology; soil investigations; and meteorology. It also drew attention to the importance of utilization, particularly wood technology—including the testing, seasoning, and preservation of timber and investigations into products other than timber.²⁷ The resolution particularly emphasized the importance of applied research. It envisaged a definite innovation chain, extending from laboratories to experimental plots and on to the forest.²⁸ Finally, the resolution urged governments to recognize that research into forestry was an issue of national importance and that it involved long periods of work and co-ordinated effort. The state alone, it argued, could make forestry research possible and sustain it in the long run.²⁹ In making this argument, the resolution reinforced the position adopted in the debate on the question of control. Having articulated a research agenda in this broad manner, the conferences sought to implement it by establishing appropriate institutions. Delegates began by endorsing the two main proposals made by the Canadian Forestry Association when it had proposed the convening of the conferences in the first place. Thus, the second conference unanimously endorsed the ideas of holding periodic Empire Forestry Conferences and the setting up of an Empire Forestry Association with its own journal. The conferences also voted for the establishment of a Standing Committee on Empire Forestry, with a view to maintaining continuity of action between meetings of the Empire Forestry Conferences.³⁰ The principal thrust of the debate on organization was however on the subject of setting up a central institution for education and research in forestry.³¹ The discussion on this subject was begun during the first conference by Claude Hill, a member of the viceroy’s executive Council ²⁶ Dr A. W. Borthwick, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 307. ²⁷ Ibid. 249–50. ²⁸ Ibid. 249. ²⁹ Ibid. 248. ³⁰ ‘Resolutions’, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 374. ³¹ See, for example, Cd. 2523: ‘Correspondence Relating to the Training of Forestry Students’ (London, 1905).

167

The Imperial Environmentalist

in India. Hill argued that the proper administration of empire forest assets necessitated the establishment of more fully equipped institutes for research. He argued, further, that the best people ought to be employed to train the ‘relatively small body of experts’ who should comprise the upper controlling and administrative staff for forestry. Moreover, this corps d’élite ought to be equipped as highly as possible to enable it to formulate and understand how to bring either virgin or (as in the case of India) ostensibly maltreated and semi-ruined forest to the point of highest economic efficiency.³² Hill argued that the basic question was whether it was best for each part of the empire separately and individually to evolve its own research, organization, and policy or whether it was possible to create a machinery by which the whole empire will be in a position to ensure that the larger problems relating the administration of forestry shall be submitted to and advised upon by an authority recruited from all parts of the empire, and which should organise the training of the forest experts and specialists of the whole empire. Will efficiency, economy and enterprise be stimulated by such a scheme or will it be preferable to leave each part of the empire to evolve its own machinery for research and higher education?³³

Hill stated that the Indian view was that whereas local research and training for the lower grades should be provided for locally, there would be great advantages in arranging that the higher branches of the various forest services should receive their training, whether in fundamental principles or in post-graduate studies, at a central institute for the whole empire, where access would be had to the results of the highest research affecting forestry throughout the world, and where the greatest living experts are congregated.³⁴

Hill argued further that the Indian forest service also believed that it was best for every part of the empire if the training of the highest controlling staff took place in the same locality as the central research institute. It was also important to create a central clearing house of information and locate it in this central institute. The establishment of such an institute, he said, would mean that an esprit de corps would be created among forest officers throughout the empire, leading subsequently to mutual assistance and interchange of ideas. It would also result in providing trainees with a sound foundation in the general principle of the science of forestry and methods of research which, he said, were ‘more or less constant’ and thus adaptable and applicable in the varying colonial conditions.³⁵ ³² Sir Claude Hill, First Empire Forestry Conference, 125–8. ³⁴ Ibid. ³⁵ Ibid. 128–9.

³³ Ibid.

168

The Imperial Environmentalist

According to Hill, the Indian forest service preferred Britain as a site for such an institute. Britain was ideal not only because it was the seat of the empire and had the ‘best choice of scientific teachers anywhere in the empire to equip such a school’ but because it was close to the Continent. Proximity to Europe was important because continental forests were illustrative of the best methods of forest management and because it was there that the theoretical works could be best illustrated with complete object lessons. He argued that it would take a century for Indian or dominion forests to reach a stage in any way comparable with the highly developed and intensively worked woods of Europe. There was broad unanimity among most discussants on the proposals made by Claude Hill. Professor Stebbing, for example, argued that in addition to providing basic training at an advanced level before a forester went to a colony to take up his first appointment, such an institution could provide advanced specialized courses to men coming home on furlough after ten to twelve years of service. Such people, he said, had previously gone to Germany or France for the purpose. A central institute would also allow such officers to conduct research work and would, in fact, be the centre of research in Britain and the place where research carried out at research institutes in different parts of the empire could be collated.³⁶ Other foresters argued similarly. W. F. Perre, of the Imperial Forestry Research Centre in Dehra Dun, M. A. Grainger, chief forester of the Provincial Forest Service of British Columbia, and A. W. Borthwick, the educational, research, and publicity officer of the British Forestry Commission, for example, argued that a central institution was necessary in order to ‘collect and co-ordinate the work of other isolated research centres’³⁷ and to ‘have one agency behind all the work and experimentation that would visualise the thing in a broad way’.³⁸ Yet another argument for the establishment of a central institution located in Britain was advanced in the conference by Professor Groom of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and C. E. Lane-Poole, conservator of forests, Western Australia. Groom claimed that such an institution would enable research to take place in Britain, where timber was being used most extensively. Moreover, a pool of experts would be created in Britain who could advise on substitutes when they were wanted and who, because of their familiarity with timbers of the empire, would be able to resolve difficulties of nomenclature and ³⁶ Prof. E. P. Stebbing, First Empire Forestry Conference, 142–3. ³⁷ Dr Borthwick, ibid. 196. ³⁸ M. A. Grainger, ibid. 156.

The Imperial Environmentalist

169

certify quality to satisfy the needs of timber merchants who would otherwise not trust documents coming from the colonies.³⁹ Lane-Poole argued in a similar vein by stating that a centre located in Britain would mean that forest departments in different parts of the empire would be able to get in touch with the ‘great marketing centres’. It would also result in the standardization of methods and a universal method of certification of forest products which would help the export of forest products and the globalization of forest trade.⁴⁰ The upshot of the debate on organization was a set of resolutions that were presented to parliament. There were three broad recommendations. At the outset, there was one on education, which stated that systematic schemes for forestry education ought to be established by the forest authorities throughout the empire and that these schemes ought also to meet the needs of those parts of the empire unable to meet their own requirements. The resolution on education also recommended the establishment of an institution in the United Kingdom for training forest officers possessing natural science degrees and for organizing supplementary courses for forest officers from any part of the empire. The second recommendation was on research, and stated that systematic research into the formation, tending, and protection of forests ought to be associated with the training institution. The third resolution was on the establishment of an imperial forestry bureau, independent of any agricultural bureau, with the task of collecting, co-ordinating, and disseminating information and advice on the development of the forest resources of the empire.⁴¹ Each of these resolutions was soon translated into imperial policy. Soon after the first Empire Forestry Conference, its resolutions recommending education, research, and a bureau were presented to parliament in a command paper.⁴² An interdepartmental committee on imperial forestry was set up in autumn 1920 to prepare a scheme for giving effect to the resolutions regarding the central institution for the training of forest officers. The committee was charged with determining the location, the system of organization, including the constitution, the control of the institution, its costs and methods of financing it, and its research role, in addition to deciding how best to select its students. The committee undertook its task with vigour and presented its report to parliament.⁴³ ³⁹ Prof. Groom, ibid. 142. ⁴¹ Cmd. 865 of 1920.

⁴⁰ C. E. Lane Poole, ibid. 153. ⁴² Ibid. ⁴³ Cmd. 1166 of 1921.

170

The Imperial Environmentalist

The committee noted that most of its witnesses were in favour of establishing a central institution for higher forestry training. Its report then discussed the background of the students. It concluded that the needs expressed by the conference would be met by accepting an approved forestry degree course at any university as a preliminary to a higher forestry training later at the central institution. It recommended further that the probationers should specialize at the institution in two out of a dozen suggested subjects. In doing so, the committee attached great importance to special courses at the central institution. Another of the committee’s recommendations was that while it was for individual governments to decide what opportunities should be given to their officers, it ought to be a recognized part of the duties of a forest officer to attend at least one special course at the institution during the earlier part of his service. Moreover, the committee endorsed the resolution of the forestry conference proposing a system of reciprocity between the training institutions at home and abroad, whereby probationers or forest officers could proceed to the institution of another country for study. The committee also recognized the benefits of close association between teaching and research and recommended a close relation between them. Accordingly, it recommended that training and research be combined in one institution and that trained scientific investigators be appointed to forge a research agenda for the proposed subjects of research—entomology, mycology, and soil science. The committee turned its attention next to the question of the location of the central institution. It considered three broad alternatives: as one of the schools of a university; as an institution apart from a university but within a university town; and finally, in the country near a forest. After prolonged deliberations, it concluded that it would be advantageous to locate the institution as a constituent part of a university. During the consultations, Cambridge had objected to the idea of a central institution, while Oxford had supported the scheme and proposed to enlarge its buildings for botany and forestry. Accordingly, the committee recommended that the central institution be established there.

5.1.3. Resonant Themes The deliberations on forest management in the first two conferences thus turned out to be what they were meant to be—an attempt at imperial environmental stocktaking. Implicit was a commitment by the empire forestry community to extend the continental European model

The Imperial Environmentalist

171

throughout the empire.⁴⁴ According to their vision forestry was a production system, meant to serve the needs of a growing empire. They deemed their own job to be serving the imperial economy. Such an outlook is evident in the emphasis, during the deliberations, on resource inventories, economically practicable agendas of production, forest industries, and empire trade in forest products. The discussion on waste was similarly a strong normative assertion of value, aimed at gaining credibility for an attitude to forest resource that had hitherto been peripheral to the imperial mentality. The debates on resources, production, utilization, waste, and research also resonate in some ways with the discussions on the issue of state control discussed in Chapter 4. At the outset, there was the firm perception that the ‘common man’ everywhere was ‘ignorant’ and ‘apathetic’. Significantly, as the discussion on the issue of fire illustrates, this perception extended not only to non-European communities but also to white settlers. Another important undercurrent throughout the discussion was a strong expression of technocracy, an explicit aspect of which was the constant reaffirmation of the idea that forestry policy was best made by forestry experts with the backing of the state. Nowhere did these three issues combine more potently than in the discussion on the big agroforestry dilemmas—shifting cultivation and soil erosion. 5.2. AGRO-FORESTRY DILEMMAS Although foresters had grappled with soil erosion and shifting cultivation in various degrees since the onset of forestry in the British Empire, it was only in the late 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s that these issues blew up into a major colonial environmental crisis. In taking up these concerns for discussion, the conferences sought to be a centre of calculation to determine an effective pan-colonial strategy.

5.2.1. Empire Foresters and the Debate on Shifting Cultivation Shifting cultivation has been a recurrent theme in recent work on colonial environmental history. This is so because it offers an excellent example with which to explore some of the pet themes of contemporary ⁴⁴ See, for example, RHO MSS Afr. S. 1389; RHO MSS Afr. S. 1364; RHO MSS. Ind. Ocn. S. 168 (1–3).

172

The Imperial Environmentalist

historians—such as the hegemony of the colonial state, governmentality, and social protest and resistance. Not surprisingly, this literature takes, as its starting point, the idea that the colonial sciences were an intrinsic part of an assumed homogeneous state. Consequently, little attention has been paid to the views and standpoints of particular interest groups and epistemic communities that worked under the auspices of the state. The debates on shifting cultivation at the conferences are therefore an excellent site to begin to address this important gap. The deliberations on shifting cultivation at the Empire Forestry Conferences began with a strong articulation of the kinds of perspectives alluded to by most historians when they refer to colonial approaches to the issue.⁴⁵ This perspective was set forth by J. R. Ainslie, a forest officer from Nigeria, and R. M. White, a forest officer from Ceylon. Ainslie began by comparing shifting cultivation with what he referred to as ‘real agriculture’. Whereas the latter was the ‘cultivation of the soil on a rotation of crops’, the former was the ‘cultivation of crops on a rotation of soils’. Shifting cultivation was thus the very reverse of ‘normal’ agriculture. It was the setting fire to a piece of forest during dry weather, the cultivation for a year or two of the ground thus cleared, and, when the crops begin to fail owing to soil deterioration, the moving on to another piece of virgin forest land, there to recommence the process.⁴⁶

Ainslie argued that shifting cultivation was a process that caused immense destruction. The forests of Nigeria alone had halved over the previous eight decades and approximately 2,000 square miles were lost in Nigeria each year. ‘One has only to pass through the numerously repeated areas of high forests destroyed and blackened by this fire-cultivation’, he said, ‘to see in a practical and vivid form the almost incredible extent of the damage done’.⁴⁷ On the one hand, this meant severe ecological disruption: shifting cultivation caused soil erosion and deterioration. On the other, it had major economic consequences. In local terms, it meant the creation of timber and fuel famines. In national terms, it meant ‘an annual drain on resources’ and, in West Africa as a region, the successive replacement ⁴⁵ Pouchepadass, ‘British Attitudes to Shifting Cultivation in Colonial South India’; Rangarajan, ‘Swidden Cultivation and Forest Management in the Central Provinces’; M. Gadgil and R. Guha, ‘The Problem of Shifting Cultivation’, in Guha and Gadgil, This Fissured Land 150–7; and Raymond L. Bryant, ‘The Rise and Fall of Taungya Forestry’, The Ecologist, 24/1 (Jan./Feb. 1994), 21–6; id.; ‘Shifting the Cultivator: The Politics of Teak Regeneration in Colonial Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 28/2 (1994); id., ‘The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1826–1993, (Delhi, 1997). ⁴⁶ J. R. Ainslie, Second Empire Forest Conference, 325. ⁴⁷ Ibid. 326.

173

The Imperial Environmentalist

of a ‘superior’ forest type by ‘considerably inferior and more xerophytic types’.⁴⁸ Shifting cultivation, Ainslie argued, betraying his sedentary bias, also caused a great deal of ‘political damage’: the ‘prevention of permanent settlements or dwellings’, and the prevention of permanent improvements of all things, and in the consequent retarding of civilisation, the encouragement of nomadic instincts and vagrant, indolent, and thriftless habits among the people, whether they were inclined that way or not.⁴⁹

Shifting cultivation was thus ‘as vitally important to West Africa as fire control was to Canada’. It was in fact of ‘imperial importance’: West Africa had 14 per cent of empire forests which contained a great palm-oil wealth, kept its rivers navigable, and protected its agricultural products to such an extent that without it Nigeria alone would lose half its export trade.⁵⁰ Ainslie argued, however, that shifting cultivation was a practice that was very difficult to eliminate. The ‘peculiar system of land tenure prevailing in West Africa’ meant that wastelands and forests were not state but communally owned. In essence, Ainslie’s point was that reservation was a lengthy process. At the outset, an agreement had to be reached with the chiefs and councils of each commune or tribe. This took several years. Next, a preliminary proclamation had to be made. This took almost a year and, since there was no legal protection in this phase, actually served as an advertisement to forest destroyers that ‘here is a place of convenient and compact virgin land awaiting shifting cultivation’. The preliminary proclamation phase was succeeded by a prolonged period of settlement and demarcation, which took almost a decade. Only then could a final proclamation be made. Ainslie argued that even such legal protection did not often prove entirely effective.⁵¹ R. M. White, who worked at that time in Ceylon, agreed with Ainslie on the issue of the dangers of shifting cultivation. It meant, he argued, not only the loss of invaluable timber, but the loss of ‘an agent indispensable for building up and maintaining natural soil fertility which in Ceylon is the ultimate source of almost all production and wealth’.⁵² Moreover, shifting cultivation was regarded as destructive even by traditional ‘enlightened’ Sinhalese opinion. It was continual war that forced this practice and the result was that Ceylon, from once being an exporter of food, had now become an importer.⁵³ ⁴⁸ Ibid. 325. ⁴⁹ Ibid. 326. ⁵⁰ Ibid. 328. ⁵² R. M. White, ibid. 328. ⁵³ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid. 326.

174

The Imperial Environmentalist

Ainslie and White concluded that shifting cultivation could, in principle, be allowed to proceed in areas where adequate control could be exercised, provided a long enough rotation was insisted upon to prevent undue soil and forest deterioration. They urged that steps be taken to expedite control by increasing facilities for forest survey, settlement, and demarcation.⁵⁴ They argued, however, that there was often, as in Ceylon, not enough land available to ensure sufficiently long rotations and that this resulted in increased shifting cultivation in low jungle on short rotations, thereby increasing the acreage of once fertile land annually converted into abandoned scrub.⁵⁵ More importantly, Ainslie and White contended that although expedient, systems of forest management involving shifting cultivation were silviculturally unsound.⁵⁶ They therefore argued for a total ban on shifting cultivation, especially in high forests, especially where existing land-tenure rules and other reasons did not enable the extension of forest reservation. While sharing the reservations of Ainslie and White, other officers adopted a different perspective on the issue. One such person was Edward Battiscombe, a forester who worked then in Kenya. Battiscombe contended that the forest ordinance of 1911 gave the governor the right to declare any area of Crown land a forest area and have it demarcated. Once this was done, the district forest officers and the political officer could order the local people not to do certain things. After the passing of the forest ordinance, every ‘native’ was registered and all cultivated land marked. Moreover, state control was established to such an extent that the natives plant exactly where we tell them to cultivate. When wood is required for example to make a railway, we divide the land and give it to the natives. They plant their crops in the first year. In the second, we plant and they put in their crops with the trees. According to their arrangements, which are endorsed by the magistrate, they have to look after the trees; if they fail to do so they are fined. In the third year they again plant crops and in the fourth they can also plant if the trees are not too large by that time.⁵⁷

Battiscombe stated that such a system of forest management was indeed shifting cultivation but argued that it was indispensable because it provided a supply of reserve labour and resulted in an increase in food production. In Kenya, illegal shifting cultivation had been abolished but ‘legal shifting cultivation was the mainstay of forest management at the moment’.⁵⁸ ⁵⁴ R. M. White, Second Empire Forest Conference, 327. ⁵⁶ Ibid. ⁵⁷ E. Battiscombe, ibid. 329–30.

⁵⁵ Ibid. 328. ⁵⁸ Ibid. 330.

175

The Imperial Environmentalist

The discussion that followed was led by Professor Troup, who began by agreeing with the views expressed by Ainslie and White. He conceded that shifting cultivation was indeed very destructive: it left land derelict and badly eroded soils. He argued however that it could serve a useful silvicultural purpose in certain conditions. In Burma, for instance, plantations were raised with the aid of shifting cultivation at very little cost. In Bengal, the natural regeneration of Sal, the most important timber tree of that country, had failed. Nothing except to cut and regenerate artificially seemed possible and this would have been out of the question except for shifting cultivation. Thus, men who had been turned out of the reserves years before as being the destroyers of the forest were induced to come back. The regeneration there is now almost entirely carried out with the aid of shifting cultivation.⁵⁹

Again in East Africa, the abolition of controlled shifting cultivation would mean doing away with the most effective means of regenerating forest.⁶⁰ Troup argued that there were two basic issues that needed to be appreciated. The circumstances under which the practice of shifting cultivation took place needed to be checked ‘at all costs’, if any forests in the countries concerned were to be left. However, it ought to be understood that controlled shifting cultivation was undoubtedly the surest and in many respects the cheapest method of carrying out plantation work in the tropics and in dry climates. In the Deccan of India and in many parts of the Bombay Presidency and Berar—in fact, in all climates with a low rainfall—it is now recognized as the best method of forming plantations.⁶¹

A similar view was expressed by Owen Jones, a forestry commissioner from Victoria, Australia. Uncontrolled shifting cultivation, he said, was absolutely bad but ‘more or less controlled shifting cultivation’ combined with planting would yield the desired results. Controlled shifting cultivation, along with an increase in the forest staff so that ‘where you have this controlled shifting cultivation you may really be able to control it’, could thus be the framework of pan-colonial policy.⁶² The idea of controlled shifting cultivation as an empire-wide policy was however not accepted by Ainslie. In Africa alone, he argued, a perspective such as the above may be applicable in Kenya but not in West Africa. He advanced two reasons, one political and the other scientific, in ⁵⁹ Prof. R. S. Troup, ibid. 333. ⁶² Owen Jones, ibid. 335.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Ibid.

176

The Imperial Environmentalist

support of his argument. The political reason was that the native of West Africa was, unlike his East African counterpart, a ‘member of a civilised community’. It was therefore not possible to ‘suddenly enforce upon him distasteful legislation and thereby control his activities’.⁶³ The scientific reason was that the cutting down of a rainforest, whether by clear felling and burning or by chena cultivation, meant that the resultant forest would be of a more xerophytic type. The original evergreen forests could not be regrown without first working, manuring, and, generally, intensively cultivating the forest. Ainslie argued that the same was true for the deciduous forests in the region. Ecological progression in this region normally meant that, influenced by geological and planetary causes, mangrove swamps would slowly move to the sea, the rainforest to the belt previously occupied by the mangroves, the deciduous to the rainforest belts, the savannah to the deciduous, and the desert to the savannah. Shifting cultivation, practised on the scale that it was in this region, however, enormously accelerated this normal ecological progression of plants. Ainslie exclaimed: ‘I have myself seen rain-forest clearings reverting not to deciduous forest, which is the next progressive xerophytic grade, but straight to savannah.’⁶⁴ The discussion on shifting cultivation was thus split between advocates of controlled shifting cultivation as an intrinsic aspect of silvicultural policy, such as Battiscombe and Owen Jones, and those, like Ainslie and White, who did not accept the idea that shifting cultivation could be part of a sound silvicultural practice. In order to resolve this, the conference, on the suggestion of Major Ralph Furse, the recruiting officer of the Colonial Office and a leading proponent of forestry, decided to set up a committee of ‘neutrals’—Furse himself, Troup, Jones, and W. A. Robertson, deputy conservator of forests, Burma—to examine this question. The committee began its report by defining shifting cultivation as ‘a system of temporary cultivation under which areas of forest are felled and burned. The clearings are temporarily cultivated with agricultural crops for one year, or a few years, and then abandoned’.⁶⁵ The committee identified two types of shifting cultivation, the recurrent and the nomadic. In the former ‘a sequence of felling is adopted, the same areas being cleared and cultivated again after a period of rest, during which the forest is allowed to recover to a certain extent’.⁶⁶ In the latter, ‘no regular sequence of felling is adopted, the same areas being permanently abandoned’.⁶⁷ ⁶³ Ainslie, Second Empire Forestry Conference, 333. ⁶⁴ Ainslie, ibid. 334. ⁶⁵ ‘Report of the Committee on Shifting Cultivation’, ibid. 407. ⁶⁶ Ibid. ⁶⁷ Ibid. 408.

The Imperial Environmentalist

177

The committee agreed with Ainslie and White that shifting cultivation caused both forest destruction and political damage. It concurred that shifting cultivation did result in the destruction of forest wealth as represented by timber, and induce a regrowth of less valuable species and vegetation of a more arid type. The committee reasoned further that in the recurrent type, population pressure tended to reduce the rest period, and if carried too far, resulted in the complete sterility and often denudation of the soil, whether for forestry or for agriculture. Moreover, it argued, shifting cultivation also caused political damage by inducing nomadic habits on the part of the local population, discouraging agricultural progress, and facilitating the evasion of taxation.⁶⁸ The committee was however pragmatic in its recommendations. In laying down a pancolonial policy guideline, it struck a compromise between the perspectives of White and Ainslie, on the one hand, and Battiscombe and Owen Jones, on the other. In doing so it differentiated between geographical contexts in the empire and was particularly cognizant of strategic economic and political issues. Addressing the case of West Africa first, the committee thus began by stating that the destruction of North American forests and its proximity to European and American markets meant that it was a potential source for the hardwood demands of these regions. Moreover, in times of war, it contained the nearest large forests to the United Kingdom under British control. The committee identified shifting cultivation as the major cause of forest destruction in the area, affecting not only timber production, but palm-oil production, which demanded moist soil conditions, and agriculture—on account of the ‘sterilization’ of soil. It went on to recommend that shifting cultivation be replaced by systems of permanent agriculture. It recommended further that the procedure to constitute forest reserves be accelerated; that the extension of existing rights or the accrual of new rights to shifting cultivation be prohibited in areas proposed for reservation; and that forest officers be given power to deal summarily with the infringements of regulations concerned with the control of shifting cultivation.⁶⁹ The committee, however, urged that, where possible, full use be made of shifting cultivation as an aid to the propagation of valuable species over suitable areas after exploitation. To this end, it recommended the formation of forest villages for the local supply of forest labour. The committee made a similar recommendation for Ceylon, for which it recommended ⁶⁸ Ibid. 407–8.

⁶⁹ Ibid. 408–10.

178

The Imperial Environmentalist

that shifting cultivation be used to assemble marketable timber stands in forest reserves, and gradually be eliminated and replaced by permanent wet- and dry-soil cultivation in other areas.⁷⁰ For East Africa, the committee ratified the existing policy of extending controlled shifting cultivation in reserved forests, stating that it would materially assist in increasing the forest wealth of the colony by affording a cheap and efficient means of propagating the more valuable species of trees and by increasing the supply of local forest labour.⁷¹ Finally for India, it stated that existing legislation was adequate and recommended that protection against shifting cultivation could therefore be extended by reserving the land which ought to be maintained under forests. It also urged the formation of forest villages for the practice of controlled shifting cultivation inside reserves as a silvicultural operation.⁷² The resolution adopted by the conference unanimously approved the recommendations made by the committee. It stated that the practice of shifting cultivation was a serious menace except when controlled as an integral part of forest management. It stated however that if controlled from a forestry point of view, shifting cultivation was a useful and necessary tool in silvicultural operations. It went on to urge governments to ‘take such measures as may be necessary to deal with the situation’ in cognizance of the particular demands of each geographical and ecological area and political context in the empire.⁷³ The debate on shifting cultivation policy was basically about trying to reconcile the paradigmatic goals of forestry with regionally specific problems. While there was consensus over the former, there was considerable dispute over the latter. The disputes were resolved by agreeing on the paradigmatic goals of forestry while being pragmatic when it came to the specifics. Thus, shifting cultivation was deemed bad because it potentially affected the revenue that the state could accrue from forests—from the sale of hardwood and other products. However, if controlled, it could be useful in some cases, especially in contexts where the cost of employing labour for artificial plantations could be avoided by a contractual agreement with shifting cultivators, whereby they would provide labour for plantations free in exchange for being allowed to cultivate in forest lands chosen by foresters. The basis of such an agreement stemmed from silvicultural considerations that reflected the predominant ideological orientation of continental forestry which, needless to say, resonated with ⁷⁰ ‘Report of the Committee on Shifting Cultivation’, 410. ⁷¹ Ibid. ⁷² Ibid. 410–11. ⁷³ Resolution 10, ‘Shifting Cultivation’, ibid. 386–7.

The Imperial Environmentalist

179

the priorities of the colonial state, even at the expense of the local peoples. It is this shared ideological orientation that allowed foresters like Battiscombe on the one hand and White on the other, coming as they did from different regional experiences, to agree on a pan-colonial policy guideline. It is also this orientation that informed their approach to the second of the issues being discussed in this section, soil erosion.

5.2.2. Foresters and the Politics of Soil Erosion In 1943, the soil conservation board of the government of Palestine issued an annual calendar with a rather unusual theme. The four scenes therein, and the captions beside them, sought to draw public attention to soil conservation. They offered the reader a choice between the utopia of a garden and the dystopia of a desert. In essence, the choice rested on whether to allow goats—deemed a symbol of bad human husbanding of nature—to destroy the vegetation, or indeed to take proactive measures, such as tree plantations on sand dunes and fields. This calendar was symptomatic of an important Zeitgeist during the interwar years globally. In the colonial world from the mid 1930s onward, colonial officials—bureaucrats, agriculturists, irrigation engineers, and foresters—had begun to short themselves hoarse about the problem, which, they claimed, had stated to threaten not just the physical environment but ultimately the colonial economy.⁷⁴ Similarly, in the United States, following the Dust Bowl, the issue of soil erosion became part of popular culture, thanks, in part, to the writings of literary luminaries like John Steinbeck. Soil erosion was also the locus of a new environmentalist sentiment, expressed, for example, in the work of the influential William Vogt, a sentiment that began to rival, in terms of policy impact, that of the conservation ideologues of the progressivist era.⁷⁵ Moreover, the work of the newly established soil science research centres at the major land grant colleges began to attract worldwide attention, creating an invisible college of scientific consensus. Many British colonial scientists corresponded with their American counterparts, and some even arranged to visit and work in the labs of senior scientists in institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley.⁷⁶ ⁷⁴ See e.g. RHO MSS Afr. S. 2024 5/4; RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 457; RHO MSS Medit. S. 23; RHO MSS W. Ind. S. 58; RHO MSS Medit. S. 22; RHO MSS Afr. S. 1741 (6); and RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 481. ⁷⁵ William Vogt, A Road to Survival (New York, 1948). ⁷⁶ See e.g. the correspondence between G. Milne and Clements Gilman (RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 457 (20)).

180

The Imperial Environmentalist

Figure 5.1. Government of Palestine soil erosion calendar.

Figure 5.2. Government of Palestine soil erosion calendar.

The Imperial Environmentalist

Figure 5.3. Government of Palestine soil erosion calendar.

Figure 5.4. Government of Palestine soil erosion calendar.

181

182

The Imperial Environmentalist

Given the sheer intensity and global nature of the problem of soil erosion, it is not surprising that there is a substantial body of historical literature on this phenomenon. The work on the British Empire thus far has focused largely on East, Central, and Southern Africa.⁷⁷ It begins by noticing the extent to which the problem of soil erosion had become an important issue in colonial environmental politics by the mid 1930s across these regions. In Rhodesia, for example, declining crop yields had prompted farmers to raise the issue of ‘soil wastage’ at the 1931 congress of the Rhodesia Agricultural Union. This had eventually resulted in the formation of the Soil Conservation Advisory Councils in 1934, which served as the first formal framework for communication between farmers and various governmental officials.⁷⁸ Throughout East and Central Africa and in the Colonial Office similarly, the problem of soil erosion had become an important issue of governmental concern throughout the 1930s.⁷⁹ In seeking to explain the origins of the official concern about soil conservation in the British Empire, the above-mentioned literature has identified four key issues. First, there were anxieties about security and land ownership among the white settler communities in the wake of the Great Depression.⁸⁰ Secondly, there was a wider international scientific concern with soil conservation following the dust bowl in the United States during the period.⁸¹ Thirdly, there was a great deal of worry about demographic increases (of both human and animal populations) and the consequence of this on the carrying capacity of land.⁸² Last, but by no means least, there were fears about desiccation, aridity, and impending drought.⁸³ ⁷⁷ Among the most important of the historical studies that appeared in the 1980s on soil conservation were: Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought’; W. Beinart, ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development: A Southern African Exploration, 1900–1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 11/1 (1984); R. Whitlow, ‘Soil Conservation History in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 43/4 (1988); J. E. G. Sutton, ‘Irrigation and Soil Conservation in African Agricultural History’, Journal of African History, 25 (1984); K. B. Showers and G. M. Malahleha, ‘Oral Evidence in Historical Environmental Impact Assessment: Soil Conservation in Lesotho in the 1930s and 1940s’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 18/2 (1992). ⁷⁸ Whitlow, ‘Soil Conservation History in Zimbabwe’, 299–300. ⁷⁹ Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought’, 322–43. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 323–4. ⁸¹ Ibid. Beinart, ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development’, 68–9. ⁸² Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought’, 331; Beinart, ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development’, 70–5. ⁸³ Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought’, 331–3; Showers and Malahleha, ‘Oral Evidence in Historical Environmental Impact Assessment’, 282; Beinart, ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development’, 58.

The Imperial Environmentalist

183

The response of colonial states to soil erosion, according to this analysis, was shaped by an approach that emphasized scientific research on various aspects of soil conservation. These studies, in turn, were oriented toward demonstrating the need for better husbandry under strictly controlled conditions of land management. Across East and Central Africa and other parts of the empire, therefore, such studies ‘demonstrated’ the need for enforcing specific technical methods of land management and in some areas, forcibly destocking overgrazed pastures.⁸⁴ According to this literature, the issue of soil erosion was seen by the colonial state largely as a technical problem with technological and engineering solutions.⁸⁵ As a result the entire debate on soil conservation was couched in terms that emphasized the role of the scientific expert. Moreover, given the social roots of the technological experts, the nature of their technical interventions was by no means value-neutral. On the contrary, they reflected the priorities of settler populations—mainly increasing agricultural production—and the biases of settlers against indigenous peoples. An important aspect of the conservationist ideology perpetrated at this time, therefore, was a concern to effect what might be termed technocratic closure, to restrict and control the access of local populations to natural resources under the guise of ecological improvement. The welfare of the soil, it has thus been argued, emerged as the ‘cutting edge of justification for intervention in peasant agriculture’.⁸⁶ The discussions on soil erosion at the Empire Forestry Conferences largely corroborate such an analysis. They began by painting a picture of impending ecological doom and were premissed upon a unanimous agreement that there was ‘no doubt about the effect of deforestation on erosion’.⁸⁷ Speaker after speaker from different parts of the empire declaimed about the seriousness of erosion in his region of the world. In India, the river beds in the Himalayan foothills and elsewhere had dried up because of deforestation.⁸⁸ In Ceylon, there was ‘not a river’ which had clear water during the rains. Rivers and streams were mostly ‘highways for conveying thousands of tons of the finest soil to the sea’.⁸⁹ ⁸⁴ Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought’, 334–8; Showers and Malahleha, ‘Oral Evidence in Historical Environmental Impact Assessment’, 285. ⁸⁵ Showers and Malahleha, ‘Oral Evidence in Historical Environmental Impact Assessment’, 285; Beinart, ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development’, 60; Michael Stocking, ‘Breaking New Ground’, in Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns (eds.), The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment (Oxford, 1996). ⁸⁶ Beinart, ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development’, 83. ⁸⁷ W. R. Jacob, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 186. ⁸⁸ E. O. Shebbeare, ibid. 189. ⁸⁹ A. B. Lushington, ibid. 191.

184

The Imperial Environmentalist

In parts of Australia, the destruction of forest cover had caused serious erosion on the hilly areas and water levels had been greatly lowered.⁹⁰ In New Zealand, steep hillsides were alternations of bare landslides and strips of scrub and bracken. Large areas of shingle moved slowly onto the flats and gradually raised the river beds, resulting in serious deterioration of the lands and frequently also in the aggrading of river beds followed by the wandering of the stream course. Moreover, the loss of the plant coverings on these slopes increased floods in rivers.⁹¹ In Canada, there were many instances where the effect of deforestation, particularly on run-offs, was pronounced.⁹² In Kenya and East Africa, entire hillsides had been denuded, and very little soil was left. Rivers that were once perennial were now only seasonal.⁹³ In South Africa, desiccation had been a threat ‘for a long time’. Hippo pools, for example, were no longer in existence except in the form of driedup holes in the river beds. Forests which had once formed the habitat of various wild animals such as buffalo and lions had disappeared and had been replaced by different types of vegetation, accompanied by arid conditions. Moreover, actual decline in rainfall had recently been measured: there was a marked diminution in rainfall over the past four to five decades.⁹⁴ Again, in Nigeria, particularly in the regions with average rainfall around ten to twelve inches per annum, there was terrible erosion. Strong winds in the winter months drove along, picked up soils from deforested areas, and deposited them either in dry stream beds to form sand drifts or in the larger rivers from where they washed down to form the Niger delta. In the rainy season that followed the long dry summer, the torrential rains carried the soil to the rivers which, after one downpour, resembled liquid mud, with the ‘consistency of thin porridge’. This porridge-like water was then carried down the rivers and, as the gradient decreased, either spread over the agricultural land or filled up the river beds. This in turn exposed a bigger surface area to evaporation and caused further deposition, thus creating a multiplier effect. The result was that most of northern Nigeria, which had once been covered by forests, was now drastically suffering ecological degradation and assuming desert-like conditions.⁹⁵ Having described the extent and seriousness of soil erosion across the empire, the discussants dwelt on the ecological and economic importance of soils. Soil, argued one forester, was ‘man’s capital’. Its deterioration led ⁹⁰ ⁹² ⁹⁴ ⁹⁵

E. Julius, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 192. ⁹¹ Phillip Turner, ibid. 189. E. H. Finlayson, ibid. 186. ⁹³ H. M. Gardner, ibid. 191. J. D. Keet, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 114–15. J. R. Ainslie, ibid. 118.

The Imperial Environmentalist

185

the way to a lower standard of living and, eventually, desertification. Erosion cut at the very roots of an economic structure. Soil and water conservation were thus issues that affected the community at large.⁹⁶ In making these points, many foresters had recourse to history. For example, C. G. Trevor, inspector-general of forests for India, argued: ‘If one compared the grandeur of ancient kingdoms with their present day decay and their ancient wealth with the amount produced today, one could only be driven to one conclusion, that the present decay of these countries was largely based on the deterioration of the moisture that lay in the earth.’ The palace of the ‘King of Kings’, Darius, in Susa was now in an uninhabited wilderness desert. Mesopotamia, which once produced all the revenues of Persia, had degenerated into a dreary waste. The hanging gardens of Babylon were now a ‘rubbish dump’, a result of the destruction of the forests of the hills and thus of the ‘finest irrigation system in the world’. Trevor claimed that the lessons of history showed that deforestation, by lowering the moisture content of the soil and thus decreasing the water supplies of the country, had done ‘more damage than any war and had resulted in the destruction of the greatest empires’.⁹⁷ In their diagnosis of the causes of soil erosion and depletion, the participating foresters invoked the Malthusian spectre. They pointed their fingers first at agricultural populations who, they claimed, were encroaching on forests. They argued that with demographic increase and the unavailability of more land for agriculture, there was an increasing pressure on marginal lands, including forests, for agricultural purposes and grazing. In Nyasaland, for example, ‘a dense and rapidly increasing population’ was increasingly moving towards lands that were of only limited and temporary agricultural value.⁹⁸ In the Gold Coast, the growth of population meant a rapid increase in the demand for land, and for the consequent destruction of woodlands. Forests there, it was claimed, were receding at the rate of 300 square miles per year.⁹⁹ The problem was similar in Nigeria and other parts of tropical Africa.¹⁰⁰ The ostensibly increasing conversion of forests and other marginal lands to agriculture was seen by foresters as producing the problem of soil erosion in three important ways. First, the use of forests and other lands not ideally suited for agriculture and the overcultivation of traditional agricultural lands meant that soils, across the tropical empire, were beginning seriously to deteriorate. The process of periodic reconditioning of the soils was being ⁹⁶ A. P. F. Hamilton, ibid. 80. ⁹⁸ J. B. Clements, ibid. 214. ¹⁰⁰ J. R. Ainslie, ibid. 217–19.

⁹⁷ C. G. Trevor, ibid. 109–10. ⁹⁹ H. W. Moore, ibid. 220.

186

The Imperial Environmentalist

critically disturbed.¹⁰¹ Secondly, methods of cultivation normally associated with sparse populations in regions of unlimited forests were increasingly being used by large anchored populations in areas of sparse forest. In Nyasaland, for example, finger millet was being grown by the ‘soil burning’ method although the people had become more or less anchored and had to use two- to three-year regrowths for burning rather than loppings from large trees. This led to an acceleration in the indiscriminate removal of natural vegetation and consequently in erosion and desiccation.¹⁰² Thirdly, overgrazing caused a great deal of destruction of vegetation and often prevented fresh seedlings from taking root.¹⁰³ In addition to identifying the cause of soil erosion as the ‘encroachment’ on forests by agricultural populations, foresters argued that it was also a consequence of poorly planned policies of settlement¹⁰⁴ and the unrestricted operations of timber companies whose practices drastically affected stream flow.¹⁰⁵ There was a considerable degree of unanimity among colonial foresters from different parts of the empire on how the problem of soil conservation was to be addressed. Three broad and often complementary types of approaches were suggested. The first envisaged technological fixes, such as bore-well digging, to generate irrigation. The second involved adopting various forms of coercive practices to ensure that local peoples co-operated with governmental policies. Such practices included measures such as the forced redistribution of entire populations. They also included the enactment of legislation to protect sensitive lands, such as watersheds, from agriculture and to curb practices seen as ecologically destructive, such as grass burning early in the season which led to fierce and uncontrolled fires. The third type of approach was to co-opt local peoples and practices. This approach varied considerably from one context to another. There was, to begin with, a call for education and practical demonstration. There was, in addition, the advocacy of methods of environmental management that involved local labour, such as the taung-ya system of regulating shifting cultivation. There was similarly an enthusiasm for methods such as the ‘three-field system’, wherein local cultivators were allowed to place two out of three fields under crops each season, allowing the third to regain some of its fertility; and systems such as rotational grazing, where, similarly, a third of the area was to be left ungrazed during the summer months. ¹⁰¹ J. R. Clements, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 214. ¹⁰² Ibid. 214–15. ¹⁰³ See. e.g. Dr Unwin, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 189 and J. R. Ainslie, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 118. ¹⁰⁴ Phillip Turner, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 189. ¹⁰⁵ E. H. Finlayson, ibid. 120.

The Imperial Environmentalist

187

Finally, there was the encouragement, in certain areas, of policies that encouraged the selection and allocation of village forest areas, using land least suited to agriculture. The idea was to give local peoples, in areas where scarcity of wood was being experienced, an interest in protection by placing forested lands directly under the control of village headmen.¹⁰⁶ In discussing possible approaches to alleviating the problem of soil erosion, foresters were guided by two main considerations. The first was to ensure maximum productivity and the best possible use of forest lands. In order to do this, foresters advocated the conducting of detailed surveys of land classification to determine the most economic use to which each portion of the catchment should be put, and a delineation of the sectors which needed to be maintained permanently as forests.¹⁰⁷ There was, argued a forester from India, a need for ‘land planning schemes to produce best land use, get the necessities of life from land to get maximum production out of it and to put each land to the right purpose’.¹⁰⁸ Similar views were expressed by a forester from British Guinea who argued that the issue was largely one of economics, a question of which crop and practice was best suited given social and ecological conditions. There was, he argued, a need for a proper study of the economics of marginal lands. There was no reason why under certain conditions practices such as shifting cultivation could not be made more profitable economic propositions than forest crops. It was therefore urgent, he argued, for proper economic surveys to be undertaken to determine what the optimum yield from these lands was.¹⁰⁹ Underlying the perspectives on the problem of soil erosion advocated by the empire forestry community at the conferences was the conception that forests constituted a productive entity distinct from others, especially agriculture. A related idea was that agriculture was not necessarily the best form of land use. Such perspectives, as pointed out in earlier chapters, had been articulated by supporters of forestry from the early nineteenth century and had become an important element of the colonial forester’s mentality since the days of Brandis. ¹⁰⁶ What is particularly notable is the unanimity of approaches from foresters from different parts of the empire. Each of the above approaches was suggested in different ways by the various foresters participating in the discussion: J. B. Clements, from Nyasaland; J. R. Ainslie, from Nigeria; H. W. Moor, from the Gold Coast; R. W. Thornton from Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland; Prof. R. S. Troup of the Imperial Forestry Institute and formerly, the Indian forest service; E. A. Garland from India; G. N. Sale from Trinidad; D. G. Thomas from Sierra Leone; F. M. Oliphant of the Colonial Forestry Services. ¹⁰⁷ A. V. Galbraith, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 113. ¹⁰⁸ A. P. F. Hamilton, ibid. 81. ¹⁰⁹ C. Swabey, ibid. 83.

188

The Imperial Environmentalist

Significantly, similar ideas began to be expressed by forest officers recruited directly from the empire, as opposed to the United Kingdom. Harnam Singh-Pathania, a forester of Indian origin, for example, argued that good land management had to be based on proper surveys. He argued that land ought to be examined by units of areas and that any areas not fit for cultivation ought to be set aside for afforestation. The bigger lands, he argued further, ought to be transferred to the forest department and the smaller ones converted into village forests. He advocated the establishment of land utilization boards to oversee such processes. Moreover, he urged that attempts be made to convince other departments about the need to set up small forest areas which would meet the fuelwood needs of local populations, thereby saving farmland manure now being used as the only fuel.¹¹⁰ Another aspect to the foresters’ perspective on the issue of soil erosion stemmed from their understanding of the ‘indirect effects’ of forests. They argued that mature forests are the best preserver of both climate and soils, and good soil the best reservoir of water.¹¹¹ The solution of the problem of erosion therefore was to create forest reserves wherein denuded areas would be reforested. Here the basic principle was to preserve vegetation and to increase the area of forests. Another principle was to create subsidiary control measures, such as river plantings, and to establish minor structures on the upper reaches of streams to prevent further erosion, pending improvement to highland sectors.¹¹² There was concern also for the adequate protection of forest areas from fire and for the revocation of methods under which highland areas were leased for grazing.¹¹³ The response of foresters to agriculture-related issues such as soil erosion was largely shaped by the belief that they were simultaneously economic producers and environmental guardians. Such a mindset, as argued earlier, has its roots in the very disciplinary ethos of continental forestry, in which colonial foresters were trained and which they imbibed. Colonial foresters therefore saw their duty as that of diagnosing such problems quickly and solving them effectively. To adapt a phrase initially used to describe colonial conservationists in general, theirs was an ideology of ‘doom and resurrection’ stemming from the fear that but for urgent action marginal lands, especially forests, would be taken over and destroyed.¹¹⁴ Moreover, implicit in their vision—as vividly illustrated by the government of Palestine calendar—was the conception of themselves as saviours. ¹¹⁰ Harnam Singh-Pathania, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 104. ¹¹¹ J. D. Keet, ibid. 116. ¹¹² A. V. Galbraith, ibid. 113. ¹¹³ Ibid. ¹¹⁴ Beinart, ‘Introduction: The Politics of Colonial Conservation’.

189

The Imperial Environmentalist

The approach of the imperial forestry community also reflected their underlying technocratic rationality. To begin with, they identified the problem of soil erosion as primarily an environmental one. They never raised the question of the social reasons, other than demographic, which forced people to engage in ostensibly ecologically destructive practices. Their diagnosis was often couched in patronizing terms, blaming traditional peoples for mismanaging the lands. Their purported solutions in turn were either directly technological or involved various forms of technocratic closure, ranging from outright exclusion to systems that controlled and channelled local ecological practices. In this, they were similar to other colonial technological communities which began to advocate conservation at that time. Indeed, their approach very clearly fits the chart made by Piers Blaikie illustrating what he calls the ‘classic’ or ‘colonial’ approach to agro-ecological conflicts (Table 5.1). Table 5.1. The technocratic perception: environmental protection Problem

Symptoms

Causes

Solutions

Consequences

Family planning

Lack of response

Education; Change attitudes; Demonstrate new ideas; Environmental education and EIA

Inappropriate knowledge ⫽ frustration Short-term palliatives Rationalizing oppression

Inadequate legislation

Tougher legislation

Institutional weaknesses

Integration Ministry of the Environment

Oppression and polarisation protect environment against people New and more efficient ways of avoiding problem

Region X has an Desertification environmental crisis Deforestation Soil erosion

Overpopulation; overgrazing; 冦 overcultivation Ignorance; tradition; Catchment loss culture; inappropriate Silting practices Decline of rivers Lack of environmental awareness

冦

Decline of food production

Source: Adapted from P. Blaikie, The Political Ecology of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries (London, 1985), 57.

190

The Imperial Environmentalist

5.2.3. Wider Issues The diagnosis of the nature and causes of colonial agro-ecological crises made by foresters at the Empire Forestry Conferences during the period 1923–52 indicates a sharp critique of the attitudes adopted by other colonial governmental agencies, technical and non-technical. There was, to begin with, belief that governmental bureaucrats could not comprehend the extent of such problems. It was argued that governments did not appreciate the indirect advantages of forests since they seemed inclined to regard their forest properties ‘more and more from the monetary or financial point of view’.¹¹⁵ The public were similarly perceived as not being aware of the importance of the connection between erosion and deforestation and the impact of this on water supply.¹¹⁶ Delegates pointed out that there were, in some parts of the empire, alarmists who argued that forests were not the most efficient ways of conserving the water supplies.¹¹⁷ In addition to governments and the public, foresters at the Empire Forestry Conferences also blamed other colonial technical communities, such as engineers and geologists. In Nigeria, one forester claimed, geologists had begun to argue that there were no records of fall of water level and that there was no evidence of desiccation. However, he pointed out that the old historical evidence corroborated the beliefs of the foresters and not that of the geologists.¹¹⁸ Similarly, a South African delegate claimed that in his country, reservoir engineers, realizing that all plant growth, like all living matter, must use up water to live and grow, had begun to demand that catchment areas be paved with bare rock or land covered with malthoid. He pointed out that such colonial officials did not realize that in the absence of filtered storage, which made up water supply and also the control and utility thereof, it was not vegetation, but soil, as a product of decomposition of vegetation and of climate, that was the reservoir for rainfall.¹¹⁹ Finally, in Canada, a great deal of the problem of stream flow caused by timber operations and pulp, lumber, and paper manufacture was, argued foresters, a result of engineers not appreciating the importance of forests.¹²⁰ The worst criticism was, however, reserved for agricultural officers and populations engaged in agriculture. Speakers from across the empire claimed that agricultural scientists often ignored the advice given by ¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁷ ¹¹⁸ ¹²⁰

Richmond, Third Empire Forestry Conference, 188. ¹¹⁶ Gay, ibid. 193. J. D. Keet, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 116. J. R. Ainslie, ibid. 119. ¹¹⁹ J. D. Keet, ibid. 114. E. H. Finlayson, ibid. 123.

The Imperial Environmentalist

191

foresters. They also argued that agriculturists were ignorant and apathetic about the importance of forests and forestry. This perception was furthered by the frustration that colonial governments often preferred the views of agricultural officers over those of foresters on land. Some delegates therefore launched themselves into a severe condemnation of agriculturists: At the very beginning, man existed without agriculture; he subsisted upon the forests. It was the agriculturist who dispossessed the forest and raped the earth wherever he went. The forest services must now accept the responsibility to repair the sins of the agriculturists. I suggest that foresters should resume their place of being the complete conservationists . . . When I recall how . . . forests were pushed aside, how governments of the day, through their land departments, threw open sections to all and sundry with the idea merely of dispossessing the unemployed and of cashing the capital resources of the country, then I find myself believing that only by expression of the utmost energy of the Forest Services both in defence and offence can we redeem our traditional responsibilities to the earth.

Although colonial foresters were quick to blame other communities, they themselves refused to entertain criticism of their practices made by colonial officials who were not foresters. A case in point was an exchange between foresters, agriculturists, and other scientists on the issue of the impact of exotics in Southern Africa, and particularly their role in producing aridity and erosion. John Phillips, a professor of the University of Witwatersrand, argued that in the semi-arid parts of South Africa, stands of exotic species such as gums, wattles, and some pines resulted in washing and erosion whereas those of natural species did not.¹²¹ He argued that while springs had ceased flowing in exotic plantations, springs and streams in the open veld, where that veld had been looked after, did not cease flowing. Further, research had explicitly shown that gums and wattles had water requirements and rates of water usage and transpiration considerably greater than indigenous species. This was true especially of the pines. Moreover, argued Phillips, agriculturists, pastoralists, and horticulturists could point out that grass herbage and fruit trees were either stunted and poorly bearing or that they died altogether when within twenty to thirty feet of shelter belts of gums. In addition, there was evidence that much of the litter that fell from these exotics was not incorporated into the soil, but lay on the surface for a long period, ultimately largely disappearing in a gaseous form, not being incorporated into the humus of the soil. Given this kind of evidence, argued Phillips, it ¹²¹ Prof. John Phillips, ibid. 124.

192

The Imperial Environmentalist

was imperative that these matters be looked into ‘scientifically and dispassionately’.¹²² There was, he contended, need for critical, long-term experimental research into these matters, including issues such as the relation of planting to water supply, the effect of habitat development studies on the soil, and the relation between afforestation and succession.¹²³ In particular, he argued that it was a ‘mark of defeat’ if, being charged with the silviculture of the native forests, exotics had to be invoked for management when other methods could be found for the purpose.¹²⁴ A similar sentiment was echoed by others. Roberts, a South African engineer, for example, stated that from the point of view of anti-erosion work, indigenous bush was of great advantage because indigenous forests did not draw on the water in the soil as heavily as the exotics did. Also, he argued, their growth was such that they did not stand alone. They were accompanied by all forms of shrubs, grasses, and other vegetation which blended together to form a complete protective mat.¹²⁵ Foresters, however, totally dismissed such ideas. J. A. Keet, a member of the South African forest department, who spoke first, made a spirited defence of exotics, which he claimed had been criticized by many of his compatriots. Denying that in planting exotics South African foresters had ignored an ecological outlook, he argued that just as a farmer does not plant the exotic apple in the low veld or the exotic citrus on the high veld, foresters did not plant exotic custer pine on the coast land of Zululand or the exotic gum on the mountains of the Free State. The issue, he claimed, was not whether exotics were good or not but under what conditions they were appropriate. Indeed, the South African forester could ‘teach the world something about the knack of matching species to growing sites’. The South African forester, he claimed, worked in conformity with ecological principles. He stated further that there was no evidence to indicate that exotic trees acclimatized to their new home were any more desiccators of their climate than they were in their native habitat. Moreover, he claimed, the exotic trees in South Africa, the gum, the pine, and the wattle, often acted as ‘pioneers’ to indigenous species, even to the moisture loving ones, and showed more clearly than any measure of soil measure, light intensities, and temperatures that ‘we are on the right lines with our exotic species’.¹²⁶ In response, some delegates who were non-foresters steered a middle course. Carlson, an elderly South African agricultural officer, for example, stated that the issue was not one of indigenous versus exotic species ¹²² Prof. John Phillips, Fourth Empire Forestry Conference, 125. ¹²³ Ibid. 127. ¹²⁴ Ibid. 126. ¹²⁵ Roberts, ibid. 131. ¹²⁶ J. D. Keet, ibid. 117.

The Imperial Environmentalist

193

but of the right mixture of species. Exotics, he argued, could be deployed provided they were mixed adequately with others.¹²⁷ The forestry community however rejected such arguments and provided unanimous applause for the hard-liners like Keet.¹²⁸

5.2.4. Resonant Themes The discussions on shifting cultivation and soil erosion at the Empire Forestry Conferences show that empire foresters approached such questions largely from their disciplinary standpoint as foresters. They emphatically articulated and argued for an explicit paradigm of dealing with the forests of the empire, one that emphasized the silvicultural goals of continental forestry—in turn geared to the needs of a modernizing empire. The discussion on shifting cultivation shows that rather than being unilaterally opposed to shifting cultivation, as existing historical studies have claimed, colonial foresters located the issue within wider priorities of forest management, and especially the question of the political economy of forest regeneration. Their approach ultimately was to control and adapt what was otherwise considered an ecologically retrograde practice to enable them to manage forests according to the principles of continental forestry. Shifting cultivation, with appropriate pragmatic controls, thereby emerged as a mainstay of pan-colonial forest policy. Again, in the case of the problem of soil conservation, it was a commitment to continental European forestry principles that broadly dictated the approach of British colonial foresters. In short, what distinguished the approach of foresters to the issue of soil erosion, as with shifting cultivation, was their predominant concern with promoting the cardinal forestry principles and their self-perception as environmental guardians. The deliberations on shifting cultivation and soil conservation at the conferences also reaffirm the traditional biases of foresters against local peoples. People on the move, such as swidden cultivators, were especially seen as doubly immoral—in the sense of being bad citizens (evading taxes) and in being environmentally profligate. What is interesting, however, is that there were a different set of biases against those of their own kin who were not foresters. For example, white settlers were castigated for their ostensibly wasteful and apathetic attitudes towards forest resources, as were governments and civil servants who did not as yet subscribe to the vision of the forestry community. The discussions thus posed ¹²⁷ Carlson, ibid. 131.

¹²⁸ The discussion on exotics, ibid.

194

The Imperial Environmentalist

the differences in attitudes between foresters and other people—white or native—in categorical terms: non-foresters, including members of legislatures, were wrong or misguided and therefore had to be educated and civilized. Such views arguably had their roots in the growing scientism and technocracy of the empire forestry community. It is also possible that the increasing convergence of scientific disciplines in the forestry realm in the twentieth century contributed to this feeling of superiority.¹²⁹ The differences between foresters and others on shifting cultivation and soil erosion also show that the colonial state was as differentiated and desegregated as it was homogeneous. Indeed, although the basic response of colonial foresters was in many respects similar to that of the ‘colonial officials’ described in the analysis made in recent work on colonial environmental history, their motivations lay in a concern systematically to manage classified forest lands (actual and potential) according to the principles of forest science. Seen from this overall perspective, the approaches of other colonial officials, such as agriculturists, appeared to foresters as fundamentally flawed. 5.3. CONCLUSION Perhaps the most significant data that emerges from the analysis of the debates at the conferences is the incredible degree to which foresters in the British Empire in the first half of the twentieth century pursued and tried to implement a silvicultural, management, and utilization agenda that had first been developed within the context of continental Europe and then transplanted to British India in the later nineteenth century. Implicit within this agenda was a total commitment to the wider matrix of relations between science, technology, the economy, society, and the natural environment, embedded within the continental European programme. Thus, the discussions on these technical aspects of forest management were largely an elaboration and articulation of the German forestry paradigm—an attempt to solve particular technical problems ¹²⁹ Of particular importance here is the role of ecology. There was active correspondence between R. S. Troup and A. Tansley on teaching botany and plant ecology to foresters in 1932 (OU FOR/SF/8/2). Reading the papers of the various colonial scientists of the period (see n.75 for references), it is also evident that the issue of environmental change was being approached with an increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary work. Another point of note is that this was also the era of great surveys in the environmental sciences—almost everywhere, there were studies that explored the terrain, both intellectual as well as physical. There was also a sense of crisis and confidence—stemming from a coding of agro-ecological problems as significant, as well as the sense that they could be addressed through good science and public policy based on scientific advice.

The Imperial Environmentalist

195

arising out of an attempt to adapt German forestry methods to the different ecological contexts in the empire. Such problem-solving attempts were largely attempts at resolving the tension between the generality of the programmatic mandate—to implement the continental system in the empire—and the particularity of the ecological problems in specific regions. It is important to note that the resolution of this tension almost always affirmed the paradigmatic mandate. This observation is significant in light of attempts by contemporary historians to argue that imperial forestry practices were site specific, varied from one colonial context, and were not generalizable. While these commentators are indeed correct to argue for the importance of place and time, their region-specific focus biases, and often blinds them to the bigger drama being played out across a more global stage.¹³⁰ The existence of the bigger drama is evident across a range of topics discussed at the conferences. To take one example, on education and research, the debates show imperial foresters explicitly thinking beyond the specific needs and issues of their respective regions. On the contrary, they cogently articulated a framework that was centrally co-ordinated and, in doing so, continued a tradition of policy thinking which, as argued in Chapter 4, had been an important element of the empire forestry community’s agenda since the late nineteenth century. The wider relevance of the empire-wide drama for local problems was, however, most evident in the deliberations over shifting cultivation and soil erosion. In the case of the former issue, the manner of resolution is itself illustrative: in resolving the problem, the foresters were driven, not by dogma, as suggested by some historians, but purely by pragmatic considerations that reflected both their indoctrination in the continental forestry tradition and their wider commitment to developing forest resources for industry and imperial expansion in specific regions of the empire. Significantly, despite their biases against swidden cultivators, foresters engaged in a protracted debate on the silvicultural utility of shifting cultivation and, for some parts of the empire, resolved to adopt shifting cultivation as an intrinsic aspect of silvicultural policy. Again, on the issue of soil erosion, it was a similar commitment to German forestry principles that broadly dictated the approach of the forestry delegates at the conferences. Indeed, what distinguished the approach of foresters to such issues was their pre-eminent concern to promote the cardinal forestry principles of the balance sheet, sustained yield, and as environmental protection for the long term. ¹³⁰ See especially, Saberwal, Pastoral Politics, and Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests.

196

The Imperial Environmentalist

The latter point, the emergence of a strongly articulated sense of stewardship based upon the ethic of efficiency and conservation, is yet another theme that resonates through time. What is significant, though, is that by the first half of the twentieth century, this ethic had—perhaps bolstered by successes in science and technology and the growing clout of professional scientific communities—metamorphosed into an ideological commitment to technocratic modes of solving human-ecological problems. An example in this regard was the manner in which the soil erosion problem was approached. Concomitant with a technocratic mindset was a growing scientism. The biases against people on the move, such as swidden cultivators— whose land use practices were traditionally looked upon by foresters as immoral and environmentally profligate—were reaffirmed. Significantly, it is worth reiterating that the conference deliberations also reveal biases against almost anyone who was not a professionally trained forester. They included white settlers, civil servants, and other governmental officials. The deliberations on fire, shifting cultivation, and soil erosion, for example, illustrate the extent to which foresters saw themselves as fundamentally superior to other communities—native, white settler, governments, and legislatures—on the question of how best to manage forests. Specifically, the discussions on soil erosion underlined sharp differences in approach and perspective between foresters, in partnership with some agricultural scientists—both of whom had internalized the sense of crisis provoked by the Dust Bowl and the Depression in the United States— and other elements of the colonial technical and non-technical bureaucracy. Unlike the case of shifting cultivation, wherein the tensions between programmatic generality and problematic specificity were resolved by negotiation, empire foresters were joined in consensus on both how to define the problem of soil erosion as well as how to resolve it. In the process, foresters increasingly blamed other colonial officials, including those from other technical communities, for perpetrating ecologically destructive practices. Such attitudes, articulated strongly for the first time in these conferences, have endured to this day, and thereby set the context for the great contests over the control of forests that were played out in the second half of the twentieth century.¹³¹

¹³¹ See e.g. Westoby, The Purpose of Forests, 21.

6 The Contested Legacy Amidst the turmoil of popular uprisings against the draft forest bill in India in the mid 1980s, the venerable Claude Alvares wrote about the continuities between the past and the present in the following terms: Without the ideology of modern science, imperialism would have been compelled to appear without its clothes . . . Colonial science has survived colonialism’s formal departure from the third world in the form of the Trojan Horse.¹

This contested legacy of colonial eco-development was the point of departure of this book. The purpose of this chapter is to undertake a quick stocktaking of the major findings and contemplate some of their wider implications.

6.1. THE NATURE OF COLONIAL FORESTRY: A REVISIONIST ACCOUNT A good place to start is one of the main goals of the monograph, to explore the agendas of resource management in colonial scientific forestry institutions. The central discovery here was the vital importance of the continental European forestry tradition. From the latter part of the early modern period, there was, in European science, a tradition of thought and research premissed upon hypotheses about adverse anthropogenic environmental and climatic change. The colonial scientists campaigning for forest conservation in the first half of the nineteenth century were informed by this tradition. The agendas of the professionally trained foresters who succeeded the early forestry advocates, and who staffed the forest departments from the ¹ C. Alvares, ‘Science, Colonialism and Violence: A Luddite View’, in Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence, 90.

198

The Contested Legacy

mid nineteenth century onward, reflected their priorities as progeny of the continental European forestry tradition. Not surprisingly, the consequences of their commitments—large timber monocultures and coercive and repressive practices toward local peoples—bore significant similarities to the events that unfolded following the spread of the modern forestry paradigm within Europe. Imperial forestry in the twentieth century was, in large measure, an attempt to consolidate on the achievements of the nineteenth. The first two Empire Forestry Conferences saw foresters emphatically articulating the agenda put forward by their forebears in the previous century, albeit with some new embellishments that twentieth-century science provided them. This broad outlook did not change much, even as the century wore on. The post-war context did introduce new variables into the discussion, such as provincial devolution in different regions of the empire and, following the Great Depression, the spectre of ecological fragility and agrarian collapse. The debates on forest policy were however largely an extension of those that had taken place in the first and the second Empire Forestry Conferences. In essence, they were attempts at reiterating the basic conviction held by the forestry community—that the best way to manage empire forests was to place them under the strict control of colonial forest departments backed by strong legislation. Notably, this conviction had been born in continental Europe and was one of the cornerstones of that tradition. The significance of the continental European forestry paradigm for the colonial context was particularly evident in the deliberations on the technical aspects of forest management, such as silviculture, production, and utilization. These debates were effectively about what Thomas Kuhn has termed ‘paradigm articulation’, the attempt to solve specific technical problems arising out of an attempt to adapt European forestry principles to the varied ecological contexts prevalent within the empire. Again, it is important to recognize here that colonial foresters approached novel socio-ecological problems such as shifting cultivation and soil erosion from the paradigmatic mindset of continental forestry. The advent of the continental system of forest management in the British Empire also resulted, to use Lewis Mumford’s terminology, in the introduction of an authoritarian technics in the realm of forests.² An example is the attitude of colonial foresters toward local populations, whose claims were ² Mumford, Technics and Civilization.

The Contested Legacy

199

deemed illegitimate because of their ostensible scientific and technological backwardness.³ Such perceptions and biases had their origins in Europe and were transported by foresters when they went to the colonial periphery. They were buttressed by the growing scientism and technocracy of the empire forestry community, resulting often in a feeling of superiority justified by the idea that, as scientists, they were better educated on matters of forest use. An important consequence of this hubris was the outbreak of conflicts between foresters and the other bureaucratic and technical professional communities of the state administrative apparatus. The bone of contention was political authority for the forester. Foresters responded by organizing themselves into an effective and potent lobby group. The manner in which the Empire Forestry Conferences were mooted and staged is an illustration of this approach. The conferences were the outcome of effective lobbying, which strategically preyed upon the wartime concerns about a wood procurement crisis. Once the Empire Forestry Conferences were sanctioned, colonial foresters used the fora to make their case before the leading politicians and decision makers of the empire. In doing so, they adopted strong moral language to criticize British attitudes toward forests and argued that Pax Britannica had thus far been an ecological disaster with explicit economic ramifications. Implicit in the critique was the contention that had it not been for the efforts of the empire forestry community, the degree of the problem would have been greater.

6.2. POSTSCRIPT: WIDENING THE ARGUMENT The aforementioned findings speak forcefully to three widely held and interrelated theories about the history of imperial science and environmentalism. At the outset, they problematize a commonly believed notion that imperial policies in the colonized tropical world resulted in a socioecological watershed. Although the ecological and social relations defined by forestry in the British Empire were extractive and ‘colonial’, respectively, their implicit modes of production cannot be understood simply by invoking cultural ³ For a full blown analysis of such a perception in world history, see Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men.

200

The Contested Legacy

or economic imperialism as an explanandum, as is so often done in the historiography of forestry in the British Empire. At the cost of repeating the point, it is worth remarking that the ‘environmental imperialism’ of colonial forestry was at least partially a result of the transplantation into a colonial realm of the social and political contexts that had defined forestry in Europe in the first place. Put differently, there are significant family resemblances between continental and colonial forestry—and these similarities force a more critical examination of the socio-ecological system that characterized continental forestry.⁴ Such an examination indicates that forestry as a technology was not merely a product of colonial expediency. On the contrary, it provided a context for colonial politics just as it was shaped and moulded by it. Similarly, colonial foresters were not mere ‘servants of the state’; they were carriers of a culture of technology that had its origins in another setting, even if the imperial context exacerbated the impact of their actions. Moreover, against the backdrop of the debate over whether or not colonial forestry constituted a watershed in the environmental history of the British Empire, it is important to note that scientific forestry, as a regime of resource management, was designed to be a major watershed even in continental Europe, its place of birth. A second important theoretical assumption in the historiography of colonial science that the foregoing account problematizes is the distinction traditionally drawn between western and non-western science. In seeking to distinguish European sciences and technics and non-western knowledge systems and practices, scholars often argue that modern European scientific and technological systems were characterized by an attention to method and a concern with universalizing knowledge claims. Nonwestern, indigenous knowledge systems, in this view, are looked upon as having practical, local, relevance, but little possibility of universal validity. The analysis in Chapter 2, however, helps stake out a different approach. To recapitulate, it argued that the birth of continental European forestry meant a great displacement—the disembedding of indigenous knowledge systems in Europe from their traditional or historical contexts. It also entailed the reassembly of some pieces of earlier practices, such as local knowledge of the properties of particular species and soils, within the socio-economic and political grid defined by newly emerging frameworks of political economy and state making, such as cameralism. The ⁴ The term ‘family resemblance’ is used here in the sense defined by Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations.

The Contested Legacy

201

novelty of the new forestry, thus, lay in its explicit socio-economic construction—as a scientific and technological system designed to promote the goals of the emerging doctrines of modern political economy. This construction produced what it was designed to. It created new landscapes, characterized by monocultures; and it spawned new relationships between nature, national economy, science and technology, local people, and the state. It also nurtured a new social cadre—professional experts, whose mandate answered, not directly to local peoples or contexts, but instead to the goals of a reconstituted national economy. The great transformation of nature and society brought forth by cameralist political economy was designed to emancipate people, among other things, by scientifically mobilizing resources and, thereby, developing the economy. A product of the enlightenment, it drew deeply upon the classical idea of perfectibility and the theological traditions of dominion and responsibility. As a result, doctrines of political economy, such as cameralism, were justified and promoted as harbingers of progress. The very fact that they brought material prosperity in their wake served further to bolster the progressivist ideology. However, as the French contestations over German silviculture indicate, the socio-ecological impact of technics based on and embedded within modern political economy also spawned what became a long tradition of dissent, or a double movement against modernist approaches to resource management.⁵ Put differently, although modern forestry developed novel observational, inferential, and validation techniques, its fundamental difference, relative to the preceding indigenous practices, was in the manner in which it related society and nature, science and technology, and economy and governance. The transfer of modern European technics such as forestry to colonial contexts brought forth similar transformations in relationships between economy and science and nature and society. The fact that these technologies, knowledge systems, and economic regimes were embedded simultaneously in the extractive inequities of imperialism meant that they were doubly colonial and coercive. Although the ‘western’ versus ‘non-western’ distinction drawn by historians is undoubtedly salient, it is equally important to recognize that underlying it is a critical distinction between ‘modern’ and pre-modern technics. A third important and commonly held distinction that the foregoing account blurs is that between the colonial and the post-colonial. This ⁵ The phrase ‘double movement’ is used in the sense defined by Karl Polanyi in Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, ed. George Dalton (New York, 1968).

202

The Contested Legacy

distinction is drawn upon the belief, often more imagined than real, that the decline of formal empires marked the beginning of the end of the socio-economic relations that had been engendered within imperialism. Needless to say, the claim of such a disjuncture often formed the basis for the legitimacy of the nationalist governments of the newly independent states. Indeed, such governments, which rode on the backs of anticolonial struggles, rhetorically claimed power on manifestos of facilitating emancipation. There is a significant and legitimate history to support such claims. In the aftermath of the First World War, the goals of colonial science began to be focused and defined. The question, put crudely, was how to do the business of colonial exploitation without inviting a backlash from the natives. As Lugard put it in articulating his dual mandate argument with reference to the African case: That the economic development of African territories is no less a duty than that of securing the welfare of natives is not questioned. The problem is how these two duties should be reconciled without on the one hand subordinating policy to a purely utilitarian outlook, or on the other hand adopting a standpoint too exclusively philanthropic.⁶

By the end of the Second World War, a new set of concerns began to influence the debate about science policy. These were mooted by officials influenced by Fabian socialism.⁷ Driven, among other things, by guilt stemming from the recognition of the ‘generosity’ of the colonies, which were contributing approximately £17 million a year, members of the influential Fabian Colonial Bureau engaged in a great deal of soul searching about Britian’s tropical responsibilities.⁸ They concluded that the way forward was to help contribute to the ‘development’ of the colonies. An excellent illustration of their conception of colonial development is the following excerpt from the ‘Partners in Progress’ speech to the Africa ⁶ See Lugard (4): RHO MSS Afr. S. 1829, Box 2, file 2 (1925), p. 39. It is important to note here that in the African context, the question of science policy was also closely tied to concerns of demographic collapse owing to diseases contracted either due to travel or through the new labour regimen that Africans ostensibly could not bear. Moreover, there were new emerging diseases, and it was feared that all these factors contributed to a shrinking labour pool. It was widely believed that the answer lay both in regulating labour supply and in spreading development. See e.g. ‘Notes of Conversation with Dr. Wicliffe Rose, 27th October 1925’ (MSS Lugard (4), RHO MSS Afr. S. 1829, Box 2, file 2, pp. 49–51). See also Malinowski, Memorandum on Colonial Research (MSS Lugard (4), RHO MSS Afr. S. 1829, Box 2, file 2, pp. 56–64. ⁷ The Fabian socialist connection is evident in reading through the files of several of the individuals involved with colonial science policy during this period. ⁸ See e.g. RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 365, FCB 46/3/12, FCB 46/3/144–9.

The Contested Legacy

203

Conference in 1948, by the secretary of state for the colonies, Arthur Creech Jones: We all want a stable and peaceful world . . . You want good standards and conditions. The world wants what you can make and produce. You need what Western Civilization can offer. From the reservoir of our experience and knowledge in the Western world we contribute as partners in supplying the things essential to your development.⁹

Jones went on to say that social progress was only possible through ‘improving agriculture, establishing industries, exploiting minerals, expanding production and selling a proportion of the production overseas’.¹⁰ It is very significant that such sentiments were expressed around the same time that President Truman, in his inaugural address, made a call for the ‘development of backward areas’. Jones himself wrote a note acknowledging Truman’s speech and calling for co-operation between the United States and Britain on the colonies.¹¹ However, the advent of the United States as a player in colonial politics, and the fact that it had actually begun contributing by means of aid for development, was a source of concern for members of the Fabian Colonial Bureau and the Labour Party, more generally. They were worried by the possibility both that Britain’s influence in the colonies would wane and that the American agenda would be contrary to their own progressive goals—of ensuring a socialist world order.¹² Colonial science in the British Empire in the aftermath of the Second World War was thus tied up with both the geopolitics of third world development and the seductive paternalism of Fabian socialist attitudes to decolonization. Consequently, there was a concerted attempt to ensure that the imperial scientific network that had been built over several decades would serve the needs of the empire and survive the transition to the postcolonial era. An official statement in 1948 therefore explicitly defined the purpose of British colonial policy to be ‘to guide the colonial territories to responsible government within the Commonwealth’.¹³ Many colonial scientific officials interpreted this to ‘mandate “the sacred trust of civilisation”—to bring all native peoples who were under their suzerainty ⁹ Creech Jones Papers. See RHO MSS Brit. Emp. S. 332, Box 23, Item 3, p. 7. ¹⁰ Ibid. ¹¹ Creech Jones Papers. See Box 44, file 1. ¹² Ibid. The sense of redemption through science and of the moral burden of Britain for ensuring colonial development resonates through Creech Jones’s papers as well as those of E. B. Worthington. Moreover, there is a hint of a strategic competition with the USA which, it was feared, was extending its sphere of influence in the tropics, among other ways, through its philanthropic institutions. ¹³ Jefferies, A Review of Colonial Research, 43.

204

The Contested Legacy

to a state of self-determination’.¹⁴ For some imperial scientific officers working on natural resource management, this meant ensuring, often as an urgent priority, that they left an institutional and ideological legacy that would endure and benefit the peoples of the colonies. A good illustration of this spirit is the following poem, cited by one colonial forester as exemplifying the spirit of their sense of mission and the justification for their very presence in the empire: young men in your pride make haste The wrong to right, the bond to free And plant a garden in the waste.¹⁵

Significantly, some ex-colonial scientific officials believe that the scientific institutions of resource management established during imperial rule, and their constitutive disciplines, traditions, and agendas, have indeed carried over into the post-colonial era. An example is the following observation made by an ex-colonial forester in the mid 1970s: It has been encouraging to read the progress reports for the period 1966–1972 presented to the Tenth Commonwealth Forestry Conference by the African countries. They show no diminution of forestry activity . . . All refer to forest policies, the continuing development of forest resources under management plans, research and local education and training of technicians and workers.¹⁶

It is by no means surprising that the colonial scientific legacy survived formal decolonization. Indeed, many post-colonial leaders actively sought the return of colonial experts.¹⁷ Some, like Julius Nyerere and Jawaharlal Nehru, actively embraced the ideology of Fabian socialist development.¹⁸ Herein lies one of the great paradoxes of the second half of the twentieth century. Although nationalist movements embraced political freedom, their chosen paths of socio-economic development were enthusiastic and often uncritical embracement of the scientific, technological, and economic policies put in place within a colonial context.¹⁹ Indeed, British experts who, with the lowering of the flag, sailed back to their motherland were wooed back as consultants, either through intergovernmental exchanges such as the Colombo plan, or within international schemes under the auspices of the various organizations of the United Nations system. As a consequence, while nationalist governments paid at least rhetorical homage to the principles of equity, distribution, justice, and emancipation, ¹⁴ R. G. Sangster, IFCAS Symp. 71. ¹⁵ Ibid. The poem is attributed to John Buchan. ¹⁶ Ibid. 78. ¹⁷ For an instructive source on this see D. Barton’s letter to Julius Nyerere, RHO MSS Afr. S. 2118. ¹⁸ R. W. Shenton and Michael Cowen, Doctrines of Development (London, 1996). ¹⁹ Ibid.

The Contested Legacy

205

they failed to explore the possibility that the relationships encoded within the socio-economic and ecological matrices of European technics might, in some contexts, hinder the realization of precisely such objectives. Put differently, in their uncritical acceptance of the rhetoric of emancipation through modern science and technology, they failed to recognize that the design of knowledge and technological systems needed to be reflectively understood and carefully calibrated. Consequently, as soon as the honeymoon period was over and the euphoria of independence faded, local peoples all over the third world began to protest at the continuance of coercive practices. It should be noted here that the legitimacy of the post-colonial governments; their rhetorical equation of social and economic emancipation with modernization, and the power of local elites that thrived on colonial practices, allowed for passionate and coercive enforcement of state policies by resource management technocracies such as forest departments. With the re-emergence of coercion, a new wave of protest movements began. The nature and dynamics of such social movements have, in the case of forestry, been thoroughly explored by scholars in a variety of contexts. However, there is one aspect of this contested legacy that has not garnered much attention. This aspect has to do with the critiques of science with which this book began. The point, in essence, is that there has been more to third world environmental social movements than public protest. For every tree-hugging activist or an everyday struggle in villages, there has been an equal and complementary double movement, produced by nongovernmental organizations, intellectuals, scholars, and scientists. The locus of these complementary revolts has been the claim that there are alternative routes to socio-economic emancipation, pathways that are ‘more’ equitable and, in the long run, ‘more’ ecologically sustainable than the extant order promoted by the state institutions.²⁰ Broadly speaking, the rhetoric of the advocates of such new visions of development spins around the felt need to strengthen the capacity of local citizens to access and nurture their resource bases and life-supporting socio-ecological systems. They have emphasized the need to promote the erection of governance frameworks wherein decision-making power is democratic and, where possible, devolved to local peoples and institutions. Such programmes have also concomitantly attempted to create ‘locally relevant’ technologies, knowledge systems, and resource management and conflict resolution frameworks. The vision of social and economic development in the third world implicit in these so-called ‘environmental governance’ frameworks is also ²⁰ It is useful to notice that at the roots of such claims are attempts at re-embedding knowledge making and technological design within new social and moral paradigms.

206

The Contested Legacy

characterized by attributes such as ecological viability, sustainability, social equity, democracy, and public accountability. Over the past decade, this vision has been translated into a number of ‘success’ stories across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the case of forestry, Joint Forest Management in India, and Campfire in Mozambique, to take two examples, are, to many in the global environmental community today, blueprints for an ecologically sustainable and socially equitable new world order. The range of institutions now that, at least rhetorically, seek to replicate such models spans everything from local NGOs to organizations such as US AID and the World Bank. While the question of whether the alternative hybrid programmes being practised on the ground are actually successful is moot, the very fact of their existence is significant to historians of science, technology, development, and the environment.²¹ Indeed, they point to the idea that knowledge and artefact making, economic design and institution building, in the name of socio-economic emancipation do not need to follow the cookie-cutter models established amidst the revolutionary fervour of the enlightenment. On the contrary, the enlightened ideals of that era can be harnessed toward a grand project of reflexive experimentation—one that iconoclastically re-examines and reworks every brick and edifice of development theory. In the case of forestry, such a process has already begun, for hybrids such as joint forest management, in theory, advocate neither the classical modernist agenda nor a return to the past. Instead, at least rhetorically, they experiment with new, reflexive modernities, which seek to redraw the old contract with nature, and replace it with new matrices that redefine the relationships between local peoples and nation-states, between the state and the economy, and between economy and nature. If the story of the history of modern forestry was that of the social construction of a technological system, the unfolding history of forestry is a tantalizing pointer toward the possibilities implicit in a deliberated and reflexive reconstruction.²²

²¹ See S. Ravi Rajan, ‘Disaster, Development and Governance: Reflections on the “lessons” from Bhopal’, Environmental Values, 11 (2002), 369–94. ²² I use the term ‘reflexive’ in the sense developed by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck in their various writings on risk society and reflexive modernization. See Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Stanford, Calif., 1995).

APPENDIX 1

Syllabus and Coursework at Nancy FIRST YEAR Winter term, 10 hours, daily, for 6 months (November 1 to May 1) Hours Forest Economy: Sylviculture; working and delivery of wood, 235 75 lessons orally, of 11⁄2 hours, 112.5; study, 112.5 hours Natural History: Botany, anatomy, organography, physiology, nomenclature, geographical distribution of plants, 75 lessons 225 orally, of 11⁄2 hours each, 112.5; study, 112.5 hours Laws: Organization and attributes of public authority; property and its protection; repression of agencies injurious to forest properties, 50 lessons orally, 75 hours; study, 75 hours 150 Mathematics: Topography, properly so called, and surveying, 20 lessons orally; roads, 8 lessons, orally; construction, 22 lessons, orally, each of 11⁄2 hours, 75 hours; study, 75 hours; drawing of plans, 162.5 hours 312.5 112.5 German Language: 50 lessons, orally, 75 hours; study, 371⁄2 hours Military Instruction: 25 lessons, orally, of 2 hours each; study, 100 hours 250 Horsemanship 75 Free study hours in morning 150 Total 1,500 Summer term 6 months (May 1 to November 1, including 4 months for labor and 2 months for vacation) (A.) Out-door Labors: Days Forestal and botanical excursions in Aisne, Oise, the Vosges; Doube, and Jura 31 Topographical labors; leveling 13 Exercising in surveying 4 Laying out of forest roads 5 Military reconnaissances; shooting 6

208

Appendix 1

(B.) In-door Labors: Preparation of journal of journey, and forestal herbarium Labors and calculations Examinations and preparation Free days Total days in summer term

6 16 21 18 120

SECOND YEAR Winter term (as in first year) Hours Forest Economy: Amenagement estimation, 75 lessons orally, of 11⁄2 hours each, 112.5 hours; study, 112.5 Natural History: Mineralogy; study of minerals and rocks; geology and geological description of France, 75 lessons orally, 112.5 hours; study, 112.5 hours Law: Study of the law of property completed; legal relations of real estate, between personal estate and persons, and between persons; administration of forests subjected to the rules of forestry; 50 lessons orally, 75 hours; studies, 75 hours Mathematics: Topography, part 3; Triangulation, 15 lessons orally; saw mills, 35 lessons orally, 75 hours; studies, 75 hours; drawing, 162.5 hours German Language: 50 lessons, 75 hours; studies, 37.5 hours Military Instruction: 25 lessons orally, each 2 hours, 50 hours; studies, 100 hours; exercise, 100 hours Horsemanship Free study hours in morning Total

225 225

150 312.5 112.5 250 75 150 1,500

Summer term (as in first year) Days (A.) Out-door Labors: Exercises of amenagement in the forests of Meurthe, and Mossele, and Aisne Triangulations Surveys Study of saw-mills in the Vosges Military reconnaissances; shooting

23 6 2 10 8

Syllabus and Coursework at Nancy (B.) In-door Labors: Writing a memoir upon the study of amenagement and reduction of an official plan for the same Designing, calculations, and report Examinations and preparation Free days Total days in summer term

209

14 11 28 18 120

THIRD YEAR, ( THEORETICAL INSTRUCTION) Winter term, 5 months (November 1 to March 31) Hours Forest Economy: Forest statistics; political economy, 40 lessons orally of 11⁄2 lessons each Natural History: General, forestal, and agricultural zoology, 40 lessons orally Law: Law of the chase; fixing of dunes; reboisement and sodding of mountains, 20 lessons orally Principles of administration and management of a cantonnement, 40 lessons orally Agriculture: Laws of vegetable and animal production; agriculture proper, 40 lessons orally German Language: 40 lessons orally Total

60 50 30 60 60 60 390

Gardes-generaux of the first stage are allowed to work freely, without being required to assist in the studies. (Practical instruction) Office-work: Two days are devoted in each week to the office of inspection, and to the various administrative duties relative to the current service. Forest-work: Two days in each week are given to various reconnaissances, the supervision of workings, surveys, study of domainal and commercial series, etc. Summer term, 5 months (April 1 to August 31) April: Participation in all the operations of marking and of cutting in the domainal and communal forests under the care of the school, preparation of reports of marking, estimation and cutting.

APPENDIX 2

Brief Profiles of Some Colonial Scientist-Conservationists in India in the Period 1800–1850 Ainslie, Sir Whitelaw (1767–1837) Education Studied medicine in Edinburgh. Main career Doctor employed by the East India Company. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Wrote Materia Medica of Hindoostan and Artisans and Agriculturalists Nomenclature in 1813 and Materia Indica: Or, Some Account of those Articles which are Employed by Hindoos and Other Eastern Nations in their Medicine, Arts and Architecture in 1826. Became an important propogandizer of the need for a permanent forest policy in India. Balfour, Edward Green (1813–89) Education Studied surgery in Edinburgh. Main career Went to India in 1834 where he joined the medical department of the Indian army. Established himself as an authority on public health by the mid 1840s and published a number of statistical studies on diseases and health. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Wrote a book on the impact of climate on the health of troops in 1845. Wrote a major report in 1849, ‘On the Influence Exercised by Trees on the Climate of the Country’. Established the Government Central Museum in 1850 and, as its superintendent, published many scientific works including a classified list of the Mollusca, and reports on the iron ores and the coals of the Madras Presidency, among others. Published his Cyclopaedia in 1857. This book went through many subsequent editions. In 1866, published Timber Trees, Timber and Fancy Woods, as also the Forests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia. Wrote two pamphlets before leaving India under the general title ‘Medical Hints to the People of India’. Returned to England in 1876 where he published Indian Forestry (1885) and The Agricultural Pests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (1887). Beddome, Henry Richard (1830–1911) Education Charterhouse. Main career Joined the Indian army, served in Jabalpur from 1848 and the Madras Infantry from 1856. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Devoted to botanical and zoological studies while in the army. Appointed senior assistant to the

Some Colonial Scientist-Conservationists

211

newly organized forest department in 1857 and conservator of forests in Madras from 1860 to retirement in 1882. Wrote ‘Report on the Vegetable Products of the Pulney Hills, Madras’ and ‘Flora of Pulney Hills’ (Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 19, 1858); ‘Contribution to the Botany of Southern India’ (Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 22–3, 1861–2); The Trees of the Madras Presidency (1863); Report of the Conservator of Forests (1862–3); The Ferns of South India and Ceylon (1864); The Ferns of British India (3 vol., 1865–70); A List of Exogenous Plants Found in the Annamalai Mountains (1865); Flora Sylvatica for South India (1869); ‘The Forest Flora of the Nilgiris’ (Indian Forester, 2, 1876); ‘The Forests and Flora of the Tinnelvelly District’ (Indian Forester, 3, 1877); ‘The Jeypore Forests’ (Indian Forester, 3, 1877); Report on the Nelambur Teak Plantations (1878); and On Eucalyptus Plantations in India (1885). Cleghorn, Hugh Francis (1820–95) Education MD, Edinburgh, 1841. Main career After graduation in 1841, proceeded at the age of 22 to Madras where he was attached to the Madras General Hospital to study Indian diseases. This job entailed a great deal of travel with regiments and Cleghorn used this as an opportunity to undertake botanical research. In 1851 appointed professor in botany in Madras. Appointed conservator of forests, Madras Presidency, in 1856 and joint commissioner for the conservancy of forests, along with Dietrich Brandis, in 1862. In 1867, a year in which Brandis was in England on leave, he acted as the inspector-general of forests of India. After retiring from the Indian service in 1869, he taught botany at the University of Glasgow and promoted forestry in Britain, serving as president of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, and giving evidence before the Forestry Committee appointed by the House of Commons. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Was arguably the most important campaigner for forest conservancy in India in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the early 1860s he examined the forests of the Himalayas, including Kashmir and the Trans-Indus territory, at the request of the governor-general. Wrote Forests and Gardens of Southern India in 1861 and Report upon the Forests of the Punjab and the Western Himalaya in 1864 and floras of the Annamalai hills and the Sutlej valley. Visited several forestry schools in Europe, including the Royal Forest School in Vallombrosa, Italy, to assist in the setting up of a forestry school for British colonial foresters. In 1848, when he returned to Britain on sick leave, he assisted in the preparation of the catalogue of raw products for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Dalzell, Nicol Alexander (1817–78) Education MA, Edinburgh. Main career Customs officer. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Practised botany in his leisure time at customs. Joined the Indian forest service in 1841

212

Appendix 2

and worked there until 1870. Became conservator of forests in Burma and in Bombay, when he succeeded Alexander Gibson (see below). Wrote ‘Contributions to the Botany of Western India’ (1850); Forest Reports for the Bombay Presidency (1860–1; 1867–8; 1868–9); The Bombay Flora (1861— co-authored with Gibson); wrote floras of western India. Falconer, Hugh (1808–67) Education MD, Edinburgh, 1829. Main career EIC surgeon (1830); superintendent of the Saharanpur Botanical Garden (1832–41); superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden (1848–55); professor at Calcutta Medical College (1848–55). Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Wrote Memorandum Respecting Timber Trees and Materials for Fuel (1848); Report on the Teak Forests of the Tenasserim Province (1852); Report on the Teak Plantations of Bengal (1857); floras of the Upper Gangetic Plains. Important figure in the introduction of tea in India; responsible for the introduction of quinine-yielding cinchonas to India. Gibson, Alexander (1800–67) Education MD, Edinburgh. Main career Appointed to the EIC medical service in 1825. Appointed a vaccinator for Deccan and Khandesh in 1936. Appointed superintendent of the Dapoori Botanical Garden in 1836. Elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1853. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist While vaccinator he acquired a widespread field knowledge of the biota and the rural economies of the region. While superintendent of the Dapoori Botanical Garden he produced several drugs for the use of the medical service. His report on teak deforestation submitted to the Bombay government in 1840 led directly to his appointment as conservator of forests in the presidency. Kyd, Robert (1746–93) Education Unknown. Main Career Bengal Infantry (1765; Lt.-Col. 1782; superintendent of the EIC Dockyard and secretary of the Military Board of Fort William; hon. superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden (1786–7). Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Founder of Calcutta Botanical Garden following the 1796 famine ‘not for the purpose of collecting rare plants (although they also have their uses) as things of mere curiosity or furnishing articles for the gratification of luxury, but for establishing a stock for disseminating such articles as may prove beneficial to the inhabitants’. McClelland, John (1805–83) Education Unknown.

Some Colonial Scientist-Conservationists

213

Main career Bengal medical service (1846–65); superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Editor of the Calcutta Journal of Natural History (Vols. 1–8—1840–7). Set up herbaria in West Bengal (Birgham, 1849) and Burma (Pegu, 1855). Contributed to the Calcutta, Edinburgh, and Kew Botanical Gardens. Roxburgh, William (1751–1815) Education Studied botany. Main career East India Company botanist who first went to India in 1776. From 1781 he was in charge of the Samalkot Botanical Garden in the Madras Presidency where pepper, sappam, tobacco, and cardamoms were grown. His task on joining the botanical garden was to make an exhaustive survey of India’s flora. From 1789 to 1793, he was the EIC botanist in the Carnatic. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Distinguished himself by studying the flora of the northern Sirkars and the Coromandel coast. Also began descriptions of Indian flora giving a number to each plant and at the same time having a life-size drawing made to which the number was given. By the time he retired in 1813, 2,542 paintings had been made by his team. He contributed substantially to Hortus Bengalensis, Flora Indica, Wight’s Incones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis, and Plants of the Coromandel, published by Joseph Banks at company expense. Royle, John Forbes (1799–1858) Education MD, Edinburgh. Main career Was in Bengal in 1818–23 where he became particularly interested in the medicinal properties of plants and their geographical distributing. Appointed to the Saharanpur Botanical Garden where under him plants were listed and drawings made in the same way as at Sibpur. Was professor of materia medica and therapeutics at King’s College, London, from 1837 to 1856. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist While posted at Saharanpur he studied the flora of the Himalayas in the area between Saharanpur in the south and Kashmir in the north. He made some of the earliest collections in the Himalayan area which later were arranged at his herbarium. He also commissioned paintings of plant specimens which were kept along with the dried plants. He wrote an eleven-part book: Illustrations of the Botany and Other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of Cashmere, between 1833 and 1840. After retirement in 1831, he published a number of learned papers on Indian botany and medicine. During this time he continued to be closely associated with Indian matters. He was also in charge of the Hall of Indian Products at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Paris Exhibition of 1855.

214

Appendix 2

Wallich, Dr Nathaniel (1786–1854) Education Studied medicine in Copenhagen. Main career Surgeon at Serampore, 1807. Joined the British colonial medical service at Calcutta in 1814. Joined the Sibpur Botanic Gardens in 1815 and was its superintendent until 1846. Important work as colonial scientist and environmentalist Made an enormous impact on tropical botany, having classified dozens of species, especially the palm genus Wallichia. Under his aegis, Roxburgh’s scheme for adding to the systematic knowledge of India’s flora was continued. In 1825 he was dipatched to the Upper Provinces to enquire into and watch over the extensive forests of the empire. His team, known as ‘The Plantation Committee’, produced 1,070 pages of manuscript on forest cultivation.

APPENDIX 3

A List of Participants at the Empire Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Ackers, C. P., MA

Forestry Societies, Great Britain

IV

Acland, F. D., MP

Forestry Commissioner, UK

I

Ahmad, Y. S., MA

Chief Conservator of Forests Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Pakistan

VI

Ainslie, J. R., B.Sc. (Oxon.), DF, FLS, FRGS

Senior Conservator of Forests Nigeria (II) Chief Conservator of Forests Colonial Forest Services, Nigeria (IV)

II and IV

Andrews, L. R., B.Sc.F.

District Forester British Columbia (II) Secretary-Manager British Columbia Lumber Manufacturers’ Association (V) Executive Vice-President British Columbia Lumber Manufacturers’ Association (VI)

II, V, and VI

Ashbolt, A. H.

Agent-General, Tasmania

I

Atkinson, D. J., OBE, IFS

Chief Conservator, Forest Dept., Burma

V

Balch, R. E., BSA, MS, Ph.D.

Forest Entomologist Canadian Institute of Forestry, Dominion Entomological Laboratory, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada (V and VI)

V and VI

Baldock, W. F., BA, Dip. For.

Senior Assistant Conservator of Forests Colonial Forest Services, Tanganyika Territory

IV

Banerji, J., B.Sc., B.Com., Dip. For., IFS

Deputy Inspector-General of Forests Ministry of Food and Agriculture, New Delhi, India

VI

216

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Bannerman, J. M., MA, B.Sc.

Commissioner Forestry Commission, UK

V

Battiscombe, E.

Conservator of Forests East African Protectorate (I) Conservator of Forests, Kenya (II)

I and II

Bayly, C. H. U.

Assistant Chief Division of Reforestation, Ontario, Canada

V

Beall, H. W., B.Sc.F.

Chief Forestry Operations Division, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Beck, E.

Secretary Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Canada

II

Beckett, Hon. W. J., MLC

Minister of Forests Victoria

III

Bedard, A., MF

Assistant Chief of Forest Service Dean, Lava Forest School, Quebec

II

Bednall, B. H., B.Sc.

Conservator, South Australia (V) Conservator of Forests, Woods and Forests Dept., Adelaide, South Australia (VI)

V and VI

Beeson, C. F. C., CIE, MA, D.Sc., IFS (Retd.)

Imperial Forestry Bureau, Oxford

V

Beeton, Sir Mayson M., KBE

Newfoundland Development Company, Newfoundland

I

Bell, G. E., B.Sc.F.

Forest Products Laboratory, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Bell, Right Hon. Sir Francis, HD, PC, GCMG, KC

Minister without Portfolio New Zealand

III

Benjamin, L. R.

Tasmanian Paper Pty. Ltd., Geeveston, Tasmania

III

Beresford-Peirse, H. C., BA

Director, Forestry Commission, Scotland

V

Besley, Lowell, BS, MF

Dean, Faculty of Forestry, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

VI

Best, A. L., B.Sc.F.

Forest Economics Section, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

217

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Bédard, A., IS, MF, LL D

Deputy Minister Dept. of Lands and Forests, Quebec, Canada

VI

Bhargava, M. P., M.Sc., AIC, IFS

Forest Research Institution (Pulp and Paper Section), Dehra Dun, India

V

Bickerstaff, A., B.Sc.F.

Head, Silviculture and Management Section, Forest Research Division, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Bier, J. E., B.Sc.F., MA, Ph.D.

Associate Chief Division of Forest Biology, Dept. of Agriculture, Canada

VI

Black, Robson

Secretary, Canadian Forestry Association, Canada (I) Manager, Canadian Forestry Association, Canada (II)

I and II

Blandford, H. R., OBE, Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill), IFS (Retd.)

Conservator of Forests, Burma (III) Editor-Secretary, Empire Forestry Association (V) Late Editor-Secretary, Empire Forestry Association (VI)

III, V, and VI

Boas, I. H., M.Sc.

Chief, Division of Forest Products, Commonwealth of Australia

IV

Borthwick, A. W., OBE, D.Sc.

Education, Research, and Publications Officer, Forestry Commission, Great Britain

II

Bottomley, Miss A. M., BA

Division of Plant Industry, Union of South Africa

IV

Bourque, Hon. J. S.

Minister, Dept. of Lands and Forests, Quebec, Canada

VI

Brasnett, N. V., MA, Dip. For.

Conservator of Forests, Colonial Forest Services, Uganda

IV

Breton, J. A., FE

Directeur et Administrateur L’Association Forestière Québecoise, Quebec, Canada

VI

Brett, J. F.

Managing Director Messrs. Brett & Co. Ltd., Brisbane, Australia

III

Brookes, J. D., MC, M.Sc.

General Manager, APM Forests Pty. Ltd., Australian Pulp & Paper Industries Technical Association, South Melbourne, Australia

VI

Brown, G. S., B.Sc.

Assistant Conservator, North Borneo

V

218

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Brown, K. B., M.Sc.F.

Director of Photogrammetry, Dept. of Lands & Mines, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

VI

Brown, Loren L., B.Sc.

Commissioner, British Columbia, Canada

II

Bryan, J., M.Eng.

Senior Principal Scientific Officer and Administration Division, Forest Products Research Laboratory, UK

VI

Buccleuch, Duke of, PC, GCVO, JP

UK

V

Bunning, C., BCE (Melb.)

Western Australian Timber Interests, Australia (IV) Saw Millers’ Association, West Australia (V)

IV and V

Bunny, J.

Senior Conservator of Forests, Nigeria

III

Burt, R. H.

Colonial Office

V

Butters, Sir John H., CMG, MBE, MICE, MIE (Australia)

Chief Commissioner, Federal Capital Commission

III

Cain, W. C., BA

Deputy Minister of Lands and Forests Ontario (II and IV)

II and IV

Calder, James, CBE

Great Britain

II

Cameron, D. Roy, BA, B.Sc.F.

Dominion Forest Service (II) Associate Director of Forestry Ottawa (III) Dominion Forester (V) Canada

II, III, and V

Campbell, R. D.

Conservator of Forests, Auckland, New Zealand

III

Carter, C. E., MF (Yale), B.Agr.Sc., Dip. Ed.

Lecturer, Australian Forestry School, Australia

III

Carter, K. J.

Deputy Minister, Dept. of Mines and Resources, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

VI

Caverhill, P. Z., BSF, M.Sc.F.

Chief Forester, Provincial Forest Service, British Columbia (II, III, and IV) (Resolutions Committee, Conference III)

II, III, and IV

Chaffey, Hon. F. A., MLA

New South Wales

III

219

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Champion, Prof. H. G., CIE, MA, D.Sc., IFS (Retd.)

Head, Dept. of Forestry, Imperial Forestry Institute (V and VI)

V and VI

Chaplin, C. J., M.Sc., MEIC, MI, Mech.E.

Forest Products Research Laboratory, Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research, Great Britain

IV

Chaturvedi, M. D., B.Sc., IFS

Inspector-General of Forests Forest Dept., Ministry of Food and Agriculture, New Delhi, India

VI

Christie, H. R., B.Sc.F.

Dean, Forest School, Univ. of British Columbia

II

Churchman, J. W.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Dept. of Natural Resources, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada

VI

Clair, R. C. St, B.Sc.F.

Assistant Chief Forester British Columbia

II

Clarke, S. A., B.Sc., AMIE

Forest Department, Australia

III

Clarke, S. A., BE, AMIE

Chief of Division, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Australia (V) Chief, Division of Forest Products, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Melbourne (VI)

V and VI

Clements, J. B., B.Sc.

Conservator of Forests, Colonial Forest Services, Nyasaland

IV

Clinton, Rt. Hon. the Lord, DL, JP

Chairman, Forestry Conference British Forestry Commission, Great Britain

III

Clutterbuck, Sir P. H., CIE, CBE, VD, Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill)

Chief Conservator for United Provinces India (I) Chairman, Empire Forestry Association, and Late Inspector-General of Forests India (III)

I and III

Cockayne, L., Ph.D., FRS, FNZ Inst.

Forest Department, New Zealand

III

Collier, F. S., Dip. For., CBE

Chief Conservator, Nigeria (V) Forestry Adviser, Colonial Office, UK (VI)

V and VI

Collier, Hon. Philip, MLA

Premier and Minister for Forests, Western Australia

III

Connolly, Sir J. D.

Agent-General, Western Australia

I

220

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Corbin, Prof. H. H., B.Sc. (Agr.)

Forestry School, Auckland University College, New Zealand

III

Cotterell, Major Sir Richard

Commissioner, Forestry Commission, UK

V

Courthope, Col. Rt. Hon. Lord, PC, MC, TD, JP, DL, Hon. MA

Head, School of Forestry, Oxford University (II) Commissioner, Forestry Commission, UK (V)

II and V

Cowan, Hon. J., MLC

Minister of Forests, South Australia

III

Cox, M. A., MA

Research Officer, Forests Products Research Laboratory, UK

V

Craib, I. J., BA, MF, Ph.D.

Forest Research Officer (IV) Chief Research Officer (V) Union of S. Africa

IV and V

Craig, Roland D., BSA, FE

Forest Resources Specialist Dominion Forest Service

II

Craighead, F. C., MA, Ph.D.

Entomological Branch, Dept. of Agriculture, Canada

II

Crane, A. H., MF, Dip. For., B.Sc.

Chief Commissioner of Forests Forestry Commission of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

VI

Creighton, G. W. I., BA, B.Sc.F.

Deputy Minister Dept. of Lands and Forests, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

VI

Cromer, D. A. N.

Chief of Division of Forest Resources Commonwealth Forest and Timber Bureau, Australia

V

Cubitt, G. E., FMS, SS, Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill)

Conservator of Forests, Federated Malay States (I) Conservator of Forests, Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States (II and III)

I, II, and III

Cunningham, Dr G. H., Ph.D., M.Sc.

New Zealand

III

D’Espeissis, J. L., B.Sc., B.Sc.F., MA, Dip. For.

Assistant Conservator, Fiji

V

Dadswell, H. E., D.Sc., FACI

Principal Research Officer (Wood Str.) Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, UK

V

221

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Dalley, R. P.

Empire Forestry Association

II

Davie, W. A.

Agricultural Dept., Sudan

I

Davies, D. James, B.Sc.

Dept. of Agriculture, Newfoundland

I

Dawson, W. W.

Director, Special Services Branch, Dept. of Labour, Canada

VI

Deans, James

New Zealand Forest League

III

Dent, T. V., B.Sc., IFS

India

V

Deschamps, R., FE

Chief, Quebec Forest Service, Dept. of Lands & Forests, Quebec, Canada

VI

Deuchar, C. C.

S. African Railways, Harbours and Airways

IV

Duff, C. E., BA, MA, OBE

Assistant Conservator (V) Conservator of Forests (VI) N. Rhodesia, Nyasaland

V and VI

Dunstan, Hon. T., MLA

Minister for Forests, Queensland

III

Eastwood, C. G.

Assistant Under-Secretary Colonial Office

V

Eckbo, Nils B., MF

Chief, Forest Products Institute, Union of South Africa

IV

Eggeling, W. J., B.Sc., Ph.D.

Conservator , Uganda (V) Chief Conservator of Forests, Tanganyika (VI)

V and VI

Elliott, C. S., B.Sc.

Forest Department, Australia

III

Ellis, Captain L. MacIntosh, B.Sc.F.

Director, State Forests, New Zealand

II

Ellis, W. D., CMG, MA

Crown Colonies

I

Entrican, A. R., AMICE, AASE

Engineer in Forest Products (III) Conference Director (V) New Zealand

III and V

Fensom, K. G., B.Sc.

Superintendent, Vancouver Laboratory, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Ferree, W. F., CIE

President, Imperial Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, India

I

222

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Finch, J. R., OBE, MPC

United Municipal Executive of South Africa

IV

Finlayson, E. H., B.Sc.F., MEIC

Forestry Branch of the Dept. of the Interior, Ottawa, Canada (I) Acting Director of Forestry, Canada (II) Director of Forestry, Ottawa, Canada (III and IV)

I, II, III, and IV

Fischer, Major R. E.

Sudan Agricultural Dept., Sudan

I

Foggie, A., B.Sc.

Senior Assistant Conservator, Gold Coast

V

Forbes, A. C., OBE

Assistant Forestry Commissioner, Forestry Commission, Ireland (I) Forestry Branch, Dept. of Agriculture Irish Free State (II) Director of Forestry (III)

I, II, and III

Foster, F. W., BA, B.Sc., For. (Edin.)

New Zealand

III

Foweraker, C. E., MA

Lecturer in Charge, School of Forestry, Canterbury University College, New Zealand

III

French, Norman

Rep. of Timber Trades Journal and Sawmill Advertiser

VI

Furse, Major R. D., KCMG, CMG, DSO, BA

Assistant Private Secretary for Appointments, Colonial Office, Crown Colonies (II) Secretary of Appointments; Also represented the Commonwealth of Australia in New Zealand Colonial Office (III) Director of Recruitment, Colonial Office Services (IV) Colonial Office (V)

II, III, IV, and V

Furse, Lt.-Gen. Sir William, KCB, DSO

Director, Imperial Institute, London, Rep. Empire Marketing Board, Great Britain

III

Fyffe, R.

Chief Forest Officer, Uganda

I

Galbraith, A. V., Dip. For. (Vic.), Dip. Com. (Melb.), AICA

Chairman, Forestry Commission, Victoria, Australia

IV

Galbraith, A. V.

Chairman, Forestry Commission, Victoria

III

223

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Gardner, H. M., BA, Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Acting Conservator of Forests (III) Conservator of Forests (IV) Colonial Forest Services, Kenya

III and IV

Garland, E. A., MA, Dip. For., IFS

Deputy Conservator of Forests, India

IV

Gay, W. W., B.Sc., Dip. Agric.

Commissioner, Forestry Commission, Victoria

III

Gemmel, Hon. W. S., BA

Minister, Dept. of Lands and Forests, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Honorary Delegate, Conference)

VI

Gent, J. R. P., Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Deputy Conservator of Forests, Gold Coast

III

Gepp, H. W.

Chairman, Development and Migration Committee (III) Pulp and Paper Industry, Australia (V)

III and V

Gerraty, F. G.

Chairman, Forestry Commission of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

VI

Gibson, A. J.

Conservator of Forests, India

I

Gibson, J. M., B.Sc.F., D.Sc.

Dean, Faculty of Forestry, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

VI

Gordan, W. A., MA (For.), Dip. Anth., LL B

Conservator of Forests, Forest Dept., Georgetown, British Guiana

VI

Gosling, A. H., CBE, B.Sc., FRSE

Deputy Director-General (V) Director-General (VI) Forestry Commission, UK

V and VI

Grainger, M. A

Chief Forester, Provincial Forest Service, British Columbia (I) President, Canadian Society of Forest Engineers, Canada (II)

I and II

Grant, D. K. S., Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Conservator of Forests (I and III) Tanganyika

I and III

Gray, D. E., BA, M.Sc.

Assistant Chief Division of Forest Biology, Dept. of Agriculture, Canada

VI

Gray, H. R., MA, Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Lecturer Australian Forestry School

III

Greenway, J. W.

Commissioner, Dominion Lands

II

Grenning, V.

Working Plans Officer, Queensland

III

224

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Griffith, A. L., OBE, MA, D.Sc.

Silviculturist, East African Agricultural and Forestry Research Organization, East African High Commission, Nairobi Associate Delegate, Conference

VI

Guillebaud, W. H., BA, Dip. For., Dip. Ag. (Cantab.)

Chief Research Officer Forestry Commission (IV) Director, Research and Education, Forestry Commission (V), UK

IV and V

Haig, I. T., BS, MF, Ph.D.

Officer in Charge Research and Technology, Forestry Division, FAO of the United Nations, Italy

VI

Hall, J. A., AB, MS, Ph.D.

Director, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

VI

Hamber, E. W.

President Timber Industries Council of British Columbia

II

Hamilton, A. P. F., CIE, OBE, MC, BA, IFS

Inspector-General of Forests India

V

Hansson, A., MF (Yale)

Chief Inspector State Forest Service, New Zealand

III

Harkins, J. B.

Commissioner Dominion Parks

II

Harper, V. L., BS, MS, Ph.D.

Assistant Chief Forestry Service, US Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA

VI

Harrison, C. E.

Chairman Maritime Lumber Bureau, Parrsboro, Canada

VI

Harrison, J. D. B., DCM, M.Sc.F.

Chief Section of Forest Economics, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (V) Chief Forestry Research Division, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada (VI)

V and VI

Hawken, Hon. O. J.

Commissioner of State Forests New Zealand

III

Grimwade, W. Russell, B.Sc.

225

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Hawkins, Frank

Secretary Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Canada

II

Haythorne, G. V., MA, Ph.D.

Director Economics and Research Branch, Dept. of Labour, Canada

VI

Heaney, H. D., B.Sc.F.

Superintendent Petawawa Forest Experiment Section, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Heasman, G. R.

Canadian Trade Commissioner Capetown, Canada

IV

Heath, A. E., ACPA, CMG

Trade Rep. A. C. Saxton and Sons Ltd., Pyrmont (III) Official Rep. (IV) Sydney Timber Merchants’ Association (V) New South Wales

III, IV, and V

Henderson, F. Y., CBE, D.Sc., DIC

Director Forests Products Research Laboratory (V and VI), UK

V

Henniker-Gotley, G. R., CIE, DSO, BA, IFS

Chief Conservator of Forests Punjab, India

V

Hiley, W. E., MA

Royal Forestry Society of England and Wales, UK

V

Hill, Sir Claude, KCSI, CIE,

Member of Viceroy’s Executive Council, India

I

Hocking, G. H., B.Sc.F.

Senior Forester New Zealand Forest Service, Palmerston North, New Zealand

VI

Hoddinott, R. R.

Vice-Chairman East African Timber Co-operative Society Ltd., Nairobi, Kenya

VI

Hohenkerk, L. S.

Forestry Officer Dept. of Lands and Mines, British Guiana

II

Holly, J. Hunt

Rep. of Timber and Wattle Growers’ Association, Union of South Africa South African Forestry Association, South Africa

IV and V

Hone, A. A., B.Sc., For. (Adelaide)

Silvicultural Officer Victorian Forestry Commission (III), Forestry Commissioner (V) Victoria

III and V

226

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Hopping, Ralph

Entomological Branch, Dept. of Agriculture

II

Howard, C. K.

General Tourist Agent Canadian National Railways, Canada

II

Howard, S. H., BA, Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Deputy Conservator of Forests United Provinces, India (III)

III and V

Howe, C. D., Ph.D.

Dean Faculty of Forestry, Univ. of Toronto Vice-President Canadian Forestry Association, Canada

II

Howse, Hon. Sir Neville, VC, KCB, KCMG

Minister for Home and Territories Commonwealth of Australia

III

Hudson, E. L. S., Dip. For.

Working Plans Officer (IV) Commissioner of Forests (VI) Forestry Commission, New South Wales

IV and VI

Hunt, G. M.

Director Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

V

Hunter, James McEwan

Agent-General, Queensland

I

Ingle, D.

Commissioner Forestry Commission, Victoria

III

Innes, C., OBE, B.Sc., MICE

Chief Engineer (Roads) Public Works Dept., Burma

III

Jacob, W. R., Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill)

Conservator of Forests Assam, India

III

Jacobs, M. R., B.Sc., For. (Adelaide)

Chief Forester Federal Capital Commission

III

Jenkins, Col. J. H., OBE, BA. Sc.

Chief Forest Products Laboratory Division, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Johnston, Rt. Hon. T.

Commissioner Forestry Commission, UK

V

Johnstone, W. S.

Associated Chambers of Commerce, South Africa (II) British Columbia Lumber Trade Commissioner in South Africa (IV) Canada

II and IV

227

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Jolly, N. W., BA, B.Sc., Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Chief Commissioner Forestry Commission, New South Wales

III

Jones, C. C., MA, PhD., LL D

Chancellor University of New Brunswick

II

Jones, Owen, BA

Chairman Forestry Commission of Victoria, Australia

II

Julius, E.

Conservator of Forests South Australia

III

Julius, G. A., B.Sc., BE, MI, Mech. E., MIE

Chairman Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Australia

III

Kane, M. R.

Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and Quebec Forest Industries Association, Canada

V

Kaufmann, J. E., Dip. For.

Inspector of Forestry Union of South Africa

IV

Keet, J. D., Dip. For.

Chief Division of Forest Management, Union of South Africa Vice-Chairman, Resolutions Committee, Conference

IV

Keith, H. G., B.Sc.

Assistant Conservator of Forests British North Borneo

III

Kelley-Edwards, E. J., MA, Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Chief Forest Officer (IV) Conservator (V) Chief Conservator of Forests (VI) South Rhodesia Bombay Provinces, India

IV, V, and VI

Conservator of Forests (III and IV) Western Australia Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Abbottabad, Pakistan Canadian National Railways, Canada Inspector of Forestry Union of South Africa Senator and Chief Conservator of Forests Commonwealth of Australia

III and IV

Kesarcodi, S. N., M.Sc. Kessel, S. L., M.Sc., Dip. For. (Oxon.) Khan, T. M., B.Sc. Kilby, W. H. King, N. L., Dip. For. Kingsmill, Senator the Hon. Walter, BA

V

VI I IV III

228

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Kinloch, D., B.Sc.

Senior Assistant Conservator Gold Coast

V

Knight, J. A., KC

Commissioner of Forests and Game Nova Scotia

II

Koroleff, A.

Director Woodlands Research, Pulp and Paper Research Institute, Montreal, Province of Quebec, Canada

VI

Kotze, J. J., BA, B.Sc.

Chief Forest Research Section, Union of South Africa

IV

Kotze, P. C., BA, Dip. For.

Inspector of Forestry Union of South Africa

IV

Krishna, S., CIE, Ph.D., D.Sc., FIC, FNI, IFS

Chemistry and Minor Forest Products Branch, Dehra Dun, India

V

Kyaw, U Tun, B.Sc., BA

Deputy Conservator of Forests Burma

V

Kynoch, W., FE

Superintendent Forest Products Laboratories of Canada, Dominion Forest Service

II

Lamb, A. F. A., OBE, B.Sc.F.

Conservator of Forests Forest Dept., Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

VI

Lancaster, P. C., MA, Dip. For.

Silviculturist Forestry Dept., Ibadan, Nigeria

VI

Lane Poole, C. E.

Conservator of Forests Western Australia (I) Inspector General of Forests Commonwealth of Australia (III and IV) Timber Trades Federation, UK (V and VI) Deputy Timber Controller Timber Control, UK Forester Pejepscot Paper Co., Salmon River, New Brunswick Forest Research Officer Union of South Africa Chief Research Officer Forestry Commission, UK

I, III, and IV

Latham, B. Latham, R. Lauderburn, D. E., BS, FE Laughton, F. S., B.Sc. Laurie, M. V., OBE, MA, Dip. For.

V and VI V II

IV VI

229

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Leavitt, C.

Chief Forester Commission of Conservation, Ottawa (I) Chief Fire Inspector Board of Railway Commissioner (II) Canada

I and II

LeClair, W. J.

Secretary Manager Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

VI

Lee, Hon. Sir Walker Henry, KCMG

Minister for Forests Tasmania

III

Legat, C. E., B.Sc.

Chief Conservator of Forests (I, II, and III) South Africa Editor-Secretary, Empire Forestry Association, Great Britain (IV and V)

I, II, III, IV, and V

Loggie, Lt.-Col. T. G.

Deputy Minister of Lands and Mines New Brunswick

II

Long, A. P., OBE, BA, Dip. For., Dip. Ag. (Cantab.)

Divisional Officer Forestry Commission, England and Wales (IV) Director Forestry Commission, Wales (V)

IV and V

Lovat, Maj.-Gen. Lord, KT, KCMG, DSO

Chairman Forestry Commission, UK

I and II

Lucas, Edward

Agent-General, South Australia

I

Lushington, A. B.

Deputy Conservator of Forests Ceylon

III

McBreide, Sir Peter

Agent-General Victoria

I

McCallum, A. W., MA, B.Sc.F.

Forest Pathologist Dept. of Agriculture

II

McCormack, W. W.

Chief Scaler Dept. of Lands and Mines, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

VI

Macdonald, D. A., B.Sc.F., LL D

Director Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

MacDougall, F. A.

Deputy Minister Dept. of Lands and Forests, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

VI

McElhanney, T. A., BA, B.Sc., AMEIC, MCSFE

Superintendent Forest Service Forest Products Laboratories, Ottawa, Canada

IV and V

230

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

McEvoy, T.

Junior Forestry Inspector Ireland, Eire

V

MacFayden, C. B.Sc.F.

District Forest Inspector, Dominion Forest Service

II

McGavock, A. D.

Conservator of Forests Westland, New Zealand

III

McGee, G. H., B.Sc.F.

Special Services Branch, Dept. of Labour, Canada

VI

Mcintosh, D., B.Sc.

Senior Assistant Conservator Nigeria

V

Mackay, H. R.

Commissioner of Forests Victoria

I

MacKenzie, Sir Thomas, KCMG Mackenzie, T. M.

High Commissioner New Zealand Rep. of Timber and Wattle Growers’ Association, Union of South Africa

I

McKinnon, A. D.

Assistant Conservator New Zealand

V

McKinnon, F. S., MF, B.Sc.

Assistant Chief Forester Dept. of Lands and Forests, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

VI

McLaren, W.

United Africa Co., Ltd. Nigeria

V

McLean, Angus

President Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Canada

II

IV

McLeod, Baillie

Royal Burgh of Inverness

V

McLeod, N. C.

Conservator of Forests Gold Coast

I

McNeill, Wm.

Managing Director Timber Industries Council, British Columbia

II

McOwan, Hon. I.

Secretary of Native Affairs Member of the Executive and Legislative Councils, Fiji

III

Macpherson, D.

Conservator of Forests Wellington, New Zealand

III

Manbert, A. C.

Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Canada

II

Manson, T. B., FSI, B.Sc.

Dept. of Agriculture, Scotland

V

231

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

March, E. W., MA

Conservator of Forests Forest Dept., Kingston, Jamaica

VI

Marjoribanks, W. L., B.Sc.F.

Expert Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (V) Chief Conservator of Forests Forest Dept., Ministry of Agriculture, Khartoum, Sudan (VI)

V and VI

Markwardt, L. J., BS, CE

Assistant Director Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

VI

Marshall, E. J.

Director of Forests Dept. of Natural Resources, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada

VI

Meldrum, J. A. K.

Director of Forestry Ireland, Eire

V

Miller, Dr David, Ph.D., M.Sc., FES

Forest Department New Zealand

III

Miller, G. L., M.Sc.

Chief Forester Dept. of Lands and Mines, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

VI

Miller, O. B., B.Sc.

Forest Officer Basutoland Protectorate, Bechuanaland and Swaziland

V

Miller, R. G., B.Sc.

Assistant Conservator of Forests, Colonial Forest Services, North Rhodesia

IV

Mills, C. R., B.Sc.F.

Manager Ontario Forest Industries Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

VI

Milne Home, Sir John Mitchell, A. D., B.Sc.F.

Royal Scottish Forestry Society, Scotland Director of Forestry Dept. of Forestry, Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa Timber Controller, UK

V VI

India

V

Provincial Forest Officer Colonial Forest Services, Gold Coast Trade Representative, Conference Moore & Sons Ltd., Melbourne, Victoria

IV

Monkhouse, E. B., CBE Mooney, H. F., CIE, OBE, MA, Sc.D., ED, IFS Moor, H. W. Moore, Louis James

V

III

232

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Morrison, W. G.

Conservator of Forests Canterbury-Otago, New Zealand

III

Morrison, W. T.

Conservator of Forests Rotorua, New Zealand

III

Morse, C. H., B.Sc.F.

District Forest Inspector Dominion Forest Service

II

Munro, J. W., D.Sc., B.Sc. (Agr.), B.Sc. (For.)

Entomologist Forestry Commission, Great Britain

II

Murray, Hugh, CIE, CBE

Assistant Forestry Commissioner Forestry Commission, England and Wales

I

Mutter, J. L.

Canadian Trade Commissioner Johannesburg, Canada

IV

Naden, G. R.

Deputy Minister of Lands British Columbia

II

Napier, W. F.

Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Canada

II

Neethling, E. J., BA, MF

Professor of Forestry University of Stellenbosch, Union of South Africa

IV

Newman, Frank, B.Sc.F.

Superintendent Ontario Govt. Nurseries, St Williams, Ontario

II

Nisbet, R. H.

Forester Price Bros. Ltd.

II

O’Connell, F. R., FCIS, LCA

Manager Timber Merchants’ Association of Melbourne and Suburbs, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

VI

O’Connor, A. J., Dip. For.

Inspector of Forestry Union of South Africa

IV

Oliphant, Major F. M.

Forest Research Laboratory, Great Britain (III) Forest Economist Colonial Forest Resources Development Dept., Colonial Forest Services (IV)

III and IV

Oliphant, J. N., MBE, BA

Deputy Director of Forests Straits Settlements Deputy Adviser on Forestry Colonial Forest Services, Malay States

IV

233

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Orchard, C. D., MM, B.Sc.F., MF

Chief Forester and Deputy Minister of Forests British Columbia, Canada

V

Osborn, Prof. T. G. B., D.Sc. (Manch.), FLS

Contributor of paper Professor of Botany, Sydney University, Australia

III

Owen, Lloyd

Commissioner Forestry Commission, UK

V

Palfreman, L.

Conservator of Forests Sierra Leone

I

Pepler, W. A. E., MF, B.Sc.F.

Manager Woodlands Section, Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Montreal, Province of Quebec, Canada

VI

Phillips, J. F. V., D.Sc.

Professor of Botany University of Witwatersrand, Union of South Africa

IV

Piche, G. C., MF

Chief of Forest Service Quebec

II

Pinches, A. L., Dip. For. (Adelaide)

III

Pope, W. P.

Chief Inspector Forestry Commission, New South Wales

III

Porter, E., FE

Manager Quebec Forest Industries Association, Quebec, Canada

VI

Pouliot, L. J., BA

Chief Forestry Section, Industry and Merchandizing Division, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Canada

VI

Prebble, J. E., B.Sc.F., MA, Ph.D.

Chief Division of Forest Biology, Dept. of Agriculture, Canada

VI

Prettie, R. D.

Superintendent Forestry Branch, Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada

II

Prince, G. H., BSF

Chief Forester Provincial Forest Service, New Brunswick

II

Pritchard, H. A., OBE

Assistant Commissioner British Forestry Commission, Great Britain

III

234

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Proby, Major R. G., MC

Private Woodlands Committee, UK

V

Purves, J. M.

Chief Forest Officer Nyasaland

I

Quinn, E. W.

Trade Representative, Conference President Victorian Hardwood, Sawmillers’ Association, Australia

III

Radnor, Earl of, KCVD

Commissioner, Forestry Commission, UK

V

Rahim, Kazi Abdul

Deputy Conservator Sind, India

V

Ramsay, J. H., B.Sc.

Dept. of Lands and Mines, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

VI

Ranganathan, C. R., MA, IFS

President Forest Research Institute and College, Dehra Dun, India

VI

Read, H. A.

Director Exchange Yard (Proprietary) Ltd., Johannesburg, Union of South Africa

IV

Rees, T. I.

Assistant Conservator Nigeria

V

Rendell, Col. A. F.

Trade Commissioner Newfoundland

V

Rey, R. G., BA, B.Sc.F.

District Forest Officer Valcartier Forest Experiment Section, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Rhodes, Hon. Sir R. Heaton, MA, KCVO, KBE

Minister without Portfolio New Zealand

III

Rhynas, P. O.

Chief Operations and Personnel, Dept. of Land and Forests, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

VI

Richards, Wm.

Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Canada

II

Richardson, James

Trade Representative, Conference Timber Trades Federation, UK

III

Richmond, R. D., Dip. Chief Conservator of Forests For. (Cooper’s Hill) Madras, India

III

235

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Ripley, L. B., M.Sc., Ph.D.

Division of Plant Industry, Union of South Africa

IV

Rivett, Dr A. C. D., MA, B.Sc. (Oxon.), D.Sc. (Vic.)

Chief Executive Officer Council for Scientific and Industrial Research

III

Robertson, F. C. Ford, B.Sc., IFS (Retd.)

Imperial Forestry Bureau, Oxford (V) Director Commonwealth Forestry Bureau, Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford (VI)

V and VI

Robertson, M. F., B.Sc.

Conservator, Tanganyika

V

Robertson, W. A., Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill), FRGS

Deputy Conservator of Forests Burma, India (II) Conservator of Forests Burma (III) Forestry Adviser Colonial Office (V)

II, III, and V

Robinson, Lord, OBE, BA (Oxon.), Dip. For., B.Sc., FSASM

Forestry Commissioner Foresty Commission (I, II, IV, V, and VI) Technical Commissioner Forestry Commission (III)

I, II, III, IV, V, and VI

Rochester, G. H., MBE, B.Sc.

Chief Wood and Wood Products Section, Commodities Branch, Dept. of Trade and Commerce, Canada

VI

Rodger, G. J., B.Sc., For. (Adelaide)

Director-General of Forests (V and VI) Forestry and Timber Bureau, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

III, V, and VI

Roe, Col. R. Douglas

Dominion Dept. of Trade and Commerce, Canada

V

Rogers, C. S.

Conservator of Forests Trinidad

I

Rosevear, D. R., BA

Inspector-General of Forests Forestry Dept., Lagos, Nigeria

VI

Ross, Norman M., BSA, BF

Chief Tree Planting Division, Dominion Forest Service

II

Rouse, G. D., B.Sc.

Chief Education Officer Forestry Commission Secretary Standing Committee on British Commonwealth Forestry, UK

VI

236

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Rousseau, L. Z., FE

Director of Studies School of Surveying and Engineering, Laval Univ., Quebec, Canada

VI

Rule, A., MC, MA, B.Sc., For. (Aberdeen)

Australian Secretary, Conference Lecturer Australian Forestry School, Commonwealth of Australia

III

Russell, R. G. H., PC

Native Timber Merchants’ Federation, Ireland, Eire

V

Sadd, H. Norman

Chairman English Timber Merchants’ Association Vice-Chairman Federated Home Timber Association (V and VI)

V and VI

Sale, G. N., B.Sc., FZS

Conservator of Forests Colonial Forest Services, Mauritius (IV) Conservator Trinidad (V)

IV and V

Salisbury, Sir Edward, CBE, FRS

Director Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England

V

San, U

Deputy Conservator of Forests Burma

V

Sangar, O. J., MC

Director Forestry Commission, England

V

Sargent, J. D.

Deputy Conservator of Forests Ceylon

I

Schlich, Sir William, FRS, KCIE

UK

I

Schwartz, H., Ph.D.

Superintendent Ottawa Forest Products Laboratory, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Scott, M. H., B.Sc.

Chief Forest Products Officer South Africa

V

Seely, H. E., M.Sc.F.

Head Forest Inventories Section, Forest Research Division, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Shebbeare, E. O., Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill)

Conservator of Forests Bengal, India

III

237

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Shedley, A. C., B.Sc., For. (Adelaide)

Assistant Conservator of Forests Western Australia

III

Shoh, S. B.

Chief Forestry Branch, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations

V

Singh-Pathania, T. Harnam, BA, PFS

Chief Conservator Jammu and Kashmir, India

V

Sisam, J. W. B., B.Sc.F., MF

Dean Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

VI

Smit, B., D.Sc.

Division of Plant Industry, Union of South Africa

IV

Smith, C. McL., MA (New Zealand), B.Sc., For. (Edin.)

Conservator of Forests Nelson, New Zealand

III

Smith, J. T.

Home Timber Merchants’ Association, Scotland (V and VI)

V and VI

Snowball, W. B.

Canadian Lumbermen’s Association, Canada

II

Somers, J. G.

Provincial Forester Dept. of Mines and Natural Resources, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

VI

Steane, S. W., MA

Conservator Tasmania, Australia

V

Stebbing, Prof. E. P., MA, FLS, FZS, FRGS

Dept. of Forestry, Edinburgh University, UK

V

Sternberg, C., B.Com.

Managing Director Acme Box Factory Ltd., Durban, Natal, South Africa Professor of Forestry University of Aberdeen, UK (V and VI) District Forest Inspector Dominion Forest Service Deputy Director Forests Products Research Laboratory, UK Commissioner Forestry Commission, UK

VI

Steven, Prof. H. M., MA, B.Sc., Ph.D. Stevenson, Lt.-Col. H. I., DSO Stilwell, S. T. C., B.Sc. Stirling of Kier, Col. W. J.

V and VI

II V V

238

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Stoate, T. N.

Conservator Western Australia

V

Story, Fraser

Intelligence Officer Forestry Commission, Great Britain

II

Strafford, Earl of

England

II

Strangsteel, Sir S., Bart., JP, TD, DL

Commissioner Forestry Commission, UK

V

Strong, T. A., B.Sc.

Director Malayan Union, Sarawak

V

Strugnell, E. J., B.Sc., CF

Conservator of Forests, Forest Dept., Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Federation of Malaya

VI

Stubbs, T. J.

Acting Conservator of Forests Tasmania

III

Sutherland, John, CBE

Assistant Forestry Commissioner Forestry Commission, Scotland

I

Swabey, C., B.Sc.

Conservator British Guiana, Jamaica and British Honduras (V) Conservator of Forests Forestry Dept., Entebbe, Uganda (VI) Chairman Forestry Board, Queensland (III) Commissioner New South Wales, Australia (V) Associate Dominion Entomologist Canada (II and III) Ex-President Council of Public Education, Victoria Commissioner and Director-General Forestry Commission, UK Managing Director Miller’s Timber & Trading Co., Australia Rep. of United Chambers of Commerce Union of South Africa (IV) Rep. of South African Forestry Association, Knysna, Cape Province, South Africa (VI) Timber Research Officer Malayan Union, Sarawak (V) Chief Research Officer Forest Research Institute, Kepong, Selangor (VI)

V and VI

Swain, E. H. F.

Swaine, Dr J. M., Ph.D. Tate, Frank, CMG, ISO, MA Taylor, W. L., CBE, For. Dip., FSI, FZS Temperley, N. Thesan, H. W.

Thomas, A. V., B.Sc.

III and V

II and III III V III IV and VI

V and VI

239

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Thomas, D. G., B.Sc.

Assistant Conservator of Forests Colonial Forest Services, Sierra Leone

IV

Thompson, C. H., MA, Dip. For.

Royal Forestry Society of England and Wales, UK

V

Thompson, H. M., CMG

Director of Forests Nigeria

I

Thomson, Prof. T., M.Sc.

Dept. of Forestry, University College of North Wales, Bangor, UK

V

Thomson, T. S., BA

Deputy Conservator of Forests Burma

V

Thornton, R. W., Dip. Ag.

Agricultural Adviser to the High Commissioner Director of Agriculture Colonial Forest Services, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland

IV

Tooke, F. G. C., M.Sc.

Forest Entomologist Dept. of Agriculture and Forestry, Union of South Africa

IV

Trevor, C. G., Dip. For. (Cooper’s Hill), CIE, IFS

Conservator of Forests United Provinces, India (II) Vice-President Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, India (III) Inspector-General of Forests India (IV)

II, III, and IV

Troup, Prof. R. S., CIE, MA, D.Sc., FRS, Dip.For. (Cooper’s Hill)

Formerly of the Indian Forest Service, India (I) Director Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford, Great Britain (III, IV)

I, III, and IV

Truax, T. R., BS, MS

Chief Wood Preservation Section, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

VI

Tunstell, G., B.Sc.F.

Assistant to the Director Forestry Branch, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Turner, E. Phillips, FRGS

Vice-Chairman, Conference Director of Forestry New Zealand

III

Tutton, C. H.

C. H. Tutton Pty. Ltd., Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

VI

240

Appendix 3

Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Unwin, A. H., OBE, D.Oec., MCSFA, FRGS, FRES

Principal Forest Officer Cyprus (III) Conservator of Forests Colonial Forest Services, Cyprus (IV)

III and IV

Vahid, S. A., IFS, IG, HEH

The Nizam’s Government, Hyderabad, India

V

Vancamp, J. L., MA, B.Sc.F.

General Manager Canadian Forestry Association, Montreal, Province of Quebec, Canada

VI

Veness, J. C., B.Sc.F.

District Forest Officer Maritimes District, Dept. of Resources and Development, Forestry Branch, Canada

VI

Viljoen, P. R., MRCVS, Dr. Med. Vet. (Berne)

Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry Union of South Africa (Vice-President, Conference)

IV

Villar, A. R., BA, IFS

Conservator of Forests India

IV

Voorhis, E., MA, Ph.D.

Natural Resources Intelligence Service, Ottawa

II

Ward, W. C., M.Sc.

Contributor of paper, Conference New Zealand

III

Waterer, R. R., CBE, BA

Conservator Cyprus and Palestine (V) Conservator of Forests Forestry Dept., Nairobi, Kenya (VI)

V and VI

Watt, W. E., AFC, BA, Dip. For.

Director South Africa

V

Wellner, C. A., BS (For.), MF

Research Forester Northern Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Inland Empire Resarch Center, Spokane, Washington, USA

VI

White, Brig.-Gen. J. B.

Canadian Pulp and Paper Association

II

White, R. M., BA, DF

Deputy Conservator of Forests Ceylon

II

Willis, E. B.

Irish Timber Importers’ Association, Ireland, Eire

V

Wilmost, G. A.

Rep. of United Chambers of Commerce Union of South Africa

IV

241

Participants at the Forestry Conferences Name, qualifications

Designation, agency representing

Conferences

Wilson, C. C., BA, Dip. For. (Oxon.)

Conservator of Forests, Madras, India

III

Wilson, Ellwood

Chief Forester Laurentide Paper Company, Quebec, Canada (I) Chief Forestry Dept., Laurentide Co. Ltd. (II)

I and II

Wilson, J. O.

Woodlands Executive Anglo-Canadian Pulp and Paper Mills Ltd., Quebec, Canada

VI

Wimbush, S. H. BA, Dip. For.

Research Officer Kenya

V

Winegar, B. M.

Assistant General Tie Agent Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada

II

Wood, G. L., MA, FRGS (Melbourne)

Lecturer Faculty of Commerce, Melbourne University, Australia

III

Wroughton, F. H.

Burmese Timber Industry, India

IV

York, B. L.

Controller of Timber and Grazing Dept. of the Interior, Canada

II

Youl, J. W.

Manager Victorian Sawmillers’ Association, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

VI

Young, C. C.

Manager Woodlands, Pejepscot Paper Co., Salmon River, New Brunswick

II

Zavitz, E. J., BA, MSF, LL D

Provincial Forester Ontario Deputy Minister of Forests and Provincial Forests Ontario, Canada Chief Division of Reforestation, Dept. of Lands and Forests, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

II III

VI

Bibliography A. ARCHIVAL AND MANUSCRIPT SOURCES Oxford Forestry Institute, Oxford (OFI): Printed Proceedings, Resolutions, and Statements of the Empire Forestry Conferences held in 1920, 1923, 1928, 1935, 1957, and 1952. Bodleian Library, Oxford, University Archives (OU): The Files of the Imperial Forestry Institute, Oxford. Rhodes House Library, Oxford (RHO): Furse, Worthington, Colin Duff, Sale, Thirgood, Hardy, Lester-Smith, Nigeria Forestry, Edwardson, Bayly, Decolonization in Africa, Lowie, Kenya Mss. Afr.—Swynnerton Plan, Honore Edward, Maher, Barton, Bere, Moor, Collier, Groome, Colvap, Jameson, Chipp, Duncan-Johnstone, Wigg, Dawson, Maher, Kenya Agriculture, Heaney, Brown, Bookless, Watson, Seward, Barnes, Plantations, Argyles, Wood, Shrubshall, Fyfe, Foenander, Swaby, Stevenson, Mitchell, Milne, Heussler, Barnes, Ford, Reginald Coupland, Oldham, Fabian Colonial Bureau, Jones, Malcolm, Worsford, Food and Cash Crops, Lugard, and Hailey Papers. Public Records Office, London (PRO): The Files of the Interim Forestry Committee and the Standing Committee on Empire Forestry, Public Records Office, London. British Library: Oriental and India Office Collections, London (IOR): Cooper’s Hill, Grant Duff, Bailey, Greville, Wallich, Brandis, Cleghorn, Munro, Roxburgh, and Buchanan Hamilton Papers. Rashtriya Forestry Institute, Dehra Dun (FRI): Institutional Archives. Forest History Society Archives, Durham (FHS): Society of American Foresters and the American Forestry Association Papers. Cornell University Archives (CU): E. B. Fernow Papers. B. DISSERTATIONS Bryant, Raymond L., ‘Contesting the Resource: The Politics of Forest Management in Colonial Burma’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1993). Dettelbach Michael, ‘Romanticism and Administration: Mining, Galvanism and Oversight in Alexander von Humboldt’s Global Physics’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1993). Forman, C., ‘Science for Empire, Britain’s Development of the Empire through Scientific Research, 1895–1940’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1941).

Bibliography

243

Goodstadt, L. F., ‘The Work and Influence of the Forestry Commission, 1919–1959’ (MA, University of Manchester, 1960). Grove, R. H., ‘Conservation and Colonial Expansion: A Study of the Evolution of Environmental Attitudes and Conservation Policies on St. Helena, Mauritius and in India 1660–1860’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988). Harrison, M., ‘Public Health and Medical Research in India, c.1860–1914’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1991). Lowood, H. E., ‘Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment: The Economic and Scientific Societies, 1760–1815’ (Ph.D. thesis, Berkeley, 1987). Macpherson, Anne Margaret, ‘The Human Geography of Alexander von Humboldt’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1971). Nicolson, M., ‘The Development of Plant Ecology 1790–1960’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1984). Rangarajan, R., ‘Forest Policy in the Central Provinces 1860–1914’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1992). Rasmussen, John Peter, ‘The Amercian Imperialist Elite: A Study in the Concept of National Efficiency’ (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1962). Tilley, Helen, ‘Africa as a “Living Laboratory”: The African Research Survey and the British Colonial Empire: Consolidating Environmental, Medical and Anthropological Debates, 1920–1940’ (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford, 2001). Wakefield, R. Andre, ‘The Apostles of Good Policy: Science, Cameralism and the Culture of Administration in Central Europe, 1656–1800’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1999). Worboys, M., ‘Science and British Colonial Imperialism 1895–1940’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1980).

C. UNPUBLISHED BOOKS Dawkins, C., ‘Sylviculture in the Tropical Rain Forest: An Historical Analysis of Success and Failure’ (Oxford, unpublished MS, 1992).

D. UNPUBLISHED Drayton, R., ‘The Myth of the Environmentally Profligate Native’, paper presented to the Seminar Series on the ‘History of Ecology and Environmentalism’ at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford, Michaelmas Term, 1990. Gadgil, M., ‘Science, Pseudo-Science and the Human Use of the Tropical Humid Forest’, Unpublished MS. Gillis, R. Peter. ‘Ernest Herbert Finlayson and Canadian Forestry, 1912–1936’ (unpublished MS).

244

Bibliography

Greenough, P., et al., ‘Discourse Contests and Environmental Narratives in South and Southeast Asia’ (1993). Grove, R. H., ‘Chiefs, Boundaries and Sacred Woodlands: Early Nationalism and the Defeat of Colonial Conservationism in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, 1870–1916’ (1993). Pouchepadass, J., ‘British Attitudes to Shifting Cultivation in Colonial South India: A Case Study of South Canara District, 1800–1920’, paper presented to the Conference on ‘South Asia’s Changing Environment’, Bellagio, Mar. 1992. Rajan, S. R., ‘Botanists as Environmental Evangelists: Fraas, Schouw, Schleiden and the Ecological Critique of “Civilisation” ’ (1993). Rangarajan, M., ‘Swidden Cultivation and Forest Management in the Central Provinces: Baigas, Gonds and the British’, paper presented to the Conference on ‘South Asia’s Changing Environment’, Bellagio, Mar. 1992. Tsing, A., et al., ‘Environmental Discourses in South and Southeast Asia: A Conference Proposal’ (1993). Watts, M., ‘Memorandum for the SSRC-Nuffield College Workshop on Environmentalism and the Poor’, paper submitted to the workshop held in Nuffield College, Oxford, Mar. 1991. E. PRIMARY SOURCES: BOOKS AND REPORTS Ainslie, W., Materia Medica of Hindoostan and Artisans and Agriculturalists Nomenclature (Madras: Government Press, 1813). —— Materia Indica: Or, Some Account of Those Articles which are Employed by the Hindoos & Other Eastern Nations, in Their Medicine, Arts & Agriculture (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1826). Baden-Powell, B. H., The Land-Systems of British India: Book III: The System of Village or Mahal Settlements, ii (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1892). Balfour, E., Observations on the Means of Forming and Maintaining Troops in Health in Different Climates and Localities (London: Hansard, 1845). —— On Iron Ores (Madras: n.p., 1845). —— On the Influence Exercised by Trees on the Climate of a Country: Being Reports to the Madras Government (Madras: Reuben Twigg, 1849). —— The Timber Trees, Timber and Fancy Woods, as also, the Forests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (Madras: Union Press, 1862). —— Vydian and the Hakim: What do they Know about Medicine? (London: Higginbotham and Co., 1864). —— Statistics of Cholera (Madras: M.A. & P. Co., 1870). —— The Cyclopaedia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (London: Gratz, Akademische, 1885). —— The Agricultural Pests of India, and of Eastern & Southern Asia, Vegetable and Animal, Injurious to Man and his Products (London: B. Quaritch, 1887).

Bibliography

245

—— Medical Hints to the People of India (Madras: C. Foster & Co., 1876). —— Indian Forestry, reprinted from the Journal of the National Indian Association (1885). Barlow, P., An Essay on the Strength and Stress of Timber, Founded upon Experiments Performed at the Royal Military Academy, on Specimens Selected from the Royal Arsenal and his Majesty’s Dock-yard, Woolwich (London: J. Taylor, 1817). Beddome, Lt., Timber Trees of the Godavery (London: Gantz Press, 1821). Benson, Major, Reports on the Woods of Tenasserim (London: n.p., 1840). Bernhardt, August, Geschichte des Waldeigenthums der Waldwirthschaft und Forstwissenschaft in Deutschland (Berlin: n.p., 1972–5). Boussingault, J. B., Rural Economy, in its Relations with Chemistry, Physics and Metereology: Or Chemistry Applied to Agriculture (New York: H. Balliere, 1845). Brandis, D., Indian Trees: An Account of Trees, Shrubs, Woody Climbers, Bamboos and Palms Indigenous or Commonly Cultivated in the British Indian Empire, Assisted by Indian Foresters (London: A. Constable & Co., 1906). —— Report on the Pegu Teak Forests, 1857–60 (Calcutta: Baptist Mission, 1861). Brown, J. C., Report of the Colonial Botanist for 1865 (Cape Town: Government Printers, 1865). —— Hydrology of South Africa: Or Details of the Former Hydrographic Condition of the Cape of Good Hope, and of Causes of its Present Aridity, with Suggestions of Appropriate Remedies for its Aridity (London: H. S. King and Co., 1875). —— Forests and Moisture: Or the Effects of Forests on Humidity of Climate (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1877). —— Water Supply in South Africa, and Facilities for the Storage of it (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1877). —— Pine Plantations on the Sand-Wastes of France (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1878). —— Reboisement in France: Or Records of the Replanting of the Alps, the Cevennes and the Pyrennes with Trees, Herbage and Bush, with a View to Arresting and Preventing the Destructive Consequences and Effects (London: H. S. King, 1878). —— Glances at the Forests of Northern Europe (London: J. & W. Rider, 1879). —— The Forests of England and the Management of Them in Bye-gone Times (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1883). —— French Forest Ordinance of 1669: With Historical Sketch of Previous Treatment of Forests in France (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1883). —— Finland: Its Forests and Forest Management (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1884). —— Forestry in the Mining Districts of the Ural Mountains in Eastern Russia (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1884). —— Forests and Forestry in Northern Russia and Lands Beyond (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1884).

246

Bibliography

Brown, J. C., Introduction to the Study of Modern Forest Economy (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1884). —— Forestry in Norway: With Notices of the Physical Geography of the Country (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1885). —— Forests and Forestry in Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and the Baltic Provinces of Russia: With Notices of the Export of Timber from Memel, Dantzig and Riga (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1885). —— School of Forest Engineers in Spain, Indicative of a Type for a British National School of Forestry (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, (1886)). —— Management of Crown Forests at the Cape of Good Hope under the Old Regime and the New (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1887). —— Schools of Forestry in Germany, with Addenda Relative to a Desiderated British National School of Forestry (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1887). —— African Fever and the Culture of the Blue Gum Tree to Counteract Malaria in Italy (Aberdeen: W. & W. Lindsay, 1890). Buchanan, F., A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1807). Buffon, Comte, Natural History, General and Particular . . . , trans. William Smellie, 20 vols. (new edn., corr., enl., London: T. Cadell and William Davies, 1812). Burgsdorf, F. A. L. von, Forsthandbuch, 2 vols. (Berlin: n.p., 1800). Cleghorn, H. F. C., The Forests and Gardens of South India (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1861). Cotta, H., Systematische Anleitung zur Taxation der Waldungen (Berlin: n.p., 1804). —— Naturbeobachtungen über die Bewegung und Function des Saftes in den Gewächen, mit vorzüglicher Hinsicht auf Holzpfanzen (Weimar: n.p., 1806). —— Anweisung zum Waldbau (Dresden: n.p., 1817). —— Anweisung zur Forst-Einrichtung und Abschätzung, Part I (Dresden: n.p., 1920). —— Grundriss der Forstwissenschaft (Dresden: n.p., 1832). Dalzell, N. A., The Bombay Flora: Or, Short Descriptions of all Indigenous Plants hitherto Discovered in or near the Bombay Presidency: Together with a Supplement of Introduced and Naturalized Species (Bombay: Education Society Press, 1861). —— Observations on the Influence of Forests and on the General Principles of Management as Applied to Bombay (Bombay: Education Society Press, 1863). Darnell, H. B., The Past, Present and Future Condition of the Forests of the George, Knysna and Uitenhage Districts (Cape Town: Government Printer, 1866). Drury, H., The Useful Plants of India (Madras: Asylum Press, 1817). Eardley-Wilmot, Sainthill, Forest Life and Sport in India (London: E. Arnold, 1911). Fabre, J. A., Sur la théorie des torrens [sic] et des rivières . . . (Paris: n.p., 1797).

Bibliography

247

Falconer, H., On a Reformed Character of the Genus Cryptolepis (London: R. Taylor, 1845). —— On Edgeworthia, a New Genus of Plants of the Order Myrsinea (London: R. Taylor, 1845). —— Some Account of Auklandia, a New Genus of Composita: Believed to Produce the Costus of Dioscorides (London: R. Taylor, 1845). Faulkner. A., Dictionary of Commercial Terms (London: n.p., 1857). Firth, Lt.-Col., Woods in the Madras Arsenal (Madras: n.p., 1851). Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, One Hundred Years of Indian Forestry 1861–1961 (Dehra Dun: Forest Research Institute, 1961). Fraas, C., Klima und Pflanzenwelt in der Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Beider (Landshut: Verlag von J. G. Wölfle, 1847). Gibson, A. On Bombay Forests (London: n.p., 1850). —— On Timber Trees (London: n.p., 1850). Government of India, A Concise Manual of Sylviculture, for the Use of Forestry Courses in India (Calcutta: Government Printers, 1906). Hamilton, B., Journey through Mysore (London: T. Cadel and W. Davies, 1807). Hartig, G. L., Anweisung zur Holzzucht für Förster (Marburg: n.p., 1791). —— Anweisung zur Taxation der Forste, oder zur Bestimmung des Holzertrags der Wälder (Giessen: n.p., 1795). —— Grundsätze der Forstdirection (Hadamar: n.p., 1803). —— Lehrbuch für Förster und die es werden wollen (Tübingen: n.p., 1808). Heske, F., German Forestry (New Haven: Yale University Press: n.p., 1938). Heyer, C. J., Die Waldertragsregelung (Giessen: n.p., 1841). —— Anleitung zu forststatischen Untersuchungen (Giessen: n.p., 1846). —— Der Waldbau oder die Forstproduktenzucht (Leipzig: n.p., 1854). Hough, F. B., Report on Forestry: Prepared under the Direction of the Commissioner of Agriculture, in Pursuance of an Act of Congress Approved August 15, 1876 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1878–80). Howard, S. H., Forest Pocket Book (n.p.: n.p., 1927). Humboldt, A. von, Aspects of Nature in Different Lands and Different Climates: With Scientific Elucidations (Philadelphia: n.p., 1849). Hundeshagen, J., Encyclopädie der Forstwissenschaft systematisch abgefasst (Tübingen: n.p., 1821). Jefferies, C. J., A Review of Colonial Research, 1940–1960 (London: HMSO, 1964). Mac Donald, Capt., On the Woods of Ganjam and Gumsur (London: n.p., 1841). McLelland, J., Indian Cyprinidae: Fresh Water Fishes of India (New Delhi: n.p., 1880). Marsh, G. P., Man and Nature (Madras: Higginbotham and Co., 1882). Mason, Revd F. A. M., Notes on the Flora, Fauna, Minerals and Nations of British Burma (London: n.p., 1830). Morgan, H. R., Forestry in Southern India (Madras: Higginbotham & Co.,1884).

248

Bibliography

Oettelt, K. C., Practischer Beweis, dass die Mathesis bey dem Forstwesen unentbehrliche Dienste thue (Eisenach: n.p., 1765, 1786, 1798, and 1803). Pappe, L., Enumerations Plantarum Phaenogamarum Lipsiensium Specimen (Lipsiae: Hirschfeld, 1827). —— Synopsis of the Edible Fishes of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town: Van de Sandt de Villier and Trier, 1853). —— Silvia Capensis: Or a Description of South African Forest Trees and Arborescent Shrubs (Cape Town: Van de Sandt de Villier and Trier, 1862). —— and Rawson, R. W., Filicum Africae Arboralis: Or an Enumeration of the South African Ferns hitherto Known (Cape Town: S. Solomon Steam Printing Office, 1858). Pfeil, F. W. L., Über die Ursachen des schlechten Zustandes der Forsten, und die allein möglichen Mittel, ihn zu verbesseren . . . (Züllichau: n.p., 1816). —— Vollständige Anleitung zur Behandlung, Benutzung und Schätzung der Forsten. Ein Handbuch . . . (Züllichau: n.p., 1820–1). —— Grundsätze der Forstwirthschaft in Bezug auf die Nationalökonomie und die Staatsfinanz-Wissenschaft (Züllichau: n.p., 1819, 1822, 1824). —— Neue vollständige Anleitung zur Behandlung, Benutzung und Schätzung der Forsten. Ein Handbuch für Forstbesitzer und Forstbeamte (Berlin: n.p., 1929, 1933). —— Die Forstwirtschaft nach rein praktischer Ansicht . . . (Leipzig: n.p., 1831). —— Die Forstpolizeigesetze Deutchlands und Frankreichs nach ihren Grundsätzen, . . . (Berlin: n.p., 1834). Reclus, É., The Ocean, Atmosphere, and Life: Being the Second Series of a Descriptive History of the Life of the Globe (New York: Harper and Bros., 1873). Report of the Committee on the Staffing of the Agricultural Departments in the Colonies (London: HM Stationery Office, 1920). Rhode, J., On the Woods of the Madras Presidency (London: n.p., 1843). Ribbentrop, B., Forestry in British India (Calcutta: Government Printer, 1899). Roxburgh, W., A Botanical Description of a New Species of Swietenia. (Mahogany), with Experiments & Observations on the Bark thereof, in Order to Determine and Compare its Powers with Those of Peruvian Bark (London: n.p., 1793). —— Plants of the Coast of Coromandel, Selected from Drawings and Descriptions Presented to the Hon. Court of Directors of the East India Company (Calcutta: W. Bulmer and Co., 1795–1819). —— Account of the Tussen & Arrindy Silk-Worms of Bengal (London: R. Taylor, 1804). —— Hortus Bengalensis: Or Catalogue of the Plants Growing in the Hon. EICs Botanic Garden at Calcutta (Serampore: Mission Press, 1814). —— Flora Indica: Or a Description of Indian Plants (Serampore: Mission Press, 1820–4). Royle, D. J. F., Illustrations of the Botany and Other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of Cashmere, between 1833 and 1840 (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1839).

Bibliography

249

—— An Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine: Including an Introductory Lecture to the Course of Materia Medica & Therapeutics Delivered at King’s College (London: W. H. Allen & J. Churchill, 1837). —— Essay on the Productive Resources of India (London: W.H. Allen, 1840). —— On the Production of Isinglass along the Coasts of India: With a Notice of its Fisheries (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1841). —— On the Sources of East India Kino (London: n.p., 1850). —— On the Culture & Commerce of Cotton in India & Elsewhere: With an Account of the Experiments Made by the Hon-EIC up to the Present Time (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1851). —— The Fibrous Plants of India Fitted for Cordage, Clothing & Paper: With an Account of the Cultivation & Preparation of the Flax, Hemp, & their Substitutes (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1855). —— A Manual of Materia Medica & Therapeutics, Including the Preparations of the Pharmacopias of London, Edinburgh and Dublin (London: J. Churchill, 1856). —— Paris Universal Exhibition: Report on Indian & Colonial Products, Useful as Food & for Manufactures (London: G. E. Eyre & W. Spottiswoode, 1857). Schleiden, M. J., The Plant: A Biography (London: Hippolyte Bailliere, 1848). Schlich, W., A Manual of Forestry, i (London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co. Ltd., 1889). —— A Manual of Forestry, ii (London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co. Ltd., 1891). —— A Manual of Forestry, iii (London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co. Ltd., 1895). Schouw, J. F., The Earth, Plants and Man (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852). Sim, T. R., The Forests and Forest Flora of the Cape Colony (Aberdeen: Taylor and Henderson, 1907). Smythies, E. A., India’s Forest Wealth (London: Oxford University Press, 1925). Spry, H. H., Suggestions Received by the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India for Extending the Cultivation and Introduction of Useful and Ornamental Plants (Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press, 1841). Stebbing, E. P., The Forests of India, i (London: Bodley Head, 1922). —— The Forests of India, ii (London: Bodley Head, 1923). —— The Forests of India, iii (London: Bodley Head, 1926). —— The Forests of India, iv (London: Bodley Head, 1946). Swaine, J. M., Forest Entomology and its Development in Canada, Pamphlet No. 97 (Ottawa: Canada Department of Agriculture, 1928). Vierenklee, J. E., Mathematische Anfangsgründe der Arithmetik und Geometrie, in so fern solche denjenigen, die sich dem höchstnötigen Forstwesen auf eine vernünftige und gründliche Weisewidmen wollen, zu wissen nöthig sind (Leipzig: n.p., 1767, 1797, 1822). Wallich, N., Proceedings of Agri-Horticultural Society of India (London: n.p., 1853). Watt, George, A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, 6 vols. (n.p., 1889). Weber, T. W., The Forests of Upper India and their Inhabitants (London: E. Arnold, 1910).

250

Bibliography

Wight, R., Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Orientalis (London: Parbury, Allen & Co., 1834). —— Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (Madras: J. B. Pharoah, 1840–53). F. PRIMARY SOURCES: ARTICLES Baden-Powell, B. H., ‘Forest Conservancy in its Popular Aspect’, Indian Forester, 2/1 (1874), 1–15. Balfour, E., ‘Notes on the Influence Exercised by Trees in Inducing Rain and Preserving Moisture’, including a ‘Letter to the Secretary to the Madras Government on the Influence Exercised by Trees on Climate’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 15/36 (1849), 401–48. Brandis, D., ‘The Utilization of Less Valuable Woods in the Fire-Protected Forests of the CP, by Iron Making’, Indian Forester, 5/2 (1879). —— ‘Progress of Forestry in India’, Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultural Society, 10/3 (1884). Cleghorn, H., ‘Brief Account of the Royal Forest School at Vallombrosa’, Indian Forester, 3/1 (1876–7). —— Royle, F., Baird-Smith, R., and Strachey, R., ‘Report of the Committee Appointed by the British Association to Consider the Probable Effects in an Economical and Physical Point of View of the Destruction of Tropical Forests’, Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1860), 78–102. Edye, John, ‘Malabar Forests’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, 2 (1835). ‘A Fragment from a German Writer on the Reasons why the State should Manage Forests’, Indian Forester, 3/1 (1876–7), 83–5. ‘Extracts from G. P. Marsh’, Indian Forester, 9/2 (1883). ‘The Gentle Bheel: A Conference Poem’, Indian Forester, 2/2 (1874), 218. Gibson, A., ‘Extracts from a Report on the Teak Forests of Western India’, Bombay Times (16 Oct. 1852). Gleadow, F., ‘Translator’s Conclusion’, to A. Me’lard, Insufficiency of the World’s Timber Supply, trans. and applied to India by F. Gleadow (Allahabad: n.p., 1901). Hosmer, Ralph Sheldon, ‘Progress of Education in Forestry in the U.S.’, Empire Forestry Journal, 2/1 (Apr, 1923), 92. Leavitt, C., ‘The Progress of Forestry in Canada’, Canadian Forestry Journal, 16/3 (1920), 130–8. Logan, J. S., ‘Climatic Effects of the Destruction of Forests in Penang’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 2 (1851), 534. Mc Kee, J., ‘On Grazing’, Indian Forester, 1/1 (1872). Marx, Karl, ‘Debates on the Law of Thefts of Wood’. Supplement to the Rheinische Zeitung, 298, 300, 303, 305, 307 (25, 27, 30, Oct., 1, 3 Nov. 1842). Maxwell, Sir J. M. S., ‘Afforestation’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 33 (1917), 103. Munro, C., ‘Timber Trees of Bengal’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1845). ‘Punjabi’, ‘Goats in the Forest’, Indian Forester, 2/1 (1874), 86.

Bibliography

251

Robinson, Sir Roy L., ‘Foresters and the Economic Crisis’, Empire Forestry Journal, 10 (1931), 180–1. Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John, ‘Forestry and National Economy’, Empire Forestry Journal, 11/2 (1932),15–17. G. SECONDARY SOURCES: BOOKS AND REPORTS Abercroumbie, P., Branford, V., Desch, C., Gedded, P., Saleeby, C. W., and Kilburn Scott, E., The Coal Crisis and the Future (London: Leplay House/William and Norgate, 1926). Adas, M., Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). Agrawal, A., Narain, Sunita, and Chopra, Ravi (eds.), Citizens Report on the State of the Environment in India (Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1982). —— Citizens Report on the State of the Environment in India (Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment, 1985). Albion, R. G., Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652–1862 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926). Alter, P., The Reluctant Patron: Science and the State in Britain, 1850–1920 (Oxford: Berg, 1987). Alvares, C., Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West, 1492 to the Present Day (New York: Apex Press, 1991). —— Science, Development and Violence: The Twilight of Modernity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992). Anderson, D., and Grove, R., Conservation in Africa: People, Politics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Anderson, R. S., and Huber, Walter, The Hour of the Fox: Tropical Forests, the World Bank, and Indigenous People in Central India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). Anker, Peder, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). Archer, M., Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London: HM Stationery Office, 1962). Arnold, D., Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). Barnett C., The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (London: Macmillan, 1986). Beck, Ulrich, Giddes, Anthony, and Lash, Scott, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995). Beinart, William, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Liverstock, and the Environment 1770–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Blaikie, P., The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries (London: Longman, 1985).

252

Bibliography

Blaikie, P., and Broomfield, H., Land Degradation and Society (London: Methuen, 1987). Boudon, R., The Analysis of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). Bowler, Richard Carl, Bildung, Bureaucracy, and Political Economy: Karl Heinrich Rau and the Development of German Economics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996). Brockway, L., Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanical Gardens (New York: Academic Press, 1979). Brouard, N. R., A History of Woods and Forests in Mauritius (Port Louis: Govt. Printer, 1963). Bryant, Raymond, The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1826–1993 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). Cameron, J. G. P., A Short History of the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper’s Hill (Issued by the Cooper’s Hill Society for private circulation, 1966). Cardwell, D. S. L., The Organization of Science in England (London: Heinemann, 1957). Carlsnaes, W., The Concept of Ideology and Political Analysis: A Critical Examination of its Usage by Marx, Lenin and Mannheim (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981). Carron, L. T., A History of Forestry in Australia (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1985). Cittadino, E., Nature as the Laboratory: Darwinian Plant Ecology in the German Empire, 1880–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Colchester, M., and Lohmann, L., The Tropical Forestry Action Plan: What Progress? (Penang: World Rainforest Movement, The Ecologist, 1990). Constantine, Stephen, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy, 1914–1940 (London: Frank Cass, 1984). Crane, D., Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities (London: University of Chicago Press, 1972). Crosby, A., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Dargavel, J., Dixon, Kay, and Semple, Noel (eds.), Changing Tropical Forests: Historical Perspectives on Today’s Challenges in Asia, Australasia, and Oceania (Canberra: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, 1988). —— and Tucker, Richard (eds.), Changing Pacific Forests: Historical Perspectives on the Forest Economy of the Pacific Basin (Durham: Forest History Society, 1992). Davis, R. C. (ed.), Encyclopedia of American Forest and Conservation History (New York: Macmillan, 1983). Dawson. W. R., The Banks Letters: A Calender of the Manuscript Correspondence (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1958). Deressa, Y., Subsidising Tragedy: The World Bank and the New Colonialism (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 1988).

Bibliography

253

Drayton, Richard, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britian and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 2000). Drummond, I. M., British Economic Policy and the Empire, 1919–1939 (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1972). —— Imperial Economic Policy, 1917–1939 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974). Duncan, Colin, The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humanity and the Rest of Nature (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996). Egboh, E. O., Forestry Policy in Nigeria, 1897–1960 (Nsukka: University of Nigeria, 1984). Elkington, J., Double Dividends? US Biotechnology and Third World Development (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1986). Ellsworth, Edward W., Science and Social Science Research in India, 1780–1880: The Role of the Anglo-Indian Associations and the Government (London: Greenwood Press, 1991). Engelhardt, H. Tristram, Jr., and Caplan, Arthur L. (eds.), Scientific Controversies: Case-Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Fensom, K. G., Expanding Forestry Horizons: A History of the Canadian Institute of Forestry/Institut Forestier du Canada, 1908–1969 (Quebec: Canadian Institute of Forestry, 1972). Fernow, B. E., A Brief History of Forestry in Europe, the United States and Other Countries (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1913). Fortmann, L., and Bruce, John W. (eds.), Whose Trees? Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988). Frängsmyr, T., Heilbron, J. L., and Rider, R. (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990). Furse, Ralph, Acuparius: Recollections of a Recruiting Officer (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Glacken, C., Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967). Golant, W., Image of Empire: The Early History of the Imperial Institute, 1887–1925 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1984). Graves, Henry S., and Guise, Cedric H., Forest Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932). Grove, R. H., Green Imperialism: The Evolution of Environmentalist Ideas and Conservation Policies in Mauritius, the Caribbean and India, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Studies in Environment and History, 1995). —— ‘Imperialism and the Discourse of Desiccation: The Institutionalisation of Global Environnmental Concerns and the Role of the Royal Geographical

254

Bibliography

Society 1860–1880’, in M. Bell, R. Butlin, and M. Heffernan (eds.), Geography and Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Grut, M., Forestry and Forest Industry in South Africa (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1965). Guha, R., The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). —— and Gadgil, M., This Fissured Land (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993). Gummett, Philip, Scientists in Whitehall (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980). Hailey, Lord, An African Survey (London: Oxford University Press, 1956). Harrison, M., Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Harrison, Robert Pogue, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Havinden, Michael, and Meredith, David, Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960 (London: Routledge, 1993). Hayter, T., Exploited Earth: British Aid and the Environment (London: Earth Scan, 1989). Headrick, D. R., Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). —— The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Hecter, Michael, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). Hobbelink, H., New Hope or False Promise? Biotechnology and Third World Agriculture (Brussels: International Coalition for Development Action, 1987). Hurrell, A., and Kingsbury, B., The International Politics of the Environment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Inter-Faculty Committee for Africa Studies, University of Oxford, Africa in the Colonial Period I—The Conservation and Development of Natural Resources (Oxford, 1975). James, N. D. G., A History of English Forestry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981). Jordan, C. F., Gajaseni, J., and Watanabe, H. (eds.), Taungya Forest Plantations with Agriculture in Southeast Asia (Wallingford: CAB International, 1992). Journal of Southern African Studies, ‘The Politics of Conservation in Southern Africa’, special issue, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15/2 (1989). Kittredge, Joseph, Forest Influences: The Effects of Woody Vegetation on Climate, Water and Soil (New York: n.p., 1948). Kjekshus, H., Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). Kloppenburg, J., First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology 1492–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Bibliography

255

Krieger, Leonard, An Essay on the Theory of Enlightened Despotism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). Kubicek, Robert V., The Administration of Imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969). Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (London: University of Chicago Press, 1970). Kuklick, H., The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Lal, J. B., India’s Forests: Myth and Reality (Dehra Dun: Natraj Publishers, 1989). Latour, Bruno, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987). Ledzion, M. M., Forest Families (London: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 1991). Lee, J. M., and Petter, M., The Colonial Office, War and Developmental Policy: Organisation and Planning of a Metropolitan Initiative, 1939–1945 (London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1982). Lindley, S. F., Lord Lovat: A Biography (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1935). Logie, J. P., and Dyson, W. G., Forestry in Kenya: A Historical Account of the Development of Forest Management in the Colony (Nairobi: Govt. Printer, 1962). Lowenthal, D., G. P. Marsh—Venerable Vermonter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). MacKenzie, J., The Empire of Nature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990). —— (ed.), Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990). MacMillan, H. R., The Profession and Practice of Forestry in Canada, 1907–1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto, Faculty of Forestry, 1958). Marglin, F. A., and Marglin, S. A. (eds.), Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Masefield, G. B., A History of the Colonial Agricultural Service (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). Mather, A. S., Global Forest Resources (London: Belhaven Press, 1990). Merchant, C., The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990). Meynell, G. G., The French Academy of Sciences, 1666–91: A Reassessment of the French Académie Royale des Sciences under Colbert (1666–83) and Louvois (1683–91) (Dover: n.p., 2002). Mitchell, Timothy, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002). Mukerji, Chandra, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Mumford, L., Technics and Civilization (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1934).

256

Bibliography

Nandy, A. (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). Nash, R., The Rights of Nature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). Olby, R. C., et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1990). Passmore, J., Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and Western Traditions (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974). Peluso, N. L., Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). Pinchot, G., Breaking New Ground (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1947). Polanyi, Karl, Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, ed. George Dalton (New York: Anchor Books, 1968). Pollard, S., The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1990 (4th edn. London: Edward Arnold, 1992). Poole, A. L., Forestry in New Zealand: The Shaping of Policy (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1969). Pyenson, L., Cultural Imperialism and the Exact Sciences: German Expansion Overseas 1900–1930 (New York: P. Land, 1985). —— Empire of Reason: Exact Sciences in Indonesia 1840–1940 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989). Pyenson, S. S., Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums during the Late 19th Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988). Pyne, Stephen, World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997). Radkau, Joachim, and Schäfer, Ingrid, Holz—Ein Naturstoff in der Technikgeschichte (Reinbek: n.p., 1987). Rainforest Information Centre, The World Bank Tropical Action Plan for Papua New Guinea: A Critique (Lismore: n.p., 1990). Rangarajan, M., Fencing the Forest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Richards, P., Indigenous Agricultural Revolutions (London: Hutchinson, 1985). Romberger, J. A., and Mikola, P. (eds.), International Review of Forestry Research, i (New York: Academic Press, 1964). Saberwal, Vasant, Pastoral Politics: Shepherds, Bureaucrats and Conservation in the Western Himalayas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Sahlins, Peter, Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). Scott, James, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Searle, G. R., The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971). Shenton, R. W., and Cowen, Michael, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996).

Bibliography

257

Shiva, V., Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: Zed Books, 1989). Sivaramakrishnan, K., Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). Skolimowski, Henryk, Eco-Philosophy (New York: Boyars, 1981). Spary, E. C., Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Stafford, R., Scientist of Empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, Scientific Exploration and Victorian Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Thomas, Franklin, The Environmental Basis of Society: A Study in the History of Sociological Theory (New York: Century, 1925). Thomas, K., Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500–1800 (London: Penguin Books, 1983). Thomas, W. J. (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, i. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956). Thompson, D. A., Bretting, P. K., Humphreys, Marjorie (eds.), Forests of Jamaica (Kingston: Jamaican Society of Scientists and Technologists, 1986). Tobey, R. C., Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–1955 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981). Tribe, Keith, Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse, 1750–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Tucker, J. P., and Richards, J. F. (eds.), Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983). Varcoe, I., Organizing for Science in Britain: A Case Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). Vivekanandan, K., 100 Years of Forest Conservation, 1887–1987 (Colombo: Forest Department, Ministry of Lands and Land Development, 1990). Vogt, William, The Road to Survival (New York: Victor Gollancz, 1948). Webster, C., The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975). Werskey, G., The Visible College: A Collective Biography of British Scientists and Socialists of the 1930s (London: Free Association Press, 1988). Westoby, J., The Purpose of Forests: Follies of Development (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). —— Introduction to World Forestry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). Whitcombe, E., Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, i: The United Provinces under British Rule 1860–1900 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972). Whited, Tamara, Forests and Peasant Politics in Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Wiener, M., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (London: Penguin Books, 1985).

258

Bibliography

Williams, M., Americans and their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Winner, L., Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). Winter, James, Secure from the Rash Assault: Sustaining the Victorian Environment (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). Worster, D., Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). —— Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon, 1985). —— The Ends of the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Worthington, E. B., Science in Africa: A Review of Scientific Research Relating to Topical and Southern Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938). —— Middle Eastern Science: A Survey of Subjects Other than Agriculture (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1945). —— The Ecological Century: A Personal Appraisal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). H. SECONDARY SOURCES: ARTICLES Abir-Am, P. G., ‘The Biotheoretical Gathering, Trans-Disciplinary Authority and the Incipient Legitimation of Molecular Biology in the 1930s: New Perspective on the Historical Sociology of Science’, History of Science, 25 (1987), 1–70. Ackerkneckt, E., ‘George Forster, Alexander von Humboldt, and Ethnology’, Isis, 46 (June 1955), 83–95. Adams, C. D., ‘Uncommon Ground’, Trinidad Naturalist, 3 (July–Aug. 1980), 41–4. Adas, M., ‘Colonization, Commercial Agriculture and the Destruction of the Deltaic Rainforests of British Burma in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in J. P. Tucker and J. F. Richards (eds.), Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983). Alvares, C., ‘Science, Colonialism and Violence: A Luddite View’, in A. Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 68–72. Anderson, D., ‘Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought: The Colonial State and Soil Conservation East Africa during the 1930s’, African Affairs, 83/332 (1984), 321–43. —— ‘Managing the Forest: The Conservation History of Lembus, Kenya, 1905–63’, in D. Anderson and R. H. Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: Peoples, Politics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 249–68. Apuhn, Karl, ‘Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry and State Power in Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Modern History, 72 (Dec. 2000).

Bibliography

259

Bajaj, J., ‘Francis Bacon, the First Philosopher of Modern Science: A NonWestern View’, in A. Nandy (ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 24–67. Beinart, W., ‘Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development: A Southern African Exploration, 1900–1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 11/1 (1984), 52–84. —— ‘Introduction: The Politics of Colonial Conservation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15/2 (1989), 143–62. Blais, Gabrielle, ‘The Archival Legacy of the Canadian Forestry Service’, Journal of Forest History, 32/3 (July 1988), 150–6. Boomgaard, P., ‘Forest Management and Exploitation in Colonial Java, 1677–1897’, Forest and Conservation History, 36/1 (1992), 4–14. ‘Brandis’, in Dictionary of National Biography, 1901–1917, 217–18. Brasnett, N. V., ‘A History of the Uganda Forest Department, 1898–1929’, Bulletin of the Forest Department of Uganda, 3/26 (1951). Bryant, Raymond L., ‘The Rise and Fall of Taungya Forestry’, The Ecologist, 24/1 (Jan.–Feb. 1994), 21–6. —— ‘Shifting the Cultivator: The Politics of Teak Regeneration in Colonial Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 28/2 (1994). Buchy, M., ‘Quest for a Sustainable Forest Management: A Study of the Working Plans of North Canara District (1890–1945)’, in A. Rawat (ed.), Indian Forestry: A Perspective (New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, 1993), 141–62. Buckley, S., ‘The Colonial Office and the Establishment of the Imperial Development Board: The Impact of World War 1’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2/3 (May 1974), 308–17. Cannon, Susan Faye, ‘Humboldtian Science’, in S. F. Cannon (ed.), Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period (New York: Dawson, 1978). Carron, L. T., ‘A History of Forestry and Forest Product Research in Australia’, Historical Records of Australian Science, 5 (Nov. 1980), 7–57. Castro, A. P., ‘Njukiine Forest: Transformation of a Common-Property Resource’, Forest & Conservation History, 35 (Oct. 1991), 160–8. Champion, H. G., ‘Silvicultural Research in India: Its Organization, Problems and Methods’, Forestry (1975), 104–15. Coleman, D. C., and MacLeod, C., ‘Attitudes to New Techniques: British Businessmen, 1800–1950’, Economic Histroy Review, 39 (1986), 588–611. Constantine, Stephen, ‘Britain and the Empire’, in Stephen Constantine, Maurice W. Kirby, and Mary B. Rose (eds.), The First World War in British History (London: Edward Arnold, 1995). Cook, Alan, ‘Across the Alps: London and Bologna in the Eighteenth Century’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 56 (2002), 1–2. Cooper, Alix, ‘From the Alps to Egypt (and Back Again): Dolomieu, Scientific Voyaging, and the Construction of the Field in 18th-Century Natural Histroy’, in Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar (eds.), Making Space for Science: Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1998), 39–63.

260

Bibliography

Craig, R. D., ‘Canadian Forest Resources: Their Relation to the War of 1914–1918 and to the Present Effort’, Canada Yearbook (1940), 251–8. Crosby, A., ‘An Enthusiastic Second’, Journal of American History, 76/4 (1990). Cunningham, Frank F., ‘James D. Forbes’ Alpine Tour of 1832’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 95 (1979), 130–41. Dunbar, G. S., ‘The Forests of Cyprus under British Stewardship’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 99 (Sept. 1983), 111–20. Egboh, E. O., ‘British Control of the Forests of Lagos Colony and Protectorate, 1897–1902’, Journal of African Studies, 6/2 (1979), 88–97. Fowler, L., Mooney, P., and Shand, H., ‘The Laws of Life; Another Development and the New Biotechnologies’, Development Dialogue, 1–2 (1988). Freeman, John F., ‘Forest Conservancy in the Alps of Dauphiné, 1287–1870’, Forest & Conservation Histroy, 38 (Oct. 1994), 171–80. Gilbert, L. A., ‘William Carron, Botanist and Explorer, 1821–76’, Royal Australian History Society Journal, 47 (1961), 308. Gillis, R. P., and Roach, Thomas R., ‘The American Influence on Conservation in Canada: 1899–1911’, Journal of Forest History, 30/4 (1986), 160–74. Glacken, C., ‘Changing Ideas of the Habitable World’, in W. J. Thomas (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, i (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1956), 70–92. Golinski, J., ‘The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory: Sociological Approaches in the History of Science’, Isis, 81 (1990), 492–505. Grove, R. H., ‘Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa 1820–1900’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15/2 (1989), 163–87. —— ‘Colonial Conservation, Ecological Hegemony and Popular Resistance: Towards a Global Synthesis’, in Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 15–80. —— ‘The Origins of Environmentalism’, Nature, 345/6370 (3 May 1990), 11–15. —— ‘The Transfer of Botanical Knowledge between Asia and Europe 1498–1800’, Journal of the Japan-Netherlands Institute, 3 (1991), 160–76. —— ‘Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the 19th Century’, in D. Anderson and R. H. Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Politics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 21–40. —— and Anderson, D., ‘Introduction: The Scramble for Eden: Past, Present and Future in African Conservation’, in D. Anderson and R. H. Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Politics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1–12. Guha, R., ‘Forestry in British and Post-British India: A Historical Analysis’, Economic and Political Weekly (29 Oct., 5–12 Nov. 1983). —— ‘Forestry and Social Protest in British Kumaun, 1893–1921’, in Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, iv (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 54–101.

Bibliography

261

—— ‘An Early Environmental Debate: The Making of the 1878 Forest Act’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 27/1 (1990). —— and Gadgil, M., ‘State Forestry and Social Conflict in British India’, Past and Present (May, 1989), 141–77. Gunnell, J. G., ‘The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy’, Technology and Culture, 23/3 (1982), 392. Hardin, G., ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162 (1968), 1243–8. Hart, S. G., ‘The Central Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun, India’, Empire Forestry Review, 2/2 (1922), 247–52. Heilbron, J., ‘Introductory Essay’, in T. Frängsmyr et al. (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 1–21. Herridge, A. J., ‘The Development of Forestry Policy’, Forestry Chronicle, 40 (Dec. 1964), 425–8. Hughes, F., ‘Conflict over Use of Forest Resources in the Lower Tana River Basin of Kenya’, in D. Anderson and R. Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Politics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 211–28. Jenkins, J. H., ‘Role of a Forest Products Research Laboratory in the Development of the National Economy’, Forestry Chronicle, 39 (Sept. 1963), 322–7. Keay, R. W. J., ‘Forestry: A Supplementary Note’, in Interfaculty Commitee for African Studies, University of Oxford, Africa in the Colonial Period I (Oxford, 1975), 81–4. King, N. L., ‘Historical Sketch of the Development of Forestry in South Africa’, Journal of the South African Forestry Association, 1 (1938), 4–16. Kumar, D., ‘The Evolution of Colonial Science in India: Natural History and the East India Company’, in J. Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 51–66. Lowe, P. D., ‘Amateurs and Professionals: The Institutional Emergence of British Plant Ecology’, Journal of the Society of Bibliography of Natural History, 7 (1976), 517–35. Lowood, H. E., ‘The Calculating Forester: Quantification, Cameral Science, and the Emergence of Scientific Forestry Management in Germany’, in T. Frängsmyr et al. (eds.), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 315–42. McCracken, J., ‘Experts and Expertise in Colonial Malawi’, African Affairs, 81/322 (1982), 101–16. Mackay, David, ‘Science and the East Indian Empire’, in David Mackay (ed.), In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire, 1780–1801 (Wellington: Croom Helm, 1985). Macleod, R., ‘Scientific Advice for British India’, Modern Asian Studies, 9/3 (1975), 343–84. MacLeod, Roy M., and Andrews, Kay, ‘The Origins of the D.S.I.R.: Refelctions on Ideas and Men, 1915–1916’, Public Administration, 48 (1970), 23–48.

262

Bibliography

Mantel, K., ‘History of the International Science of Forestry with Special Consideration of Central Europe: Literature, Training, and Research from the Earliest Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century’, in J. A. Romberger and P. Mikola (eds.), International Review of Forestry Research, i (New York: Academic Press, 1964), 1–37. Masefield, G. B., ‘Introduction, Comments, and Conclusions’, in Inter-Faculty Committee for African Studies, University of Oxford, Africa in the Colonial Period I (Oxford, 1975), 3–4. Merchant, C., ‘Gender and Environmental History’, Journal of American History, 76/4 (1990). Morell, J., ‘Professionalisation’, in R. C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1990), 980–9. Nicolson, M., ‘Alexander von Humboldt and the Geography of Vegetation’, in A. Cunningham and N. Jardine (eds.), Romanticism and the Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 169–88. Oedekovan, K. H., ‘Forest History in the Near East: A Survey of a Once Well Timbered Region’, Unasylva, 17/1 (1963), 13–21. Ofcansky, T. P., ‘Kenya Forestry under British Colonial Administration, 1895–1963’, Journal of Forest History, 28 (July 1984), 136–43. Palladino, P., and Warboys, M., ‘Science and Imperialism’, Isis, 84/1 (1993), 91–102. Peacock, H., ‘Forestry and Foresters through the Forestry Chronicle’, Forestry Chronicle, 59 (June 1983), 113–15. Peluso, N. L., ‘The History of State Forest Management in Colonial Java’, Forest and Conservation History, 35/2 (1991), 65–75. Piaz, Giorgio Vittorio dal, ‘Alpine Geology and Historical Evolution of the Orogenic Concept’, Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, A. 214, ser. 5, vol. 1 (1997), 49–83. Pincetl, S., ‘Some Origins of French Environmentalism: An Exploration’, Forest and Conservation History, 37 (Apr. 1993), 80–9. Pinch, T., ‘The Sociology of the Scientific Community’, in G. Cantol et al., Companion to the History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1990), 87–99. ‘Progress and Priorities in African Conservation History’, Forest & Conservation History, 35 (Oct. 1991), 188–91. Pyenson, L., ‘Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences Revisited’, Isis, 84/1 (1993), 103–8. Pyne, S. J., ‘Firestick History’, Journal of American History, 76/4 (1990), 1087–147. Radkau, Joachim, ‘Wood and Forestry in German History: In Quest of an Environmental Approach’, Environment and History, 2 (1996), 63–76. Rajan, Ravi, ‘The Colonial Ecodrama: Resonant Themes in the Environmental History of South Africa and South Asia’, in S. Dovers, R. Edgecombe, and W. Guest (eds.), Perspectives on Southern African Environmental History (Athens, Oh.: David Phillips Educational/University of Ohio Press, 2003).

Bibliography

263

—— ‘Disaster, Development and Governance: Reflections on the “Lessons” from Bhopal’, Environmental Values, 11 (2002), 369–94. —— ‘Imperial Environmentalism or Environmentalism? The Agendas and Ideologies of Natural Resource Management in Forestry Science in British India, 1800–1900’, in The Environmental History of India, ii (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). Rawat, A., ‘Brandis: The Father of Organised Forestry in India’, in A. Rawat (ed.), Indian Forestry: A Perspective (New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, 1993), 85–101. Recktenwald, H. C., ‘Cameralism’, in J. Eatwell et al. (eds.), The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, i (London: Macmillan, 1987), 313–14. Richards, J. F., and Flint, Elizabeth P., ‘Long-Term Transformations in the Sundarbans Wetlands Forests of Bengal’, Agriculture and Human Values, 7 (Spring 1990), 17–33. ——, Haynes, Edward S., and Hagen, James R., ‘Changes in the Land and Human Productivity in Northern India, 1870–1970’, Agricultural History, 59 (Oct. 1985), 523–48. Richards, J. P., and Mc Alpin, M., ‘Cotton Cultivating and Land Clearing in the Bombay Deccan and Karnatak: 1818–1920’, in J. P. Tucker and J. F. Richards (eds.), Global Deforestation and Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983). Roche, M. M., ‘Forest History in New Zealand: A Review and Bibliography’, New Zealand Journal of Forestry, 29 (1984), 98–107. Rowlinson, J. S., ‘ “Our Common Room in Geneva” and the Early Exploration of the Alps of Savoy’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 52 (1998), 221–35. Sangster, R. G., ‘Forestry’, in Inter-Faculty Committee for African Studies, University of Oxford, Africa in the Colonial Period I (Oxford, 1975), 69–80. Schabel, H. G., ‘Tanganyika Forestry under German Colonial Administration, 1891–1919’, Forest & Conservation History, 34 (July 1990), 130–41. Setten, G. G. K., ‘An Outline of the Progress of Forestry in Fiji’, Malay Forester, 11/3 (1948), 99–114. Shapin, S., ‘History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions’, History of Science (1982). —— and Thackray, A., ‘Prosopography as a Research Topic in History of Science: The British Scientific Community 1700–1900’, History of Science, 12 (1974), 1–28. Shioya, T., ‘A Short History of Forestry and Forest Research in East Asia’, International Review of Forest Research, N.Y., 2 (1967), 1–42. Showers, K. B., and Malahleha, G. M., ‘Oral Evidence in Historical Environmental Impact Assessment: Soil Conservation in Lesotho in the 1930s and 1940s’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 18/2 (1992), 276–96. Skocpol, T., ‘Bringing the State back in: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

264

Bibliography

Spoehr, A., ‘Cultural Differences in the Interpretation of Natural Resources’, in W. Thomas Jr. (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, i (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 93–102. Stebbing, E. P., ‘A Century of Forestry: Forestry in the British Commonwealth in the Last Century’, Nature, 169/4292 (1952), 173–7. Stocking, Michael, ‘Breaking New Ground’, in Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns (eds.), The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Sutton, J. E. G., ‘Irrigation and Soil Conservation in African Agricultural History’, Journal of African History, 25 (1984), 25–41. Swaine, J. M., ‘Progress in Forest Insect Control in Canada’, Forestry Chronicle, 4 (Mar. 1928), 35–40. Symithies, B. E., ‘History of Forestry in Sarawak’, Malay Forester, 26/4 (1963), 232–53. Taylor, C. J., ‘History of Indian Forestry’, Nature, 198/4881 (1963), 619–20. Thapa, G. B., and Weber, Karl E., ‘Actors and Factors of Deforestation in “Tropical Asia” ’, Environmental Conservation, 17 (Spring 1990), 19–27. Thirgood, J. V., ‘The Struggle for Sustention on the Island of Cyprus’, Journal of World Forest Resource Management, 2 (1986), 21–41. Thompson, H. N., ‘History of the Nigerian Forest Department, 1899–1926’, Farm and Forest, 9/1 (1948), 11–19. —— ‘History of the Forest Department, Nigeria, 1915–1925’, Farm and Forest, 10 (1950), 54–64. Tribe, Keith, ‘Cameralism and the Science of Government’, Journal of Modern History, 56/2 (June 1984), 263–84. Troup, R. S., ‘Schlich, Sir William’, in Dictionary of National Biography, 1922–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 751–2. Tucker, R. P., ‘The British Colonial System and the Forests of the Western Himalayas 1815–1914’, in J. P. Tucker and J. F. Richards (eds.), Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983). —— ‘The Depletion of India’s Forests under British Imperialism: Planters, Foresters and Peasants in Assam and Kerala’, in Donald Worster (ed.), The Ends of the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 118–40. —— ‘Forest Management and Imperial Politics: Thana District, Bombay, 1823–887’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 16/3 (1979), 273–300. —— ‘The Forests of Western Himalayas: The Legacy of British Colonial Administration’, Journal of Forest History, 26/3 (1982), 112–23. —— ‘The Historical Context of Social Forestry in the Kumaon Himalayas’, Journal of Developing Areas, 18/3 (1984), 341–55. Vaggi, G., ‘Physiocrats’, in J. Eatwell et al. (eds.), The New Palgrave: Dictionary of Economics, iii (London: Macmillan, 1987), 869–76.

Bibliography

265

Varcoe, I., ‘Scientists, Government and Organized Research: The Early History of the DSIR, 1914–16’, Minerva, 8 (1970), 192–217. Watson, J. G., ‘Some Materials for a Forest History of Malaya’, Malay Forester, 13/2 (1950), 63–72. Weber, Max, ‘Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy’, in Edward Shils and Henry Finch (eds.), The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1949), 50–112. White, R., ‘The Development of a New Historical Field’, Pacific Historical Review, 54 (Aug. 1985), 297–335. —— ‘Environmental History, Ecology and Meaning’, Journal of American History, 76/4 (1990). Whitlow, R., ‘Soil Conservation History in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 43/4 (1988) 299–303. Wilson, E., ‘Paper Mills and Forestry in Canada’, American Forestry, 18 (Dec. 1912), 769–76. Winters, R. K., ‘Forestry Beginnings in India’, Journal of Forest History, 19 (Apr. 1975), 82–91. Woodward, W. R., ‘Writings on the Philosophy of Science (Review of T. Glasmacher, Fries, Apect, Schleiden—List of Primary and Secondary Literature, 1789–1988)’, Isis, 84/3 (1993), 590–1. Worboys, M., ‘The Imperial Institute: The State and the Development of the Natural Resources of the Colonial Empire, 1887–1923’, in John M. Mackenzie (ed.), Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 164–86. Worster, D., ‘Transformations of the Earth’, Journal of American History, 76/4 (1990), 1090. Wynn, G., ‘Pioneers, Politicians and the Conservation of Forests in Early New Zealand’, Journal of Historical Geography, 5 (1979), 171–88.

This page intentionally left blank

Index Aberdeen University 75 absolutism (enlightened) 35 access to forests, restriction of 54 Acland Committee 123 Acland Report 124 Acland, F. D. 122, 123, 127 Adas, Michael 105 Adelaide University 123 administration of water and forests, France 46 Advisory Council on Scientific and Industrial Research, Britain 118 aesthetic concerns over deforestation 57, 58, 110 afforestation 123, 124, 139, 153, 188, 192 Africa 1 n. 1, 3, 9, 15, 61, 131, 146, 175, 185, 202, 204, 206 Africa Conference (1948) 202–3 African affairs 116 African Crown colonies 128 agrarian: collapse 198 economy 64 political economy 26, 34 populations 45, 103, 104, 186 productivity 34 ‘agree-cultures’ 5 agricultural: areas 139 bureau 169 officers 142, 190 policy 54 populations, see agrarian populations) production 183 productivity 62 products 64, 173 purposes 153 scientists 196 agriculturalists 44, 142, 191, 194 agriculture 3, 10, 27, 35, 43, 48, 56, 57, 73, 75, 83, 98, 132, 133, 144, 172, 176, 177, 183, 185, 187, 188, 190, 203 departments of 150, 153 development of 9, 55 research 121, 133 stability of 107 subordination of forestry to 157

agro-ecological: conflicts 189, 194 n. 129 crises 190 agro-forestry challenges 160 agronomists 25 aid for development 203 Ainslie, J. R. 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 187 n. 106 Ajmer 93 alienation of land dedicated to forestry 151 alpine: mountains 26 torrents 24, 25, 33 Alsace 49 Alvares, Claude 197 America 27, 131 American: forestry community 101, 102 forestry tradition 101 n. 202 timber market 177 Amery, Leopold S. 129, 135, 136 annual reports, forestry 129 anthropogenic environmental change 22, 25, 197 anti-colonial struggles 202 apples 192 applied research 166 Arago, Dominique François 27 arboriculture 74, 76, 110 Arbuthnot, John 23 n. 11, 32 Arcadian philosophy 22, 33 n. 45 areal method of forest measurement 37, 38 Argyle, A. J. 141 n. 138 aridity 182, 191 aristocracy 110 Arretin von 25 n. 18 artistic community 54 Asia 3, 146, 206 Asiatic Society, the 62 Aubreville, André 1 n. 1 Austen, Ralph 23 n. 9 Australia 9, 12, 61, 80, 113 n. 17, 114 n. 21, 125, 128, 135, 138, 139, 160, 163, 184 Austrian Alps 24, 25, 66 avalanches 48, 49, 66, 89 Awdry, Captain 93 n. 174

268 ‘Back to Nature’ movement 90 n. 157 Bacon, Sir Francis 22 n. 3 Baconianism 32 Bailey, Frederick 81, 83 Balfour committee 119 Balfour, Edward, Lord of Burleigh 65, 67, 73, 119 Ball, Sir James 128 Baluchistan 93 bamboo 84 bananas 55 Bannerman, Campbell 122 Barton, D. 204 n. 17 Basses-Alpes 24 Basutoland 187 n. 106 Battiscombe, Edward 142, 174, 176, 177, 179 Baudrillart, Jacques Joseph 46 Bazin 25 n. 18 Bechstein, J. M. 41 n. 71 Bechuanaland 187 n. 106 Beck, Ulrich 206 n. 22 Beckmann, Johann Gottlieb 36 n. 58, 37 n. 58, 38, 40, 84 Becquerel, A. C. 27, 28 Belancer 25 n. 18 Belgrand 25 n. 18 Bengal 175 Berar 93, 175 Berghaus 27 Berkeley, University of California at 179 Berlepsch, H. 25 n. 18 best practices 161 Bheel, the 95 Bienne, Lake 26 bio-prospecting 69 bio-prospectors 81 Bismarck, Otto von 113 Black, Robson 125, 127 Blaikie, Piers 189 Blandford, H. R. 152 Board of Agriculture, Britain 123 Board of Trade 125, 128 Bombay 8 Presidency 66, 175 Bonn 82 Borkhausen, M. B. 41 n. 71 Borthwick, A. W. 168 botanical gardens 62, 76, 102 botanists 1 n. 1, 8, 10, 11, 14, 29, 66, 72, 78, 121, 154, 170, 194 n. 129 botany 40, 62, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83

Index Bouches-du-Rhône 24 bourgeoisie 48 Bourgogne 49 Boussingault, J. B. 26, 27, 60, 66, 75 Bouton, Louis 75 Brandis, Dietrich 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 93 n. 174, 99, 101 n. 202, 187 Breuil du 74 Britain 13, 14, 79, 99, 110, 114, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131, 140, 154, 168, 169, 202, 203 British Association for the Advancement of Science 65, 67, 69 British colonial foresters 102, 163, 193 British colonial forestry 3, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 37, 44, 57, 74, 79, 99, 104, 105 British colonial forestry community 112, 139, 142 British Columbia 168 British Ecological Society 1 n. 1 British economy and primary production 129 British Empire 3, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 75, 79, 80, 89, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 114, 116, 118, 119, 128, 128, 129, 146, 155, 171, 182, 194, 198, 199, 200 British Empire forestry 20 British expatriate scientists 132 British experts 204 British forest management 111 British Forestry Commission 168 British forests 124 British Guiana 136, 187 British Honduras 136 British imperial interests 131 British India 61, 82, 141, 154, 155 see also India British institutions and forestry 154 British Isles 112, 124 British Labour Party 124 British naval supremacy 10 British Paper and Board Industry Research Association 14 n. 46 British state forestry 123 British universities 120 British woodlands 111, 112 Brown, Dr John Croumbie 22, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 110 Brown, Lancelot ‘Capability’ 109–10

Index Brudenell, Thomas, Lord Bruce 109 Buccleuch, Duke of 127 Buchan, John 204 n. 15 Büchtint, J. J. 36 n. 58 Buffalo 184 Buffon, Comte de, George Louis Leclerc 23 Burma 8, 73, 83, 84, 92, 93, 145, 175, 176 Burmese Days (Orwell) 145 burning 176 Burtt, Bernard Dearman 1 n. 1 Buxton, Professor P. A. 133 Caimi Pietro 25 n. 18 Calcutta 73 Calcutta Botanical Garden 8 Cambridge University 97, 170 Cameralism 35, 41, 43, 50, 200, 201 Cameralist forestry 37, 51, 156 Cameralist science 35, 36, 37 Cameron, Roy 152 Campfire, Mozambique 206 Canada 12, 101, 109, 113 n. 17, 114 n. 21, 115, 128, 138, 146, 149 n. 165, 158, 160, 173, 184, 190 Canadian Forest Authority 126 n. 71 Canadian forest department 137, 146, 149 n. 166, 151 Canadian Forestry Association 125, 127, 166 Canadian Forestry Convention 125 canes 86 Cape botanist 74, 75 Cape Colony 8, 11, 20, 62, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 150 Cape Legislative Assembly 8 Cape Town 8 Cape Verde Islands 67 capital assets, forests as 141 Cardamom 55 Carlson 192 carrying capacity of land 182 cartography 41 Castellani 25 n. 18 catchment 153, 189, 190 Cattle 64, 94 Cayenne 24 Central Africa 182, 183 Central Asia 26–7 central forest adviser 139 central institution for research in forestry 167, 168, 169, 170

269 centralized science policy 10 centre of calculation 18, 155 Cereni, Giuseppe 25 n. 18 certification of forest products 169 Ceylon 11, 73, 79, 172, 173, 174, 177, 183 Chalmers, Lord 120 Chamberlain, Joseph 115 Champion, H. G. 82 n. 124 Chena cultivation 176 Chipp, T. F. 1 n. 1, 141 n. 138 ‘Christian Pastoralism’ 33 Churchill, Winston 124 citrus 192 civil: administrations 155 administrators 142 servants 196; foresters as 147, 148 service hierarchy and foresters 145 unrest 6 clear felling 176 Cleghorn, Hugh 8, 65, 78, 81, 92, 103 Clements, J. B. 187 n. 106 climate, effects of forests and deforestation on 10, 21, 23, 28, 29, 31, 61, 67, 84, 101, 147, 188 climatic change and deforestation 14, 23, 26, 27, 30, 58, 66, 73, 197 climatic environmentalism 34 Clinton, Bill 134 Clutterbuck, P. H. 143, 144 coal 10, 117, 121, 165 coercive practices of imperialism 201, 205 and conservancy 7 and forest management 145 and forest policy 157 toward local peoples 186, 198 coffee 55, 72 Colbert, Jean Baptiste 23, 32, 44, 45 Collignon 25 n. 18 Colombo plan 204 Colon, Fernando 23 colonial: administration 16, 97, 98, 107; officials 9, 55 bureaucracy 133, 196 conservation movement 60 conservation policies 149 development 19, 120, 130, 131, 133, 134, 156; and trade 141; policy 132, 155 eco-development 20, 197 ecology 1 n. 1

270 colonial: (cont.) economy 131, 179 environmental history 2, 3, 6, 15, 171, 197 environmental policies 15, 113, 182 environmental politics 6, 100 environmentalist campaigns 61 experts 204 exploitation 19, 202 exports 116 forest history 56 foresters 13, 18, 19, 105, 106, 111, 134, 137, 143, 150, 154, 156, 186, 187, 188, 191, 193, 194, 198, 199, 200, 204 forestry 14, 16, 21, 56, 57, 59, 80, 106, 114, 125, 137, 160, 200; communities 65, 107, 138, 141, 149, 155, 157; departments 135, 152, 198; policy 16, 154; resources 9; regimes 61; science 18 forests 14, 57, 139, 155,159 governance 155 governmental agencies 190 governments 58, 59, 191 policy 119 politics 106, 203 research 120 resources 118; management 3 science 16, 61, 103, 118, 172, 197, 200, 202, 203; and technology 105 scientific corps 155 scientific departments 118 scientific environmentalist institutions 2 scientific forestry institutions 197 scientific legacy 204 scientific officials 203 scientific regimes 5 scientific research 118, 119 scientific resource management 5 scientist-conservationists 58, 60, 65 n. 39, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 92, 106 scientists 10, 20, 59, 60, 63, 69, 73 n. 82, 78, 102 n. 205, 103, 133, 179, 194 n. 129; communities of 57, 58, 59, 74 states 183 Colonial and Imperial Conferences 115 Colonial Development Act of 1929–39 130, 157

Index Colonial Development Advisory Committee 130 Colonial Development and Welfare Acts of 1940 and 1945 131, 133 Colonial Development Fund 133 Colonial Forestry Services 187 n. 106 Colonial Office 11, 65, 13, 114, 118, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 144, 145, 176, 182 Colonial Office Conference of 1927 136 Colonial Research Committee 133 Colonial Research Fund 120 Colonial Welfare and Development Acts 156 colonized tropical world 199 commercial use of forests 61 benefits of 70 common people 164 as ignorant 163, 171 Commonwealth 14, 203 Commonwealth Forestry Bureau 14 n. 46 Commonwealth forestry community 19 Commonwealth Forestry Conferences 114 n. 21 communal forest management 47 communal forests in france 46 communal lands 54 communal ownership of forests 173 Comoy 25 n. 18 conflict resolution 205 conifers 33 conservancy 64, 73 conservation 4, 14, 34, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 74, 78, 91, 94, 103, 135, 189, 196 of forests 90, 185 Conservationism 59, 60, 62, 183 conservationist 61,104, 126 concerns 57 impulse 24, 65 conservationists 66, 103, 179, 188, 191 conservator of forests 7, 8, 11, 66, 104, 111, 153 Continental Europe 19, 168, 198, 200 Continental European forestry 12, 17, 21, 61, 78, 84, 92–3, 106, 107, 112, 178, 188, 193, 195, 198, 200 experts 79 management 11, 13 model 170

Index paradigm 82 n. 124, 89, 140, 198 principles 100 programme 194 tradition 84, 104, 105, 163, 195, 197 continental foresters 74 continental forests 168 contract with nature 35, 53, 206 control of forested lands, private and communal 153 conversion (Umwandlung) 43 Cooper’s Hill forestry school 21, 112 n. 16 Coorg 93 Copenhagen 82 coppice system 47, 110 Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille 54 n. 131 Corps d’élite 167 cost of production 165 Cotta, Heinrich 39, 40, 42, 43, 47 n. 100 cotton 64, 121 Council of the Empire Forestry Association 137 Cournet, Frederick 82 Courthope, Major 127 Creech Jones, Arthur 203 critiques of science 205 crop yields 182 Crown colonies 128 Crown forests 122 Cubitt, G. E. S. 146, 161 cultivation 34, 52, 71, 186, 188 culture of technology 200 custer pine 192 cutting schedules 37 Cyprus 11, 79, 136 Dalhousie, Lord 83 Darcy 25 n. 18 Darius 185 Darmstadt 86 Darwin, Charles 94 n. 181 Deccan Highlands 66, 175 deciduous forest 176 decision-making power 205 decline of forests 161 decolonization 14, 112, 136, 203, 204 deforestation 7, 9, 10, 16, 23, 26, 32, 33, 57, 60, 62, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 103, 104, 126, 153, 183, 184, 185, 190 and anthropogenic change 27

271 and climatic change 14, 28 n. 27, 29, 30, 58, 66, 73 and drought 73, 79 economic effects of 23, 65 effect on vegetation of 28 effects on watersheds of 48 environmental effects of 22, 23, 24, 26, 61, 64, 65, 68, 102 and natural disasters 49 and rainfall 26 and soil erosion 75 and torrents 24, 25 n. 18 and water flows 28 Dehra Dun 83, 149, 168 democracy 206 democratic institutions 205 demographic increase 182, 185 as cause of soil erosion Department of Agriculture of the Canadian government 164 Department of Mines and Resources, Land, Parks, and Forests in Ottawa 152 Department of Overseas Trade 120, 127, 128 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Britain 118, 119, 120, 138 Derby, Lord 122 Descartes, René 22 n. 3 desert 176, 184, 185 desertification 185, 189 desiccation 58, 65, 182, 184, 186, 190 development 35, 63, 203, 204, 205 economic and social 10 of forests 139 of the colonies 202 Development and Roads Act of 1909 124 developmentalism 156 devolution 150, 198 Diderot 51 diminution (Ermaessigung) 44 disease (and deforestation) 32 disease (forest) 103, 162, 164 district forest officers 174 Dobbs, E. 12 doctors 10, 11, 14, 66, 72 dominion (of humans over nature) 22 dominion 201 myth 34 Dominions Office 138 Dominions Royal Commission 119 draft forest bill, India 197

272 Drain, Sir David 135 Drayton, Richard 48 droughts 30, 60, 67, 73, 79, 182 Duff, Grant 93 n. 174 Duile, Franz 25 n. 18 Dumont 25 n. 18 Duncan, Colin 53 dunes 81 Dupit 25 n. 18 Durance 24 Dust Bowl 179, 182, 196 East Africa 9, 132, 133, 134, 142, 175, 176, 178, 182, 183, 184 East African Guaranteed Loan 120 East African Research Council 133 East India Company (EIC) 7, 8, 62, 64, 66, 69 n. 59, 70 Eastern Archipelago, the 67 Eastern Ghats 66 Eberswalde forest school 33 eco-development 1 eco-evangelism 22, 30 n. 35 École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures 46 École des Mines 46 École des Ponts et Chaussées 46 École Navale 46 École Normale Supérieure 46 École Polytechnique 46 ecological: agendas 160 change 5, 14 degradation 184 differences 161 disruption 172 fragility 198 outlook 192 praxis 12 principles 192 problems 195 progression 176 regulation 5 studies 1 n. 1 ecologically destructive practices 196 ecology 30 n. 35, 155, 166, 194 n. 129 economic: development 119, 156, 205; and political stability 131 efficiency as goal of forestry 167 growth 154 imperialism 105, 200 management of forests 42, 140, 147 needs, national 54

Index policies 204 potential of forests 76 potential of nature 51 rationalization 36 utility of forests 103 utilization of timber 147 value of forests 32 economics 81 economy, importance of forests to 43, 59, 84, 99 ecosystem 1 n. 1 Edenism 58, 60 Edinburgh, University of 62, 102 Forest School 134 education 165, 194 about forestry 146, 157, 195 in forest management 33 of local populations 94, 147, 153, 164, 186 efficiency 154, 196 gospel of 91 in production 154 efficient resource management and use 50, 99 of forests 76, 161 Egypt 30 Elbe 27 Ellis, W. D. 144, 145 emancipation: discourse 52 social and economic 205 emancipatory appropriation 50 Empire Commonwealth Conferences 14 n. 46 Empire Cotton Growing Corporation 120 Empire Flax Growing Committee 119 Empire foresters 13, 56, 113, 148, 151, 155, 196 Empire forestry 12, 13, 18, 80, 128, 159 literature 128 practices 159 science 17 Empire Forestry Association 139, 152, 166 Empire forestry community 18, 19, 108, 137, 142, 149, 155, 156, 158, 159–60, 170, 187, 194, 199 Empire Forestry Conferences 13, 18, 20, 112, 113, 121, 125, 126, 127, 129, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151,

Index 153, 154, 155, 157, 159, 162, 164, 165, 166, 172, 176, 178, 183, 187, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199 Empire Forestry Journal 137, 149 n. 169 Empire Forestry Review 112 n. 16 Empire forests 162, 167, 173, 198 legislation 128 resources 141 Empire Marketing Board 120 Empire Marketing Grant 120 Empire resources 154 Empire scientific conferences 121 Empire-wide information exchange 164 Empirical methods 51 employment crisis 154 Enderlin, J. F. 40 n. 71 engineering 81 engineers 25, 190 England 7, 134 Engledow, Sir Frank 133 English Timber Federation 128 Enlightenment, the 35, 201, 206 centres 62 entomology 121, 164, 166, 170 environmental: aspects of forestry 81 change 10 crisis 171 destruction, economic effects of 24 governance 205 guardians 193 history 4 importance of forests 24 management 5, 18, 19, 68, 98, 102, 149, 186 policy 5, 23 n. 9 profligacy 95, 104 protection 195 regimes 59 regulation 57 science 31, 194 n. 129 stability and forests 73 technocrats 54 utility of forests 83 ‘environmental imperialism’ 105, 200 environmentalism 103, 104, 199 environmentalist: concerns 58 ideas 32 sentiment 179 environmentalists 61, 66 epistemic communities 5, 172

273 equilibrium of forest 86 eradication: of diseases 134 of pests 134 erosion 30, 48, 49, 66, 153, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191 Europe 5, 21, 23 n. 11, 26, 27, 30, 32, 50, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72, 74, 78, 81, 102, 106, 131, 164, 198, 199, 200 European colonial scientists 57 European environmental traditions 19 European forestry 20, 90, 99 principles of 198 schools 81 tradition 92 European science 197 European scientific communities 16, 23 n. 11 European timber market 177 evaporation 184 Evelyn, John 23, 32 evergreen forest 176 exclusion from forests of local people 189 ex-colonial scientific officials 204 exotic plantations 191 exotic species 191, 192, 193 expatriate colonial foresters 114 expert advisers 133, 135 expert scientific advice 118, 139 experts 11, 13, 155, 156, 167 forestry 112 professional 201 exploitation of forests 143 extinction (Abloesung) 44 Fabian Colonial Bureau 202, 203 Fabian socialism 202, 203 Fabian socialist development 204 Fabre, Jean Antoine 24, 25 famine 144 Fargue 25 n. 18 Federated and Unfederated Malay States 12, 135–6, 161 see also Malaya ‘feminine’ philosophy 22 Fernandez, E. E. 112 n. 16 Fernow, Bernard 52, 101, 163 fibres 86 Fifth Empire Forestry Conference 153 Fiji 136 Filicum Africae Arboralis (Rawson) 75 finger millet 186

274 Finlayson, E. H. 137, 149 n. 166, 151 n. 177 fire 44, 72, 85, 103, 162, 164, 171, 172, 173, 186, 188, 196 anthropogenic causes of 163 protection 8, 164 firewood 37 First Empire Forestry Conference 20, 114, 129, 134, 142, 143, 144, 160, 161, 162, 165, 169, 170, 198 First World War 7, 12, 13, 107, 114, 115, 116, 121, 122, 129, 136, 153 aftermath of 20, 154, 202 end of 112 Fisher, W. R. 112 n. 16 fisheries research 133 floods 24, 30, 31, 48, 49, 84, 184 see also torrents Florey, James (in Orwell’s Burmese Days) 145 forage 47 forced redistribution of populations 186 forcible expropriation of land 48 Forest Act 142 forest: administration 46, 128, 167 agencies 14 botany 166 categories 93 clearance 23, 26, 65; and climatic change 27, 27; and droughts 67; and floods 24; and water table 28 conservancy 9, 14, 16, 19, 20, 23 n. 9, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 67, 68, 74, 99, 102, 103, 140, 197 crops 187 cultivation 71 degradation 48 departments 11, 12, 21, 59, 79, 85, 112, 113, 128, 129, 136, 142, 143, 144, 150, 153, 169, 188, 205; India 8; United States 83 destruction 8, 27, 31, 55, 56, 78, 84, 103, 140, 177, 184, 185; environmental, social, and economic effects of 102; and rainfall 75 deterioration 174 development 144

Index economics 76, 165 education 128 engineering 165 finance 128 fires 73, 163 industries 86, 128, 171 legislation 49, 105, 140, 145, 148, 151, 153, 157 management 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 50, 73, 78, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 112, 128, 135, 139, 142, 145, 151, 156, 159, 160, 166, 168, 170, 174, 193, 194, 196, 198; plans 204; traditional British 110 mensuration 89; geometrical methods of 42 officers 97, 136, 143, 167, 169, 177, 188 ordinance of 1911 174 plantations 46, 73 policies 204 policy 13, 18, 19, 20, 113, 140, 142, 143, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 513, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 198 preservation 98 products 9, 10, 13, 21, 47, 50 n. 119, 55, 69, 70, 71, 73, 79, 83, 84, 86, 103, 109, 135, 143, 147, 160, 161, 162, 166, 178; export of 169; firms 128; research 139; valuation of 52 protection 43, 51–2, 84, 89, 90 n. 158, 112 n. 16, 159 protectionists 48 publications 128 regeneration 89, 193 regulation in Prussia 43 reserves 12, 101, 145, 149, 173, 174, 177, 178, 188 resources 94, 101, 122, 128, 138, 139, 161, 169, 171, 195, 204; access to 44; development 140; use 15, 16, 17, 37, 44, 54, 59, 78, 104, 126, 139 restoration 78 services 128, 147, 191 survey 78, 174 terminology 162 type 161, 173

Index use budget 42 use practices 161 utilization 32, 51, 79, 90 n. 158, 112 n. 16, 164, 165 valuation 51 villages 177, 178 wealth 177, 178 working plans 51, 89, 141 Forest Bill, India, proposed 92 Forest of Dean 111 Forest and Herbage Act (of 1859), Cape Colony 9 Forest Products Research Laboratory 14 n. 46 forestry: agendas 145 community 100, 101, 160, 193, 198 creed 147, 148, 150, 157 crisis, perceived 114, 115 education 13, 166, 167, 169; curriculum 81, 82 n. 124, 170 experts 12, 113, 155, 164, 171; ex-colonial 112 institutions, Germany 80 journals 36 manual 39 movement 12 production 164 profession 135, 148 professionals 112, 141; Indian 11 programme 111 research 128, 133, 166, 167; centres in Germany 33 schools 44, 62; in Germany and France 13, 55; training and research 36, 112, 170 science 19, 36, 39, 41, 50, 97, 139, 144, 167, 194; and management 113 Forestry Act 147 Forestry Commissioners 152 Forestry Commission 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 137, 139, 164 Forestry Special Sub-Committee of the Imperial Conference of 1926 137, 138 Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee 125 Forestry Sub-Committee Report 127 Forst-etat (forest yield budget) 42 Die Forstbenutzung (Gayer) 112 n. 16 Forstgeometer 38 Der Forstschutz (Hess) 112 n. 16 Forstwissenschaft 38 n. 62, 39, 41, 43

275 Fournié, V. 25 n. 18 Fourth Empire Forestry Conference 149, 150, 152, 153 Fraas, Carl 30 fragility of mountain ecosystems 48 France 13, 23, 24, 25, 26, 40 n. 71, 44, 46, 47, 50, 53, 55, 56, 62, 68, 74, 79, 81, 83, 92, 93, 97, 99, 104, 105, 106, 112, 122, 168 Franche-Comté 49 Free State 192 Freiburg School of Mines 33 n. 45 French Alps 24, 66 French forest law 45 French forestry 44, 45 n. 87, 80, 85 French Forestry Corps (Corps forestier) 47, 48, 105 French forestry schools 11 French forests, king’s rights over 45 French Revolution 45 fruit trees 191 fuel 70 fuel famine 172 fuelwood 188 Furse, Ralph, Major 134, 135, 136, 137, 145, 176 Gambia 9 game 108, 110 wardens 36 Garland, E. A. 187 n. 106 Gayer, Dr Karl 90 n. 157, 112 n. 16 Geddes axe 124 Geddes committee on national expenditure 124 Geddes, Patrick 117 geographical departments 133 geologists 190 geology 154 German Academy of Sciences 24 German forest law 44 German forestry 12, 37, 39, 44, 80, 84, 85, 89, 90 n. 157, 106 experts 11 methods 195 paradigm 49, 194 principles 195 schools 11, 99 system 110 techniques 47 tradition 43 German silviculture 201 German woodlands 37

276 Germany 13, 33, 35 n. 53, 36, 40 n. 71, 46, 47, 50, 53, 55, 56, 62, 68, 74, 79, 82 n. 124, 83, 86, 92, 93, 99, 104, 112, 115, 116, 164, 168 Gibson, Dr Alexander J. 8, 66, 92, 161 Giddens, Anthony 206 n. 22 Giessen, University of 86 Gillman, Clement 1 n. 1 Glacken, Clarence 22 n. 6, 32 Gladstone, William Ewart, Prime Minister 113, 114 gleaning 47 Gleditch, J. G. 40 n. 71 Glenny, W. J. 127 global: environmental community 206 industrialization 141 globalization of forest trade 169 goats 93, 94, 179 Gold Coast 1 n. 1, 9, 80, 136, 185, 187 n. 106 Gore, William Ormsby 129 Göttingen, University of 37 n. 58, 82 governance 205 governmental officials 196 governmentality 172 Graeff, 25 n. 18 grain 121 Grainger, M. A. 168 Grandes écoles 46 grass: burning 186 herbage 191 grasses 192 Graves, H. S., Col. 135 grazing 32, 43, 85, 93, 101, 109, 185, 188 and erosion 94 rotational 186 Great Depression, the 130, 149, 150, 151, 157, 182, 196, 198 Greece 30 Grey, Lord Earl 116, 126 Grisebach 82 Groom Professor 168 Grove, Richard H. 3 n. 6, 4, 10 n. 31, 14, 32, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 68, 73 growth of trees 165 Guildhall in London 114 Guineas, the 24 Gulf Stream 10

Index gum 191, 192 dammar 70 gum-resin 86 Gunnell, John G. 99, 100 Hagen, 25 n. 18 Hailey Survey of 1934–7 131 Hales, 32 Hanging Gardens of Babylon 185 Hardin, Garrett 92 n. 169 hardwood 33, 139, 160, 162, 177, 178 Harrison, Robert Pogue 51 Hart 127 Hartig, Georg Ludwig 39, 42, 46, 47 n. 100, 74, 90 Hartz forest, forestry school at 36 n. 57 harvest 52, 165 Hautes-Alpes 25 Havelock, General 83 Hazara district 93 Headrick, Daniel 106, 112 n. 15 hegemony 172 Heilbron, Sir Ian 133 Heilbron–Simonsen report 132 Helfer, Dr 8 hemp 64 Hennert, K. W. 38 n. 64 Heske, Franz 82 n. 124 Hess, Richard, Dr 90 n. 158, 112 n. 16 Heyer, Carl Justus 39 Heyer, Gustav 25 n. 18, 90 Hickling 133 Hill, Claude 166–8 Hill, H. C. 111 Hilton Young Commission (1928) 131 Himalayan foothills 183 hippo pools 184 ‘Hippocratic’ concern 32 Hippocratic ideal 60 Histoire naturelle (Buffon) 32 history of science and technology 197 Holzgerechte Jäger 36, 40 Home Grown Timber Committee 123 Hooker, Sir William 76 horticulturalists 191 horticulture 76 Hossfeld, Johann 38, 39 Hough, Franklin Benjamin 22, 28, 75 Howard, S. 152 human domination of nature 90 human health (and forests) 32, 73 human–ecological problems 159, 160 Humboldt, Alexander von 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 60, 66, 75

Index Humboldtian plant geographers 28, 30 n. 35 Hundeshagen, Johann Christian 39 Hutchins, D. E. 12 hydrologists 1 n. 1 imperial: economic interests 59 economic policy 115 economy 171 environmental audit 160 environmental intervention 57 environmentalism 53 expansion 195 forest departments 161 forest estate 107, 128, 141 forestry 13, 16, 17, 138, 141, 158, 169, 195; community 20, 139, 189; education 135 policy 169 resource management 15 science 199 scientific institutions 6 scientific network 203 scientific officers 204 scientific services 120 Imperial College of Science and Technology, London 168 Imperial Conference of 1926 121, 137 Imperial Development Board 119 Imperial Economic Conference of 1923 121 Imperial Economic Conference of 1926 129 Imperial Economic Union 119 Imperial Forestry Association 125 Imperial Forestry Bureau 139, 169 Imperial Forestry Institute at Oxford University 14 n. 46, 134, 137, 187 n. 106, 112 Imperial Forestry Research Centre 168 Imperial Institute 116, 119, 137, 138 Imperial Mineral Resources Bureau 119 Imperial Technical College 128 Imperial Visionaries 115, 129, 130 Imperial War Conference of 1917 117 imperialism 2, 4, 197, 201, 202 incendiarism 163 India 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 16, 20, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 99, 100, 102, 104, 112, 120, 124, 126, 137, 142,

277 143, 144, 152, 154, 160, 161, 164, 167, 175, 183, 187, 206 India Office 81, 111, 127, 128, 135, 137 Indian: agriculture 64 forest department 12, 79, 83, 90, 96, 99 service 11, 12, 21, 86, 87, 91, 112 n. 16, 134, 137, 164, 168, 187 n. 106, 90 n. 160 foresters 81, 82, 83, 90, 91 n. 166, 99, 100 forestry 12, 65, 82, 99, 106, 150 forestry community 20, 79, 92, 93, 94, 98 forests 84 Indian Board of Scientific Advice 120 Indian Forest Act 94, 96; of 1865 93; of 1878 93, 94, 145 Indian Forester 12, 14, 87 Indian Trees (Brandis) 83 indigenous peoples 6, 15, 18, 72, 103, 183 knowledge 64, 200 practices 201 indirect benefits of forests 92, 188, 190 industrial: development 140 interests 48 needs 54 production 129 research 133 revolution 49 society 22 industrialism 53 industry/ies 35, 83, 103, 116, 141, 195, 203 British 119 infrastructure 35, 47 inland fisheries research 133 insects 162, 164 attacks on forests by 44, 52, 72 damage due to 103 outbreaks 164 Inspector-General of Forests in India 83, 87, 112 Institute for Foreign and Colonial Forestry, Tharandt, Germany 82 n. 124 Institute of Scottish Architects 128 institutes for research 167 instrumental valuation of nature 51 n. 120

278 Interim Forestry Authority 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 139 International Exhibition of London (1861) 76 international network of scientists 30, 102 international politics of the environment 5 n. 13 Inter-State Forestry Conference 137 inter-war period 129, 132, 155 invisible college 27–8, 66, 75, 179 iron 71 irrigation 3, 76, 98, 186 island colonies (environmental vulnerability of ) 60 Italian: Alps 66 states 68 Italy 25 Ivory Coast 9 Japan 26 Jarrier 49 joint forest management 206 Joint Forestry Branches of the Board of Agriculture, Britain 123 Jones, Owen 175, 176, 177 Jormis, Moreau de 27 Jung, J. H. 37 n. 58 Jura 122 Kameralisten 36, 43, 45 Karlsruhe 86 Keen, Dr 133 Keet, J. A. 192, 193 Kenya 9, 80, 136, 174, 175, 184 King, W. L. MacKenzie, Prime Minister of Canada 115 König, G. 38 n. 64 Krantz 25 n. 18 Kuhn, Thomas 198 Labour Party, Britain 203 labour strikes 130 laissez-faire: economic policies 72, 73, 103, 156 economists 115 Lamairesse 25 n. 18 land: alienation, state enforced 49 grant colleges 179 management 158, 183, 188 ownership 182 settlements 10

Index use 142, 145; planning 187; traditional practices of 196 utilization 152 utilization boards 188 Land Agents’ Society 128 Land Owners’ Association 128 landlords 109, 111, 154 landowners 112, 123 landscapes 47, 201 landslides 48, 184 land-tenure rules 174 Lane-Poole, C. E. 168, 169 Lantzius-Benings 82 late Victorian period 111, 155 Latin America 206 Latour, Bruno 18 n. 58, 155 n. 192 Laurier, Sir Wilfred, Prime Minister of Canada 125, 126 law 81, 132 Le Roy 51 Leavitt, C. 146 legislation 176, 189 forest management 198 for forest reserves 101 to protect sensitive lands 186 Liberia 9 lions 184 Lloyd George, David 122, 124 lobby group, foresters as 102, 155, 159 lobbying 13, 99, 101, 146, 151, 154, 199 local: agrarian populations 99 education 204 elites 205 forest communities 37, 47, 52, 53 forest labour 178 governments 150 knowledge 51, 53, 200, 205 people(s) 43, 49, 64, 72, 94, 156, 160, 173, 174, 179, 186, 187, 193, 198, 201, 205, 206; biases against 196 population(s) 6, 44, 48, 49, 70, 94, 100, 104, 141, 177, 183, 188, 199; ignorance of 93, 105 problems 195 resource users 99 uprisings 47 n. 102 Lois forestiers de France 45 London 114, 129, 137, 164 Lord Mayor of London 114 Lorentz manuel du forestier 46 Lorentz, J. Bernard 46, 47

Index Lorraine 49 Louis XIV 44 Lovat, Lord 122, 123, 124, 127, 129, 134, 137, 138, 140 Lowood, Henry E. 36 n. 54 Lugard 202 lumber 37, 190 see also timber MacKenzie, Alexander 93 n. 174 McSwiney, Professor 133 Madras 7, 8, 65, 73, 90, 93 Madras revenue board 7 Malabar 7, 66, 71 Malabar teak 7 Malaya 80, 141 n. 138, 142, 146 Malézieux, 25 n. 18 Malle, Dureau de la 27 Man and Nature (Marsh) 31, 990 management of forests 141, 192 Mangon 25 n. 18 mangrove swamps 176 A Manual of Forestry (Schlich) 20, 21, 87, 89, 90, 92, 112 n. 16 manuals 86 Marbut, Curtis Fletcher 1 n. 1 marginal lands 187 Marsh, George Perkins 22, 31, 65, 90, 91, 101 n. 202 Marshman, Rachel 83 Marx, Karl 52 Massat 49 mass-based methods of measuring forests 38, 39 material progress 156 mathematical principles (application to forestry of ) 38 mathematics-based forestry 39, 40, 41 Mauquoy, Alphonse 87 Mauritius 11, 79, 136 Mauritius Royal Society 75 Maxwell, Sir John Stirling 123, 125, 127, 138 Meaume 74 medical research 133 medicinal plants 64, 86 medicine 62, 132, 144, 154 Mediterranean Alps 49 Melbourne 137 mercantilism 73 n. 82 Mesopotamia 30, 185 meteorology 166 Mildbraed, Johannes 1 n. 1 Milne, G. P. 1 n. 1

279 Milner, Lord 114, 118, 129 minerals 203 mining, effect on water supply of 33 Ministry of Reconstruction, Britain 124 mistletoe 51 Mitchell, Timothy 52 mixed forests 47 modern forestry 37, 50, 53, 108, 111, 201, 206 management 114 paradigm 198 practices 52 modern political economy 201 modern science and technology 32, 197, 205 modernism 53 modernist approaches 201 modernity 21, 32, 53 modernization 35, 154, 156, 205 of Britain’s forests 123 modernizing nature 50 Monceau, Henri Louis Duhamel du 29, 40 n. 71 Monestier-Savignat 25 n. 18 monocultures, forests 43, 47, 85, 90 n. 157, 198, 201 Montagu, Edwin 124 Montesquieu, Baron de, Charles-Louis de Secondat 23 n. 11, 32, 73 n. 79 Moor, H. W. 187 n. 106 moral improvement, education of locals for 94 moral language 199 moral paradigms 205 n. 20 moral superiority of professionals over locals 100 morality of colonialism 131 morals, and forest destruction 163 Morat, Lake 26 Moreau, Fernand 1 n. 1 Mozambique 206 Muir, John 163 Müller, Franz 25 n. 18 multi-media publicity campaign for forestry 151 Mumford, Lewis 105, 198 Munro, Dr J. W. 164 Munro, Professor 133 Munro, Sir Thomas 7 Museum of Economic Botany at Kew 76 mycologists 164

280 mycology 121, 166, 170 ‘myth of origin’ 59 ‘Myth of the Environmentally Profligate Native’ 48, 49 Nachhaltigkeit (sustainability) 41 Nadault de Buffon 25 n. 18 Nancy forestry school 46, 47, 80, 81, 82, 97, 99, 101 n. 202 Nanquette, H. 47, 82 Napoleon Bonaparte 46 n. 97 national assets, forests as 146 National Convention of 1792 (France) 45 National Forest Code of 1827 (France) 49 national infrastructure 53 national resource crisis 123 nationalist governments 202 nationalist movements 131, 204 native peoples 176, 196, 202, 203 as ignorant/immoral 72 natural resources 63, 64, 183 development 76 management 3, 6, 19, 20, 59, 104, 106, 134, 204 use 33, 113 Naturphilosophie 62 Nehru, Jawaharlal 204 neo-romanticist school of landscape painting 58 Neuchâtel, Lake 26 New Delhi 118 New Statesman 116 New World, the 26, 60 New Zealand 9, 11, 79, 113 n. 17, 114 n. 21, 125, 128, 135, 138, 139, 184 Newfoundland 128, 138 Niger delta 184 Nigeria 9, 12, 79, 136, 161, 172, 173, 184, 185, 187 n. 106, 190 Nisbit, John 112 n. 16 Nobbs, E. A. 112 n. 16 nomadism 177 non-Western knowledge systems 200 Normalbaum (standard tree) 39, 40, 43 North America 61, 102, 177 North-East Provinces, India 85 Northern Rhodesia 136 Novar, Lord 137 nutrition 134 Nyasaland 136, 185, 186, 187 n. 106 Nyerere, Julius 204

Index oak 7, 51 Oder 27 Oettelt, Karl Christoph 38, 39 Office of Woods 123 oil 165 oil seeds 86 Oldham, J. H. 116 Oliphant, F. M. 187 n. 106 optimized resource use 103 Opuntia 96 n. 184 Orientalism 60 Ormsby–Gore Commission (1924) 131 Orwell, George 145 Ottawa 114, 152, 164 Oudh 85 overcultivation 185, 189 overgrazing 183, 186 overpopulation 189 Oxford English Dictionary 108 Oxford University 1 n. 1, 87, 97, 123, 137, 140, 170 Oxford University forestry school 21, 112 Palestine 30, 136, 179, 180, 181, 188 palm kernels 116 palm oil 173, 177 pan-colonial: forestry 107, 113, 179, 193; community 13 professional identity 155 scientific community 80 paper 86, 121, 190 Pappe, Dr Ludwig 74, 75, 76, 79 Parade, Adolphe L. F. 47 ‘paradigm articulation’ 198 Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855 76 ‘Partners in Progress’ speech 202 party politics 150 Passmore, John 103 Passy, de 25 n. 18 Pastoralists 44, 191 pasturage 47 paternalism 203 patriot 25 n. 18 Pax Britannica 155, 199 Pearson, F. Col. 82 peasant: communities 52 protests 2, 49, 52 Pecquet, Antoine 45 Pegu 83, 84, 85, 86, 92 Penang 67

Index perfectibility 201 permanent cultivation 178 Perre, W. F. 168 Persia 30, 185 Pfeiffer, J. 36 n. 58 Pfeil, Friedrich Wilhelm Leopold 39 philanthropy 202 Phillips, John 191 physics 154 physiocracy 10, 34, 35 n. 53, 45, 60, 62 Pinchot, Gifford 83, 101 n. 202, 102, 126, 140, 163 pine 47, 191, 192 pine-resin 86 plant ecology 29, 111, 194 n. 129 Plantation Committee 71 plantations 8, 175, 178 cash-crop 10, 55, 57, 64 forest 47, 70, 71, 73 n. 81, 76, 85, 90, 91, 109, 143, 179 teak 7 Pliny 23 n. 11 Plocq 25 n. 18 Poirée, M. A. 25 n. 18 Polanyi, Karl 201 n. 5 political economy 4, 21, 24, 34, 35 n. 53, 46, 50, 51, 193, 200, 201 Poppert, E. P. 111 popular protest 15 population increase 134, 177, 182 post-colonial: environmental history 2 era 204 governments 205 science policy 2 post-war scientific research agencies 120 precipitation and forests 23 preservation 103, 163 forest 110 game 110 preservationist 104, 126 attitude to nature 34 pressure-group politics 155 Pretoria 118 * Priestley, INITIALS 32, 73 Prime Minister, British 118 private: commercial interests 92 contractors (exploitation of forests by) 103 forest industries 162 forestry 156

281 forests 152 landowner replantations 54 property 45, 153 timber interests 58 privatization 49 Privy Council Committee on Scientific and Industrial Research 118–19 production 171 forest 128, 198 increase 134 policies 159 for trade 203 productivity of forests 187 professional: foresters 47, 85, 137, 159 forestry community 11, 97, 106, 196, 198 scientific communities 113, 196 professionalism of foresters 80 n. 113 professionals 132 progress 32, 201 progressive conservationism 91, 102, 126 progressivist era 163, 179 progressivist ideology 156, 201 propaganda, forest 146, 151, 152 property rights 8 prosopography 20, 61 n. 20, 62 n. 20 protest movements 205 protests 2, 44 proto-environmentalist scientific traditions 34 proto-environmentalists 23 provincial devolution 157 provincial forest acts 93 Provincial Forest Service of British Columbia 168 provincial training colleges 112 Prussia 35, 114, 156 Prussian forestry tradition 43 Prussian Master-foresters 81 public: accountability 206 health 130 policy based on scientific advice 194 n. 129 protest 205 water supplies 153 works 11 publicity for forest policy 147, 157 pulp 190 Puton 47 n. 102 Pyrénées 49

282 quantification 36 Quebec 24 race, imperial attitudes about 146 railway 71, 130, 174 rainfall 20, 75, 90, 190 decline 184 and deforestation 26 influence of forests on 65 rainforest 176 range improvement 163 rational forest management 146 rationalism 51 raw materials 119, 120, 130, 133 forest provision of 140 Rawson, R. W. 75 Reclus, Élisée 22 reconstruction programme 122 recreation 109 reduction (Einschraenkung) 44 reductionist scientific practices 32 reflexive modernity 206 reforestation 25, 47, 49, 188 regeneration of forests 41, 52, 84, 161, 164 regulation of forest use 52, 145 of private forest lands 73, 152 regulation of cutting 9 regulations concerning forest management 46 Reitter, J. D. 41 n. 71 Report of the Committee on the Staffing of the Agricultural Departments in the Colonies 130 research 13, 36, 131, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 192, 195, 204 forest management 33 government-sponsored 116 programmes 32 see also forestry research reservation of land for forestry 147, 148 resin 70 resistance 15 resource: allocation 94 conservation 162 exploitation 1 n. 1, 118 extraction 15 management 1 n. 1, 4, 5, 18, 35, 37, 50, 51, 197, 200, 201, 205 needs 78 use 5, 15, 60 n. 16, 63, 69, 79, 94 Revolt of 1857 (India) 10 revolts 205

Index Rhodesia 182 Rhodesia Agricultural Union 182 Rhône 24 river siltation 66 rivers and deforestation 24 Roberts 192 Robertson 133 Robertson, W. A. 176 Robinson, Lord Roy L. 123, 127, 129, 137, 138, 146, 147, 149, 152 romanticism 51 Roosevelt, Theodore 91 n. 166, 102 Rosa, G. 25 n. 18 Rouen 45 Rousseau, Théodore 54 n. 131 Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew 4 n. 6, 76, 102, 135 Royal Charter 138 Royal Commission on Afforestation and Coastal Erosion 122 Royal English Arboricultural society 110, 127, 128 royal forests, france 45 Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill 82, 87, 97, 111, 112 Royal Navy, British 7, 8 Royal Scottish Arboricultural society 110, 127, 128 rubber 55, 143 ‘Rule of Experts’ 52 rural social problems 123 Sal 85, 175 Sale, G. N. 187 n. 106 Salomon de 47 sand dunes 179 shifting due to deforestation 26 sandalwood 72 Saussure, Horace-Bénédict de 26 savannah 176 Saxony 38 schedules for cutting 85 Schimper, A. F. Wilhelm 1 n. 1 Schleiden, Matthias Jacob 29, 34, 35 Schlich, Sir William (also Wilhelm) 20, 21, 54, 82, 86, 89, 90, 92, 112, 123, 128, 135, 144, 145, 146 Schouw, Fredrick 30, 82 science 194, 196, 201 and development 134 and economy 117 for imperial ends 11 and progress 19

Index science-based imperialism 156 scientific: advice 131, 139, 144 community/ties 5, 15, 18, 19, 61, 64, 104, 154 conservancy 61 departments 121 expertise 155 experts 94, 183; foresters as 54 forestry 11, 13, 15, 16, 21, 35, 41, 49, 50, 58, 62, 82 n. 106, 124, 114, 135, 142, 162, 200 institutions of resource management 204 management of forests 50, 56, 78, 104, 111, 113, 154, 163 policies 204 research 118, 120, 153, 183; for development 133; government support of 120; programmes of 22 resource management 55 resource use 35 specialists 11 survey techniques 46 and technical problems 121 and technological backwardness 199 and technological system, forestry as 201 scientism 194, 196, 199 scientist-foresters 80 Scotland 111 Scott 127 Scottish Board of Agriculture 138 Scottish enlightenment 62 Scottish Factors’ Society 128 Scottish Timber Federation 128 scrub 174 Second Empire Forestry Conference 20, 114 n. 21, 129, 136, 142, 143, 161, 162, 165, 166, 170, 198 Second World War 131, 202 aftermath of 152, 203 Secord, Professor S. J. 135 Selborne, Lord 123 Select Committee on Forest Management, Cape Colony 78 self-determination 204 settlement (Fixierung) 44 settlement 174 policies 186 settler communities 182 forest destruction by 125

283 Shantz, Homer Le Roy 1 n. 1 sheep 64, 93 shifting cultivation 11, 15 n. 51, 20, 72, 73, 103, 104, 153, 159, 160, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 186, 187, 193, 194, 195, 196 shipbuilding 7, 11, 45, 57 Sierra Leone 9, 79, 136, 187 n. 106 siltation 10, 189 Silva Capensis (catalogue of South African timbers) 76 silviculture 41, 46, 51, 74, 81, 85, 89, 110, 163, 165, 166, 174, 175, 176, 178, 192, 193, 195, 198 operations 86 policy 159, 176 scientific 47 systems 29, 79 techniques 164 Simonsen, Professor 133 Simpson, John 110 Singh-Pathania, Harnam 188 Sissoo 71 Sixth Empire Forestry Conference 153 Smith, Adam 73 n. 82 Smithsonian Institution 28 Smythies, A. 112 n. 16 social equity 206 social: movements 205 protest 172 resistance 172 socialist world order 203 Société des Amis de la Forêt 54 n. 131 sociology of science 5 n. 13 softwoods 121, 139, 160, 162 soil 21, 31, 32, 41, 44, 49, 67, 72, 162, 166, 177, 188, 192, 200 burning 186 conservation 160, 179, 183, 186, 193 depletion 185 deterioration 174 erosion 10, 20, 25, 75, 159, 160, 171, 172, 175, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198 fertility 173 and forests 84 research 121 research centres 179 science 170 scientists 1 n. 1

284 soil (as ‘man’s capital’) 184 Soil Conservation Advisory Councils, Rhodesia 182 South Africa 110, 113 n. 17, 114 n. 21, 125, 128, 138, 148, 149, 160, 184, 190, 192 Southern Africa 12, 182, 191 Southern Europe 30 Southern India 73 species diversity 42 species extinction 57, 58, 106 n. 214 Spoehr, Alexander 156 Stahl, J. F. 36 n. 58 standardization 128, 129 standardization of methods 169 Standing Committee for Empire Forestry 136, 137, 138, 152, 159, 166 state: administrative apparatus 199 building 156 control of forest management 156 control of forests 49, 50, 146 financing of forestry 148 forest 140, 145; departments 52; policy, coordinated 144, 145 foresters 143 forestry 16, 92, 106, 139, 143, 155, 158 forestry agency 144 intervention for forestry 157 science 4, 11, 63 statist objectives 146 statistical data 160, 166 statistical knowledge of forestry resources 128 Stebbing, Professor E. B. 134, 135, 136, 139, 145, 168 Steinbeck, John 179 stewardship 196 Stewart, A. J. 90 Stilling, see Jung, J. H.) Story, Fraser 112 n. 16, 137 Straits Settlements, the 12, 80, 161 Sub-Committee on Forestry, Britain 122 subject departments 133 succession 192 sugar 55, 121 supply of timber 36, 165 Surrel, Alexandre 25 Surveyors’ Institution 128 surveys, land classification 187

Index surveys, forests/timber 70, 84, 164, 188, 194 n. 129 geometric 39 of Indian forests 86 systematic 161 sustainability 41, 50, 53, 205, 206 sustainable production 84, 161 sustained yield 41, 147, 195 sustained yield forestry 42, 85, 89 Swaine, J. M. 164 Swaziland 187 n. 106 swidden cultivators 195, 196 as immoral 193 Sylvia (Evelyn) 23 Synopsis of the Edible Fishes of the Cape of Good Hope (Pappe, L) 76 tables, forest 39, 40, 43, 69 Tanganyika Territory 136 tanning materials 86 Tansley, Arthur 1 n. 1, 194 n. 129 Tanzania 153 Taung-ya system 186 tea 55, 64 teak 7, 69, 71, 84, 85 technical: elite 100 experts 99, 107 frameworks 5 problem, resource allocation as 94 solutions 94 technics 5 n. 12 authoritarian 105, 198 European 205 modern 201 technocracy 50, 52, 53, 99, 155, 156, 159, 171, 194, 199, 205 technocrat, forester as 100, 105 technocratic: closure 183, 189 elite 46, 99 methods 196 mindset 196 politics 102 rationality 189 technological: development 50 system 206 technology 18, 19, 91, 100, 156, 194, 196, 200, 201 as fix for soil erosion 183, 186, 189 policy 204 Tempany, Sir Haraold 133

285

Index tenasserim 8 Tenth Commonwealth Forestry Conference 204 Theophrastus 23 n. 11 Third Empire Forestry Conference 135, 139, 150, 152, 153 third world 2, 197 development 203 environmental social movements in 205 Thomas, D. G. 187 n. 106 Thomas, J. H. 129 Thompson, H. M. 12, 146, 161 Thompson, R. 11 Thornton, R. W. 187 n. 106 three-field system 186 timber 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 37, 47, 51, 55, 58, 69, 70, 71, 73, 76, 83, 89, 91, 94, 101, 109, 123, 124, 141, 143, 145, 147, 162, 165, 166, 168, 173, 175, 177, 178, 198 concessions 8 famine 172 harvesting 29 imports 124, 128 marketing of 165 merchants 168 nomenclature 165, 168 operations 190 overseas 121 production 19 quality 165 scarcity of 144 shortage, First World War 13, 122 shortfall, France 45 substitutes for 71, 165, 166, 168 supply 79 Timber Development Association 14 n. 46 Timber Supply Department of the Royal English Arboricultural Society 127, 128 Togo 9 ‘tools of empire’ 4 forestry as 112 torrents 26, 84 trade 35 and commerce 119 in forest products 162, 171 traditional: forest holdings, break-up of in france 49

forest management 52 French forestry 53 natural resource management 48 peoples 189 resource users 47, 48 rights 105 use practice 52 tragedy of the commons 72, 92 training 36, 83, 135, 136, 165, 166, 169, 170, 204 forestry 44, 89 n. 156 transformation (Verlegung) 44 Treviranus 83 Trevor, C. G. 151 n. 177, 164, 185 Trinidad 136, 187 n. 106 tropical production 129 Tropical Products Institute 14 n. 46 Trosne, G. F. le 45 Troup, Professor R. S., 137, 138, 140, 161, 175, 176, 187 n. 106, 194 n. 129 Truman, President Harry S 203 Trunk, J. J. 37 n. 58 tsetse fly and trypnosomiasis research 133 Turner, E. J. 137 twentieth-century environmental crisis 22 Uganda 9, 80 Uganda Protectorate 136 unemployment 129, 130 United Kingdom 20, 112, 122, 124, 128, 129, 132, 147, 154, 169, 177, 188 United Nations 204 United States (of America) 12, 65, 91, 101, 104, 126, 140, 146, 163, 179, 182, 196, 203 British economic competition with 132 universalizing knowledge claims 200 US forest service 135 USAID 206 usufruct rights 43, 44 utilitarian (forestry) 104 utilitarian conservation sentiment 91 utilitarianism 202 utility of forests 21, 107 utilization of forests 13, 71, 128, 198 van den Brinken, J. 25 n. 18 van Zanthier, H. D. 36 n. 57

286 Var 24 vegetation: and anthropogenic change 29 and climate 30 Venice 23 n. 9 Versailles, Park of 51 Viceroy’s Executive Council, India 166–7 Victoria, Australia 175 Victorian era 156 Vierenklee, Johann Ehrenfried 38, 39, 41 Villa, Antonio Giovanni Batti 25 n. 18 village forests 187, 188 Vincent, F. d’A. 12 Vogt, William 179 volume-based methods (of measuring forests) 38 von Berg, Edmond 25 n. 18 von Brocke, H. 36–7 n. 58 von Burgsdorf, F. A. L. 23, 24, 41 n. 71 von Hazzi, J. 36 n. 58 von Wangenheim, F. A. J. 41 n. 71 von Zallinger, Franz 25 n. 18 Walker, Campbell 11 Wallerstein, Immanuel 60 Wallich, Dr Nathaniel 8, 69 war effort (Second World War) 152 war industries 121 war needs, British 122 War Office 128 waste 171 wastelands 173 water (conservation of, and forests) 24 water 188, 192 levels 27 supply 27, 66, 152, 190, 192 tables 26, 28, 30 watersheds 48, 186 Watson, Captain 7, 92 wattle 192 wattles 191 Watts, Sir Francis 135 Weber, Max 158 n. 197 Webster, Noah 27 weeds 85 Werner, G. H. 38 n. 64 Wessely, Joseph 25 n. 18

Index West Africa 60, 116, 146, 160, 172, 173, 173, 175, 176, 177 West Indies 135 West of Scotland Agricultural College 112 n. 16 Western Africa 9 Western Australia 168 Western India 60 Western science 200 Wex, Gustav 27 white settlers 193, 196 antagonism of towards forestry 142 control of private forestry of 156 and forestry policy 146 White, R. M. 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179 Whitehall 118 Wiesenhavern, J. H. L. 38 n. 64 wilderness 163 wildlife 51 wildwood 85 Wilson, Ellwood 146 Winter, James 109, 110 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 200 n. 4 University of Witwatersrand 191 wood: oils 70, 86 procurement crisis concerns (First World War) 199 products 121 pulp 128 technology 166 woodlands 47, 51, 109, 111, 121, 140, 161, 185 climatic effects 61 management 35, 47, 110 resources 122 wool 121 World Bank 206 Worster, Donald 33 Worthington, Dr E. B. 132, 144, 203 n. 12 xerophytic forest 176 Yale Forest School 135 Zoology 40 Zululand 192