Biota Barons, ‘Neo-Eurasias’ and Indian-New Zealand Informal Eco-Cultural Networks, 1830s–1870s

Abstract

Abstract This article examines informal (private and commercial) imperial networks and environmental modification by former English East India Company (EIC) employees in New Zealand, as well as the introduction of subcontinental species into that colony. Several very wealthy settlers from India, it argues, single-hand- edly introduced a cornucopia of Indian plants and animals into different parts of nineteenth-century New Zealand and used money earned in India to engage in large-scale environmental modification. Such was the scale of their enterprise ‘in the business of shifting biota from place to place’ and in remaking environments in parts of New Zealand that these individuals can be considered ‘biota barons’. A focus on the informal eco-cultural networks they created helps refine the thesis of ecological imperialism. It also expands the more recent concept of neo-ecological imperialism, by highlighting the role of non-European natures and models in the re-making of Britain’s colonies of settlement and by tracing exchanges between white settler colonies and colonies of extraction. In sum, the paper demonstrates the influence of particular private individuals with the necessary wealth and will to effect certain kinds of environmental change, and tentatively suggests that we might usefully consider Australasia as ‘neo-Eurasias’ rather than ‘neo-Europes’.