Environments of Empire: Networks and Agents of Ecological Change, ed. Ulrike Kirchberger and Brett M. Bennet

Abstract

Inspired by Alfred Cosby’s Ecological Imperialism (1986), historians have paid attention to the ecological impacts of European imperialism in different geographical contexts. Focus has partly been on how movement of fauna and flora transformed natural environments in imperial Europe and particularly the colonial world. Earlier historical analysis has been limited to individual empires, notably the British Empire, or individual colonies. A dearth of comparative global and transnational perspectives of these ecological relations, influences and impacts is the inspiration behind the publication of this new collection. Contributors to this excellent volume, edited by Ulrike Kirchberger and Brett M. Bennet, advance our understanding of causes and dynamics of environmental transformations in multiple imperial and colonial contexts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They offer comparative and transnational perspectives by exploring case-studies in the British, French, Dutch, German and Ottoman Empires. The geographical scope includes parts of the old empires of the Atlantic and non-imperial states such as Switzerland.