Romancing Colonial Forestry: The Discourse of 'Forestry as Progress' in British Burma

Abstract

Recent research in political ecology highlights the central role played by the colonial state in tropical forest management, but little attention has been given as yet to the discursive representation of that role. This paper thus investigates the ways in which colonial foresters represented their work through books, articles and official reports. Using colonial Burma as a case study, the key elements of a discourse of 'forestry as progress' are delineated. In emphasizing the pre-eminence of teak extraction, forest revenue and forest conservation measures, however, colonial foresters failed to address in their writing other themes which would have called into question the 'progressive' image of colonial forestry. By way of illustration, the neglected dimension of political conflict between colonizer and colonized over forest management is briefly reviewed. Both the illegal 'everyday resistance' of peasants and the legal political opposition of Burmese politicians underscored that the colonial discourse of forestry as progress - in part or in whole was unacceptable to the vast majority of the Burmese population. Yet the attractiveness of this discourse to states in the tropics persists even today as foresters continue to extoll the 'non-political' commercialized nature of contemporary forestry as part of a broader attempt to counter growing popular opposition to state forest control.