Singapore. Nature contained: Environmental histories of Singapore Edited by Timothy P. Barnard Singapore: NUS Press, 2014, Pp. x, 328, Figures, Plates, Tables, Bibliography, List of Contributors, Index.

Abstract

Nature contained: Environmental histories of Singapore Edited by TIMOTHY P. BARNARD Singapore: NUS Press, 2014, Pp. x, 328, Figures, Plates, Tables, Bibliography, List of Contributors, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463414000770 This is an extraordinarily absorbing book. On starting my first reading I had not thought that there would be much of interest for me. Having read the outputs of, and for a brief time been involved in, Peter Boomgaard's pioneering, wide-ranging and ambitious Leiden-based EDEN project (Ecology, Demography and Economy in Nusantara) from 1993, it seemed that Singapore, as a developed world city, would have little to offer in environmental terms. How could any consideration of the environmental history of this small island state match the achievements of Boomgaard and his team in understanding the complexities of the Indonesian environment and its mutual human and environmental transformations? Well, of course it can't. But what Barnard's edited volume does is provide a fascinating introduction to what were important environmental moments and events not only in the history of Singapore, but also to its influence on the environmental history of other parts of Southeast Asia. As we might expect, in any consideration of Singapore, due attention is given to the sustained exploitation of nature for the purpose of capitalist development and the insertion of Singapore into a global economic system; the British colonial study, control, classification, and display of the natural world in the interest of furthering scientific understanding, and expressed in museums, research institutions, and learned societies; and the postcolonial construction of Singapore as an integrated and disciplined urban and 'garden' space. I very much liked the editorial device of commencing each chapter with a relevant extract from 'documents, interviews, and accounts of the events that influenced the chapters' (p. 5). So, for example, the chapter on Alfred Russel Wallace is prefaced with an excerpt from his The Malay Archipelago-, and the chapter on the Raffles Museum is preceded by extracts from The Annual Reports of the Raffles Museum and Library, newspaper accounts, and visitors' memories. The volume addresses many issues which have suffered from relative neglect in accounts of Singapore's history or have been influenced by uninformed conceptions of modern Singapore. Tony O'Dempsey examines environmental change in Singapore during the nineteenth century, reminding us that Thomas Stamford Raffles did not start with a clean slate. The island was already home to indigenous fishing communities; but more importantly Chinese Teochew farmers had settled there from the late eighteenth century and begun to cultivate gambier and pepper, which had enormously deleterious effects on the tropical rainforest in that both crops required substantial amounts of timber for processing and their cultivation resulted in soil exhaustion. The importance of this activity should not be understated in transforming the island's environment, and early colonial attempts at addressing the situation resulted in the establishment of a Forestry Department in 1884 to protect and reserve forests, by which time much damage had already been done. Habitat change also led to an upsurge in the number of human and domestic livestock and animal deaths from tiger attacks, a subject addressed in a chapter by Timothy Barnard and Mark Emmanuel. …