Vinita Damodaran and Rohan D’Souza, editors. Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History: Empire, Forests, and Colonial Environments in Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, and New Zealand.

Abstract

Vinita Damodaran’s and Rohan D’Souza’s Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History is a collection of papers presented in two large conferences, held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, in 2002 and the University of Sussex in 2003, organized by Richard Grove and Damodaran. On June 20, 2020, Grove passed away. This volume is hence a tribute to this great environmental historian. Forest management acquired a great significance in many parts of the world as the demand for forest resources grew in the nineteenth century. Britain faced the challenge of managing the forests of its vast empire and evolved certain policies and practices, collectively referred to as the empire forestry or the Commonwealth forestry. In his highly acclaimed book, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (1996), Grove argued that European colonization of small island colonies resulted in dramatic ecological degradation by the seventeenth century. Naturalists, botanists, medical surgeons, and colonial scientists, who accompanied colonial rulers to colonies, were first to notice this. They underlined that desiccation could result in drought, famine, and overall scarcity, destabilizing local economies, and they suggested forest conservation as a solution. Grove has shown that many administrators in the colonies accepted the advice of these newly emerged experts and adopted forest conservation policies. Governor-General of India Lord Dalhousie was one such administrator and signed a memorandum in 1855 that formed the basis for forest policies in India. Forest management systems developed in India in the late nineteenth century became a model in other British colonies.