As the British entered the Mizo hills (part of the Indo-Burmese range of hills, then known as the Lushai hills) to chase the headhunting tribal raiders and try to gain control over them by securing a foothold in the heart of the hills at Aizawl, they witnessed an amazing ecological phenomenon: a severe famine apparently caused by rats.
After yellow fever was firmly ensconced via an ecological reconfiguration connected to sugar (c. 1640–90) it underpinned a military and political status quo, keeping Spanish America Spanish. After 1780, and particularly in the Haitian revolution, yellow fever undermined that status quo by assisting independence movements in the American tropics.
A frontier environmental history of Cossack settlers in the North Caucasus reveals some of the weaknesses of the Russian imperial mission.
Matagne examines French conservation policies in the 19th century with reference to three important issues: i) the protection of landscapes; ii) the protection of animal and vegetable species; and iii) nature conservation in the colonies.
This paper examines age as a parameter in colonial and recent science. It then recounts attempts to impose an ordered progression of age classes on the forests of Victoria and Queensland according to the classical principles of forestry transmuted through an imperial model.
Ringbarking, as a means of destroying trees, was known and practised from the earliest years of British settlement in New South Wales…
Over the Colonial period, prolonged drought episodes had severe impacts on all sectors of society, particularly indigenous rural populations. This paper employs a variety of colonial historical records to document the nature and extent of these impacts within the context of prevailing social, political and economic conditions.
This paper analyses the development of state forest management in Tanganyika and its effects on African access and use rights within the larger context of British colonial governance.
The study of history in a sense that can be called ‘environmental’ is a discipline yet to be created in Latin America. This has become an obstacle that must be overcome if we are to understand better the serious social and environmental deterioration of the region.
This paper discusses changes in land and vegetation cover and natural resources of the Cape Verde Islands since their colonisation by the Portuguese around 1460.
