Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism

This study looks at the origins of environmentalism in a global perspective.

Gregory Allen Barton (Author)

9780521038898, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 August 2007

212 pages, 24 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.1 cm, 0.328 kg

'This book is well researched, easy to read, extremely good value and, for landscape historians interested in the interaction of human agency and environmental history it provides a succession of interesting case studies grounded in the landscape of the New Orleans river front.' Landscape History

What we now know of as environmentalism began with the establishment of the first empire forest in 1855 in British India, and during the second half of the nineteenth century, over ten per cent of the land surface of the earth became protected as a public trust. Sprawling forest reservations, many of them larger than modern nations, became revenue-producing forests that protected the whole 'household of nature', and Rudyard Kipling and Theodore Roosevelt were among those who celebrated a new class of government foresters as public heroes. Imperial foresters warned of impending catastrophe, desertification and global climate change if the reverse process of deforestation continued. The empire forestry movement spread through India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and then the United States to other parts of the globe, and Gregory Barton's study looks at the origins of environmentalism in a global perspective.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The great interference
3. Empire forestry and British India
4. Environmental innovation in British India
5. Empire forestry and the colonies
6. Empire forestry and American environmentalism
7. From empire forestry to Commonwealth forestry
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: The environment [RN], Earth sciences [RB], Historical geography [HBTP]