Book Review: Ecology and empire: environmental history in settler societies

Abstract

One of the major social movements of the twentieth century, environmentalism has a remarkable capacity to redefine and reinvent itself. Current controversies over the relations between biotechnology and global environmental transformation provide a particularly apt context for this book. Central to new scientific and technological knowledge, grounded in the countries of the North, is the hitherto unprecedented power to intervene in the workings of nature through genetic manipulation. Closely associated with it are concerns that this rapidly growing collaboration between the laboratory and private capital could underpin new forms of ecological imperialism into the next century. Notwithstanding the hitherto ill-defined virtues of new biotechnology on a global scale, the strength of public reaction within and beyond the countries of the North highlights a deep-rooted and widespread unease and uncertainty over the application of scientific knowledge in environmental change. Nor do these powers go unchallenged. As the boundaries between nature and society, local and global, are increasingly blurred, new questions arise about the sites of power and the agents of control as local resistances to interventionist technologies question their supposedly progressive qualities and uniform applicability. In engaging with these debates, this edited text contributes to blurring the boundaries between past and present. It demonstrates that these ecological concerns are not of recent origin, and highlights the value of excavating environmental histories as a complement to contemporary studies. Ecology and empire forms part of a growing literature which traces some of the roots of current environmentalism. A field of research within studies of colonialism which, until recently, has been largely hidden from academic and public notice, it has a long and diverse genealogy across the globe, and is now widely valued not only for its intellectual insights but also for its current relevance. This text is important in the challenge it poses to Eurocentrism. Inspired by the work of the American historian Alfred W. Crosby, notably his 1986 publication, Ecological imperialism, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin choose as their geographical focus the settler societies in Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Constituting the ‘edges’ of Europe’s empire, the colonized peripheries of primarily Britain’s imperial geopolitical regime, they are significant sites from which to reflect on European expansion. As the editors suggest, these are territories with a tradition of ‘indigenous’ environmental scholarship. They provide alternatives to the hegemony of Euro-American writing and offer scope to destabilize established narratives of global environmental history. The text is broad-ranging in both its spatial and temporal scope. The 15 chapters are arranged into five sections. In ‘The ecologies of invasion’ a long-term perspective on environmental transformations is provided, with particular reference to the significance of fire in defining and shaping the ecosystems of the ‘periphery’. In challenging notions of universal science led by Europe, ‘The empire of science’ draws distinctions between ‘local’ and ‘imported’ science and highlights the lateral exchanges which took place between the settler societies Book reviews 363