Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800-1920 (Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History)

"A new interpretation of imperialism and environmental change, and the anxieties imperialism generated through environmental transformation and interaction with unknown landscapes. Tying together South Asia and Australasia, this book demonstrates how environmental anxieties led to increasing state resource management, conservation, and urban reform."--Publisher's description A fascinating new interpretation of imperialism and environmental change, revealing the anxieties imperialism generated through environmental transformation and interaction with unknown landscapes. Demonstrating that systematic deforestation accompanied anxieties about human-induced climate change, soil erosion, and a looming timber famine, the book illuminates colonial fears about the power of environments - and environmental change - to affect health. It looks at concerns at the ugliness of urban environments and attempts at improving their appearance, but it also argues that some of the conservation policies and bureaucracies that resulted from expressions of environmental anxiety represented a form of imperial control designed to generate revenue and to enable the more efficient exploitation of resources. Environmental anxiety tied together parts of South Asia and Australasia. Policies, people, plants and ideas were exchanged between these areas, but adapted in light of colonies' particular political, economic and environmental circumstances and problems Front Matter....Pages i-xv Introduction....Pages 1-3 Origins of Environmental Anxieties....Pages 4-38 Imperial Health Anxieties....Pages 39-71 Colonial Aesthetic Anxieties....Pages 72-99 Scottish-Trained Doctors, Environmental Anxieties and Imperial Development, 1780s–1870s....Pages 100-122 German Science and Imperial Forestry, 1840s-1900s....Pages 123-149 South Asian and Australasian Forestry Anxieties and Exchanges, 1870s-1920s....Pages 150-176 Thwarting Imperial Agricultural Development: The Spectre of Drifting Sands, 1800s–1920s....Pages 177-213 Conclusion....Pages 214-216 Back Matter....Pages 217-320