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The emphasis in this study is forestry in the British Empire. This choice stems from the fact that British colonial forestry was arguably one of the most extensive imperial frameworks of scientific natural resource management anywhere, and continues to be a key locus of environmental conflicts across Asia and Africa. This introductory chapter sets the context for the argument to follow. It begins by critically discussing what is involved in focusing on science and technology in doing environmental history. It then locates the historiography of British colonial forestry within the context of this analysis, thereby laying the groundwork for the ensuing chapters.

This chapter explores the forest management agendas and environmentalist ideologies of colonial forestry as expressed at the Empire Forestry Conferences during the first half of the 20th century. In keeping with the broad structure of the conference deliberations, the discussion comprises two parts: the ‘classical’ problems associated with paradigm articulation, and the policy dilemmas posed by agro-forestry challenges such as shifting cultivation and soil erosion.

This chapter summarizes the key findings of the entire study and explores some of its wider implications concerning the contested legacy of colonial eco-development. It argues that forestry as a technology was not merely a product of colonial expediency. On the contrary, it provided a context for colonial politics just as it was shaped and moulded by it. Similarly, colonial foresters were not mere ‘servants of the state’; they were carriers of a culture of technology that had its origins in another setting, even if the imperial context exacerbated the impact of their actions. Moreover, against the backdrop of the debate over whether or not colonial forestry constituted a watershed in the environmental history of the British Empire, it is important to note that scientific forestry, as a regime of resource management, was designed to be a major watershed even in continental Europe, its place of birth.

The three characteristics of the industrial mode of resource use presented are important to a proper understanding of the ecological encounter between India and Britain. The most tangible outcome of colonialism is related to the colonizer’s global control of resources. The management and utilization of forest resources are vital in the ecological encounter between Britain and India. The Indian Forest Act of 1865 was authorized to facilitate the acquisition of those forest areas that were earmarked for railway supplies. The Indian Forest Act of 1878 was a comprehensive piece of legislation, which attempted to obliterate centuries of customary use by rural populations all over India. The strategic value of India’s forests was forcefully highlighted during the World Wars. The priorities of colonial forestry were essentially commercial in nature. Forest management was easily the most significant element in the state takeover of natural resources, which had earlier acted as a buffer for the peasant household.

This chapter focuses on forests and plants that starts by tracing botanical and forestry perceptions of the Himalayas and the uses made of them by local populations, and presents historically influential forestry-related narratives of ecological change. The role of plant-hunting (especially Joseph Hooker) in colonial narratives of territorial mapping, and economic botany is discussed. It then moves on to the villagers’ perceptions of change in the claims of control and use of the forest, the various contexts of value for produce from the forest, the ways in which plant life features in mythological accounts of the genesis of the world and humans, and in the characterization of the sociality of difference between natural kinds.

This chapter concerns Benguet Road, the American colonial road built to reach the Baguio hill station. It was one of the first major public works projects that the colonial government undertook, and it became the most celebrated road in the Philippines. For Americans, this twenty-six mile highway was an opportunity to celebrate the marvels of U.S. engineering and managerial power, but for many Filipinos, the road was an extravagant waste. This chapter explores how Americans recruited Philippine labor for the project in the face of disinterest if not outright resistance by Filipinos. Despite promises to "liberate labor" and teach colonial subjects "free agency," in gathering workers Americans largely relied on the effects of counter-revolutionary war and later, laws which circumscribed Philippine peoples’ subsistence practices and movement. These forms of primitive accumulation freed labor in ways far removed from many Filipino workers’ own vision of free agency and were a response to the contest Filipinos posed to U.S. rule.

This chapter describes the genesis and potential of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006. It begins by tracing the historical processes by which common forested landscapes customarily used by communities for multiple functions were classified as unifunctional ‘national’ forests, both before and after independence. While the overall forest reservation process often ignored the presence, occupation and complexity of forest use by diverse forest dwelling communities in central India, extension of centralized control over forest conservation also undermined more inclusive State laws that recognize customary use rights over land and forests. The labelling of forest dwelling communities as ‘encroachers’ on their ancestral lands generated persistent conflict which reached a flashpoint due to an overzealous interpretation of Supreme Court orders. The chapter explores the FRA’s potential of restoring the citizenship rights of forest dwelling communities while also democratizing forest governance in the process.

This chapter addresses the question of political conflicts surrounding agrarian activities and forest land in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. The sites of these political conflicts were the Professional Grazing Reserves. These grazing reserves provided room for economic activities of different social groups including the migrant Nepali professional cattle herders, migrant East Bengali peasants, and local Assamese peasants. The agrarian practices and settlement pattern of each of them differed. The last three decades of colonial rule found each of them making separate claims over these grazing reserves. These often conflicting claims had very far-reaching implications for the politics of Assam as a whole. This chapter, by mapping the social history of agrarian conflicts, examines how complex claims for this space had social, political, and ecological consequences.

The natural environment shapes long-term economic change via the quality or quantity of resources of potential economic value, climatic conditions that shape moisture or seasonal variations in agricultural conditions, and via the risk of natural disasters. These geographical conditions are lasting. They become active drivers of economic change when private enterprise and public policy become interested in the resources and try to mitigate the risks, and knowledge and information-gathering on these conditions for scientific or commercial purposes start to speed up. In colonial times, all of these processes speeded up greatly. Chapter 11 is about that change.