Tropical Nature

Colonial and Post-Colonial Conservation in Africa and Asia

Guillaume Blanc, Mathieu Guérin, Grégory Quenet

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781805398912
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781805398929
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Across Africa and South-East Asia, the impulse to protect nature often dovetails with the domination of local people. From mass displacement to severe restrictions on land use and daily acts of violence, conservation work risks reproducing Eurocentric modes of colonialism and worsening the effects of the climate crisis. In this insightful and wide-ranging study of the colonial history of conservation, Tropical Nature seeks to provide a much-needed history of the Global South from its own perspective. Comparing case studies ranging from Ali Bongo's Gabon, to the postcolonial African itinerary of the agronomist Arthur Bunting, this volume advances a "small-scale global history" that deciphers the relations binding human societies to the non-human world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction. Protecting Nature in Africa and Asia: Towards a Small-Scale Global History
• Chapter 1. Laissez-Faire Conservation: Nature Protection in Colonial Vietnam
• Chapter 2. Setting up a Wildlife Department: Kenyan Expertise in Malaya
• Chapter 3. Imperial Forests and Nature Reserves in Singapore, 1883–1959
• Chapter 4. Rambouillet, Agricultural Stations and French Colonial Africa: Conserving and Improving Nature (1900–1930)
• Chapter 5. Missing Conservation? On the Puzzling Dearth of Nature Conservation in Mandate Syria and Lebanon
• Chapter 6. Between Empire and Development: The Ubiquitous Life and Career of Arthur Hugh Bunting
• Chapter 7. The Adamsons, Born Free and the Late Colonial Era: Images That Helped to Change the Animal World
• Chapter 8. Conservation in the Days of Independence: The Case of the Seychelles, 1968–1974
• Chapter 9. Tracking Wildebeests: The Technological Mediation of Spaces for Humans and Wildlife in the Serengeti since 1950
• Chapter 10. Conserving Nature in Mozambique: Relaying Conservation Practices and Imaginaries since Colonial Days
• Chapter 11. Catfights and Crocodile Tears: Conflict, Charismatic Species and Nature Professionals in India’s Conservation History
• Chapter 12. Representing Space to Structure Time: Tropical Deforestation Fronts in the Light of Human–Territory Relations
• Conclusion. Studying Nature, Networks and Power: What Next?
• Index