Abstract
In recent years we have seen an explosion of popular and governmental interest in environmental problems. The world is widely seen to be in the throes of an environmental crisis, in which an artificially-induced ‘greenhouse effect’ hangs over humanity like a climatic Sword of Damocles. As a result, environmental matters have become a critical part of the political agenda in almost every country. Increasingly, too, the prescriptions of environmentalists are receiving popular acclaim and support of a kind that, before now, was heard only from a minority. Ideas about conservation and sustainable development, in particular, have become highly politicised.
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Notes
J.D. Hughes, ‘Theophrastus as ecologist’, Environmental Review, 4, (1985) pp. 296–307
J.D. Hughes, ‘Theophrastus as ecologist’, Environmental Review, 4, (1985) pp. 296–307; see also C. Glacken, Traces ort the Rhodian shore; nature and culture in Western thought, from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century, (Berkeley, Calif., 1967).
For example see D. Worster, ‘The vulnerable earth; towards a planetary history’, in D. Worster (ed.), The ends of the earth; perspectives in modern environmental history, (Cambridge, 1988).
Author of Man and Nature, (New York, 1864). This was one of the first texts to explore the history of environmental degradation and to warn of the possible consequences were it to remain unchecked. See D. Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh; versatile Vermonter, (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).
See, for example, M. Williams, The Americans and their forests; an historical geography, (Cambridge, 1989).
E.g. see K. Thomas, Man and the natural world, (Oxford, 1983)
E.g. see K. Thomas, Man and the natural world, (Oxford, 1983); T. O’Riordan, Environmentalism, (London, 1976).
R.H. Grove, ‘Conservation and colonial expansion; a study of the evolution of environmental attitudes and conservation policies on St. Helena, Mauritius and in India, 1660–1860’ unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1988 (in press under same title, Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also paper under same title in Past and Present, 1990.
P.J. Marshall and G. Williams, The great map of mankind; British perceptions of the world in the Age of Enlightenment, (London, 1982).
P.J. Marshall and G. Williams, The great map of mankind; British perceptions of the world in the Age of Enlightenment, (London, 1982); B. Smith, European vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850; a study in the history of art and ideas, (2nd ed., Oxford, 1960).
Useful detailed discussions of the idealised new iconography of the tropics can be found in Leo Marx, The machine in the Garden; technology and the pastoral ideal in America, (New York, 1964).
Useful detailed discussions of the idealised new iconography of the tropics can be found in Leo Marx, The machine in the Garden; technology and the pastoral ideal in America, (New York, 1964); and T. Bonyhady, Images in opposition; Australian landscape painting 1801–1890, (Oxford, 1985).
S. Darian, The Ganges in myth and history, (Honolulu, 1978).
S. Crowe and S. Haywood, The gardens of Mughal India, (London: India Office Library, 1972).
J. Prest, The Garden of Eden; the botanic garden and the recreation of Paradise, (New Haven, Conn., 1981).
W. Halbfass, India and Europe; an essay in understanding, (New York, 1981) p. 21.
E. Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, (Frankfurt, 1981).
E.g. see Lynn White, ‘The historical roots of our ecological crisis’, Science, 155 (1967) pp. 1202–7.
J. Opie, ‘Renaissance origins of the environmental crisis’, Environmental Review, 1 (1987) pp. 2–19.
M.C. Karstens, The Old Company’s Garden at the Cape and its Superintendents, (Cape Town, 1957).
R. Bryans, Madeira, pearl of Atlantic, (London, 1959).
P. Ligon, A true and exact history of the island of Barbados, (London, 1673). Ligon noted, ‘mines there are none in this island, not so much of as coals, for which reason we preserve our woods as much as we can’.
D. Watts, The West Indies, patterns of development, culture and environmental change since 1492, (Cambridge, 1986).
e.g. Worster, Nature’s Economy, (Cambridge, 1977) pp. 29–55.
T. Pringle, The Conservationists and the Killers, (Cape Town, 1983).
For details of this see J. Mackenzie, The Empire of nature; hunting, conservation and British imperialism, (Manchester, 1989); and T. Pringle, The Conservationists and the Killers, (Cape Town, 1983).
D. Washbrook, ‘Law, state and agrarian society in colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, 15 (1981) pp. 649–721; the highly ambiguous attitude adopted by the early colonial government towards capital and the risks which its uncontrolled deployment entailed is a subject discussed very fully by Washbrook, although he is apparently unaware of the aptness of his arguments to the ecological dimension.
To date, only Lucille Brockway (in Science and colonial expansion: the role of the British Royal Botanic Garden, (New York, 1979).
To date, only Lucille Brockway (in Science and colonial expansion: the role of the British Royal Botanic Garden, (New York, 1979) and P. Mackay (in In the wake of Cook; exploration, science and empire, (London, 1985)) have attempted to assess, on a global scale, the relationship between science, colonial expansion and commerce. Both writers attach exclusively utilitarian and/or exploitative and hegemonic motivations to the early development of science in the colonial (especially East Indian Company) context, and ignore the potential for contradictory or humanitarian motivations, of a kind certainly present among many early botanists in India, for example.
H.H. Spry, Modern India, (London, 1837).
D.G. Crawford, A history of the Indian medical service, (London, 1914).
S. Pasfield-Oliver, The life of Philibert Commerson, (London, 1909). The first scientific ‘Academie’ was founded on Mauritius by Commerson in 1770.
R.H. Grove, ‘Charles Darwin and the Falkland islands’, Polar Record, 22 (1985) pp. 413–20.
R.H. Grove, ‘Surgeons, forests and famine, the emergence of the conservation debate in India, 1788–1860’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, (1990).
R.H. Grove, ‘Colonial conservation, ecological hegemony and popular resistance; towards a global synthesis’, in J. Mackenzie (ed.) Imperialism and the natural world, 1990.
R.H. Grove, ‘Early themes in African conservation; the Cape in the nineteenth century’, in D. Anderson and R.H. Grove (eds), Conservation in Africa; people, policies and practice, (Cambridge, 1987) pp. 22–39.
J.F. Wilson, ‘On the progressing desiccation on the Orange river in Southern Africa’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, (1865) pp. 106–9.
J. Spotswood Wilson, ‘On the general and gradual desiccation of the earth and atmosphere’, Report of the Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Transactions, (1858) pp. 155–6.
A few years later, John Tyndall developed the concept of the ‘atmospheric envelope’ and the notion of ‘greenhouse’ retention of radiation heat by particular gases in the atmosphere. In doing so he built upon theories of heat transfer in the atmosphere first developed by Jean-Baptiste Fourier between 1807 and 1815; see J. Tyndall, On radiation; the Rede lectures at the University of Cambridge, 16 May, 1865, (London, 1865).
R.H. Grove, ‘Conservation and colonial expansion’, op. cit., p. 74 (St Helena Records, Council to EIC Court of Directors, April 9 1713, pp. 105–6).
C. Waterton, Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles in the years 1812–1824, (2nd ed. London, 1880) esp. pp. 289–94. Here he writes of the forests of the Americas that ‘Nature is fast losing her garb and putting on a new dress in these extensive regions… spare it … inhabitants … these noble sons of the forest beautifying your landscapes beyond all description; when they are gone a century will not replace their loss, they cannot, they must not fall’.
C. Lyell, Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth’s surface, by reference to changes now in operation, 3 vols (London, 1834).
R.H. Grove, ‘Scottish missionaries, evangelical discourses and the origins of conservation thinking in Southern Africa 1820–1900’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15 (1989) pp. 164–87.
E. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, (London, 1843) on extinctions pp. 7–12, 50–2; on forest destruction pp. 257, 297–8; on the destructive impact of man, pp. 416–17.
H.E. Strickland, ‘On the progress and present state of ornithology’, pp. 213–15; H.E. Strickland and A.G. Melville, The Dodo and its kindred, (London, 1848).
See M. Di Gregorio, ‘Hugh Edwin Strickland on affinities and analogies’, Ideas and Production, 7 (1987) pp. 35–50.
H. Cleghom, The forests and gardens of south India, (Edinburgh, 1861).
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© 1990 Richard Grove
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Grove, R. (1990). Threatened Islands, Threatened Earth; Early Professional Science and the Historical Origins of Global Environmental Concerns. In: Angell, D.J.R., Comer, J.D., Wilkinson, M.L.N. (eds) Sustaining Earth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21091-6_2
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