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The East India Company and the Natural World pp 219–248Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Plants, Animals and Environmental Transformation: Indian-New Zealand Biological and Landscape Connections, 1830s–1890s

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History ((PSWEH))

Abstract

Elizabeth Muter (1832–1914) began working on her two-volume Travels and Adventures of an Officer’s Wife in India, China, and New Zealand, while sailing from China to England. She continued drafting the manuscript in New Zealand and completed it ‘on the way from Dunedin to Calcutta’, from where she sent it to be published in London.1 The writing and publication of Travels and Adventures, just as much as its content, speaks volumes to the transitory lives of women like Muter and men like her husband (Figure 10.1) — Colonel Dunbar Douglas Muter (1824–1909) — in the British Empire. The work evinces also the importance of print culture and letter-writing as means of cultivating and giving shape to the imagined space of the British Empire.

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Notes

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  1. James Beattie
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, UK

    Vinita Damodaran (Senior Lecturer and Director) (Senior Lecturer and Director)

  2. Department of History, University of Sussex, UK

    Anna Winterbottom (Research Fellow) (Research Fellow)

  3. University of Sussex, UK

    Alan Lester (Professor of Historical Geography) (Professor of Historical Geography)

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© 2015 James Beattie

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Beattie, J. (2015). Plants, Animals and Environmental Transformation: Indian-New Zealand Biological and Landscape Connections, 1830s–1890s. In: Damodaran, V., Winterbottom, A., Lester, A. (eds) The East India Company and the Natural World. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137427274_11

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49109-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-42727-4

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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