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The impact of nineteenth century imperialism and colonialism on nature was notorious. However, from an environmental perspective these phenomena did not constitute a sharp historical break or watershed.

In fact, they were part of a larger ‘developmentalist paradigm’ characterized by state-building, sedentarization, and the intensification of natural resources exploitation that was also underway in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, China, Russia, Egypt, and South Asia.²⁶⁷ In China, for example, commercialism without capitalism resulted in substantial environmental transformation.²⁶⁸ Deforestation and environmental degradation were the price of the escalation of fuel demand triggered by economic development.²⁶⁹

Moreover, the environmental impact of European imperialism was often added to deeply modified environments that in several cases had already suffered deforestation and erosion. The Western belief

261 Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 317.

262 Ibid.

263 Ibid., 318. One can picture the proportion of forest cut, thinking that this figure amounts to a country almost the size of India (329 million hectares).

264 This amounts to a country almost the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo (234 million hectares).

265 Williams, Deforesting the Earth,. This figure amounts to the size of a country almost the size of Mongolia (156 million hectares).

266 Hughes argues that the rate of extinctions of the nineteenth and twentieth century equals catastrophic events of the geological era. See J. Donald Hughes, The Face of the Earth: Environment and Science (Armonk and London, M. E. Sharpe, 2000) 31-32. For Wilson, this represents the sixth great extinction span, which will take millions of year to recover. See Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Harvard, Cambridge University Press, 1992) 31-32.

267 Pomeranz has named this paradigm ‘the developmentalist project’. See Kenneth Pomeranz, ‘Introduction: World History and Environmental History’ in Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz (eds.), The Environment and World History (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009) 3-32, 7-14.

268 See Robert B. Marks, ‘Commercialization without Capitalism: Processes of Environmental Change in South China, 1550-1850’ 1 Environmental History (1996) 56-82.

269 Richards, The Unending Frontier, 112-147. See also Lane, After Tamerlane, 193-194.

58 that Africa or South Asia for that matter were still an untamed ‘wilderness’ was at odds with reality.²⁷⁰ Nature in the supposedly wild African continent, as elsewhere, was largely anthropogenic.²⁷¹ African landscapes were the result of the combination of timeless African muscle, tools, and ideas.²⁷² Some habitats revealed the existence of complex civilizations and empires, which skillfully modified their surroundings. For instance, the Aksum Empire, situated in the high lands of Ethiopia and Eritrea, developed impressive forms of engineering, military capacity, and commercial networks, being an active participant in the world economy of the time.²⁷³ Its wealth stemmed from a privileged location at the center of several trading routes and from ingenuity and creativity in managing the Empire’s ecological resources.²⁷⁴ But not all African societies had reached a sustainable ecological balance before European colonial powers partitioned the continent. One example of a lack of sustainability was the collapse of the Great Zimbabwe in the fifteenth century, partly due to environmental overexploitation.²⁷⁵

As European imperialism, industrialization, and the capitalist penetration of the non-European world progressed during the nineteenth century, the demand for raw materials accordingly intensified. New networks of capital, trade, and production increased the incentive to harness ecosystems in search for new commodities. The rationale behind the apprehension of the world’s natural wealth was not just to make the environment more productive, but also to bring it under the increasing control of the colonial administration. Often these two aspects intertwined. Large dams, for example, brought nature into order while transforming subsistence agriculture into a commercial activity.²⁷⁶ The increasing exercise of power over the environment had a cost. Colonial hydraulic projects in the British Empire, especially India, deteriorated riverine ecosystems, causing the diminution of fisheries, the spread of waterborne

270 For an interesting example see Jayeeta Sharma, ‘Making Garden, Erasing Jungle: The Tea Enterprise in Colonial Assam’

in Deepak Kumar, Vinita Damodaran, and Rohan D’Souza (eds.), The British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011)119-141.

271See James C. McCann, Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa 1800-1990 (Portsmouth, James Currey Ltd., 1999) 2.

272 Ibid

273 Ibid., 36-37.

274 In McCann’s words: ‘Despite the evident sophistication of its elite material culture and extensive trade contacts, however, one could easily argue that the true genius of Aksum was its environmental management in smoothing and adjusting the vagaries of the seasons and its ecological setting.’ Ibid., 42.

275 William Beinart, ‘Beyond the Colonial Paradigm: African History and Environmental History in Large-Scale Perspective’

Burke III and Pomeranz, The Environment, 211-228, 219.

276 See B. Eswara Rao, ‘Taming "Liquid Gold" and Dam Technology: A Study of the Godavari Anicut’ in Kumar, Damodaran and D’Souza, The British Empire, 145-159, 145.

59 diseases, seepage, waterlogging, salinity, and malaria.²⁷⁷ Water-loss from evaporation could reduce the efficiency of canals by 60 to 70 percent.²⁷⁸

One of the main environmental effects of Western imperialism in the nineteenth century was deforestation. The amount of forest destroyed varied in different locations. Due to the destruction of pre-colonial populations (which meant less competition for resources) in the non-European temperate world, where settler societies existed, the clearing of forests was larger than in the densely populated tropical territories acquired by European powers.²⁷⁹ The great availability of timber in the former regions explains why deforestation in temperate areas surpassed the felling of forest in the tropical world, which was nevertheless considerable.

In India, forests were already under considerable human pressure before the beginning of British rule.

As population grew, they were transformed in fields for agricultural production.²⁸⁰ Under colonial rule, two main factors intensified previous clearing. The production of cash crops for export subordinated forest to global demands.²⁸¹ Besides, the imposition of a colonial tax exacerbated land clearing to pay for the levies.²⁸² Processes of ecological degradation such as salinization, water-table losses, and soil erosion often followed the loss of forest cover.²⁸³ As the productive capacity of forests was squeezed, the possibilities of the local population to obtain traditional economic products from it sharply decreased.²⁸⁴ Honey, game, curative herbs, plants, and firewood, among others, became scarcer and less accessible.²⁸⁵ For Guha, the difference between colonial rule and previous times was not that forest disappeared or even that people were subjugated, but rather that the changes ‘had a sweeping and irreversible character that they had never previously possessed’.²⁸⁶

The colonization of South East Asia engendered a similar pattern of environmental alteration. Forests and lands in this region were under intensive use for subsistence and trade purposes long before European

277 See Elizabeth Whitcombe, ‘The Environmental Costs of Irrigation in British India: Waterlogging, Salinity, Malaria’ in David Arnold & Ramachandra Guha (eds.), Nature Culture Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1998) 237-259, 239. An important side effect of water engineering was the transformation of water into a commodity. See Eswara Rao, ‘Taming "Liquid Gold"’, 153.

278 Whitcombe, ‘The Environmental Costs’, 139.

279 This group includes the settled societies of United States, Canada, Southern Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. See Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 238. South Africa was an exception as it had a large original black population.

280 Sing C. Chew, World Ecological Degradation: Accumulation, Urbanization, and Deforestation 3000 B.C.—A.D. 2000 (Walnut Creek, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) 136.

281 Ibid.

282 Ibid.

283 Ibid.

284 Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 335.

285 Ibid.

286 Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India 1200-1991 (Cambridge University Press, 1999) 168.

60 colonization.²⁸⁷ Yet, European imperialism introduced new methods of production to satisfy an increasing global demand for agricultural products, which increased the human pressure over the land.

In Java, the Dutch introduced plantation agriculture oriented to the export of sugar, coffee, indigo, and tobacco. In order to establish plantations forests had to be cleared.²⁸⁸ The Dutch also concentrated in exploiting teak, a hardwood of great value for shipbuilding and construction.²⁸⁹ Annual production of teak rose from 16,700 logs in 1733-1765, to 145,000 in 1837-1865.²⁹⁰

In Malaya, Burma, and British Borneo, rainforests served the imperial needs of the metropolis, particularly shipbuilding, which was vital for the maritime hegemony of the British navy. The provision of teak was of such a strategic value that Burma’s attempt to control its extraction was one of the main factors leading to the third Anglo-Burmese war.²⁹¹ Burma’s deforestation resulted in the loss of local fishery stock, soil deterioration, and the extinction of some animal and vegetal species.²⁹² As in the case of India, the local inhabitants found it increasingly difficult to get products that were essential to their daily life from shrinking forests, a fact that contributed to their economic hardship.²⁹³

When the Philippines came under Spanish power in 1565, 90 percent of the island was covered by forest. By 1900, the percentage had fallen to 70 percent, which was a minor change in comparison to what had taken place elsewhere. As in other colonial territories, the subordination of land use to market requirements accelerated environmental change. Deforestation during the nineteenth century affected the part of the country—central Luzon—in which commercial crop plantations of tobacco, abaca, and sugar cane had been established.²⁹⁴ These activities were possible due to the softening of mercantilist restrictions and the opening of the island to world trade in the previous century.²⁹⁵ One of the main environmental consequences of forest destruction for the inhabitants of central Luzon was the desiccation

287 Robin A. Butlin, Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colonies c1880-1960 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009) 406.

288 Chew, World Ecological Degradation, 137.

289 Peter Boomgaard, South East Asia: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2007) 248.

290 Chew, World Ecological Degradation, 137.

291 Boomgaard, South East Asia, 248. See also James Rush, The Last Tree: Reclaiming the Environment in Tropical Asia (New York, Asia Society, 1991) 41

292 Chew, World Ecological Degradation, 137.

293 Ibid.

294 Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 347-348.

295 Dennis M. Roth, ‘Philippine Forests and Forestry: 1565-1920’ in Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards, Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth Century World Economy (Durham, Duke University Press, 1983) 30-49, 32.

61 of lakes and swamps as the water-retentive quality of soils was lost.²⁹⁶ In addition, floods became more frequent and severe than ever before.²⁹⁷

Between 1850 and 1920, the overall felling of forests in South Asia and South East Asia reached a figure of 33 million hectares.²⁹⁸

In Africa, the environmental effect of European imperialism was also considerable. However, nature was partly safeguarded by the slow advance of capitalism into the interior of the continent. Human pressure on the continent’s ecology was kept in check for centuries due to the depopulation caused by the slave trade. In the nineteenth century, violent conquest, displacement of labor, disruption of food provisioning, and the introduction of diseases took additional millions of lives and contributed to famine crises, some lasting for as long as a decade.²⁹⁹ The cattle rinderpest disease that came from Europe killed 80 percent of infected animals, leaving pastoral communities in disarray, making them more economically vulnerable and, hence, dependent on jobs offered in plantation agriculture.³⁰⁰ The reduction of the African population like the collapse of the pre-colonial population in America allowed the regeneration of nature, above all in the Savannah areas.³⁰¹

Before the 1870s the growing demand from international markets did not generally mean dispossession of land or decision-making capacity from Africans and their institutions.³⁰² Events in the southern part of the continent altered that trend. The discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in 1866 and gold in the Transvaal in the 1880s led to a reorganization of territory and power relations in South Africa as the ownership of the mines was allocated to the white elite.³⁰³ As a consequence of mining, the value of the land suddenly rose and mines mushroomed. There was an imperative need to provide the mines with food for its work force and timber for its shafts.³⁰⁴ In order to assure land for these and other lucrative enterprises such as cattle ranching and crop exports, the colonial state allocated 75 percent of the land of

296 Ibid.

297 Ibid.

298 Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 335.

299 Ibid., 104 and 122. Davis claims that in the 1889-1891 famine, about one third of the Ethiopian and Sudanese population perished. See Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocaust: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York, Verso, 2001) 6. The Congo is perhaps one of the best examples of the heavy toll of lives of colonization. In the regime of terror installed in the Congo by the Belgium 8 to 10 million people perished. This is the figure that Koskenniemi gives. See Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer, 158.

300 William Beinart, ‘Africa History and Environmental History’ 99 African Affairs (2000) 269-302, 285.

301 Maddox, Sub-Saharan Africa, 122.

302 Ibid., 111.

303 Ibid., 117.

304 Ibid., 118.

62 the South African Union to white settlers, while 40 percent of the African population was concentrated in reserves.³⁰⁵ Reserves became places of cheap labor that served as a work force for the mines.³⁰⁶

The South African model was replicated in other parts of Africa, particularly in the British colonies.

The result was a division between market-oriented production and the exploitation of natural resources mainly by white settlers and rural self-sufficient communities formed by Africans.³⁰⁷ The colonial state maintained that division, using coercive power if necessary, in order to assure the success of settlers’

economic enterprises.³⁰⁸ French planters ran their plantations more like capitalist firms than settler farms, with similar results.³⁰⁹ Intensive cropping methods caused the degradation of soils.³¹⁰ Erosion was particular prominent in areas of European settlement in the South, North, and East of Africa.³¹¹ South Africa was an extreme case. By the 1930s, the government estimated that agricultural productivity had decreased by a quarter in only 25 years because of soil erosion.³¹²

African land was not the only element of the environment that was affected by the deployment of public and private economic power. Imperial hunting provoked a severe reduction of wildlife and the extinction of several species.³¹³ In South Africa, hunting was especially important for the diet of pre-colonial populations. Nevertheless, the demand of game meat in the white settlements and imperial markets for animal products such as ivory intensified the degree of animal killing.³¹⁴ By the late nineteenth, hunting shifted from a commercial enterprise into a cultural and racial expression of white dominance, masculinity, and sportsmanship.³¹⁵ Economic and recreational factors explain the increase in wildlife hunting. The number of dead animals was considerable—the ivory trade in the Cape alone accounted for the death of 25,000 elephants in 20 years.³¹⁶

305 Ibid.

306 Ibid., 124.

307 Ibid., 118.

308 Ibid., 129.

309 Ibid.

310 See Beinart and Coates, Environment and History, 51-69.

311 John McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (London, Allen Lane The Pinguin Press, 2000) 39.

312 Ibid., 40.

313 This reduction contrasted with a pre-European diverse and abundant fauna. See John McKenzie, The Empire of Nature:

Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism (Manchester University Press, 1988)85-119.

314 William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007) 62.

315 John M. McKenzie, ‘Chivalry, Social Darwinism and Ritualised Killing: The Hunting Ethos in Central Africa up to 1914’, in Anderson and Richard Grove (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Policies and Practice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987) 47-62.

316 Beinart and Hughes, Environment and Empire, 67.

63 As in Asia, forests were also cut in Africa to serve the needs of industrial capitalism. Between 1700 and 1920 the total disappearance of tropical forest in order to open space for agriculture (part of this land was cleared by locals, but cash crop capitalism contributed to a large part of the falling) was 222 million hectares. This number added to the 315 million ha cleared in the temperate world for agriculture (mostly plantation agriculture) amounted to 537 million ha.³¹⁷ This number does not take into account the extra 146 million hectares of grassland turned into cropland in the temperate world.³¹⁸

Concluding remarks

The environmental history of Western imperialism is complex and multifaceted. One complicating element is the state of non-European ecosystems before the arrival of Europeans. Non-European pre-colonial societies differed enormously. Empires prospered alongside city-states, confederations, regional alliances, rural communities, and other types of political formation. Some societies thrived along the coasts; others built their power in plateaus, hills, or the rainforest. Some were movable and nomadic, others sedentary, and some alternated between both trends. Independently of their size and complexity, none of them was static. They all evolved, changing periodically in an effort to adapt to different circumstances and a cluster of factors that shaped their historical trajectory.

Their environmental impact was also diverse. In large part, it related to their productive activities, their consumption patterns, the nature of their natural habitats, and their population. For that reason, it is difficult to arrive at a definite conclusion about non-European patterns of nature alteration. While some pre-colonial societies had reached an ecological balance, others were unsustainable. However, despite variation, two general trends are evident. The idea that the world outside Europe was a wilderness was far from the truth. It would be more correct to say that no inch of nature was unaffected there, where humans had established their presence. The pristine and primeval reality that Europeans were thought to have discovered was largely their own creation (if for unintended reasons, as we shall later see). Despite non-Europeans’ undeniable imprint on the landscape and various instances of natural degradation, it is possible to affirm that the populations of America, Africa, and Oceania had reached a certain overall balance with their surroundings, largely because of their direct dependence on the products of their surrounding nature.

317 Williams, Deforesting the Earth, 318. This figure amounts to the size of a country slightly bigger than India and Mexico put together.

318 Ibid. This figure amounts to an extension of territory two times the size of India.

64 Western imperialism dramatically changed that scenario. The imperative of acquiring profits out of colonial ventures resulted in environmental degradation. Apart from the localized destruction that this processes produced, one of the main effects of imperialism over non-European nature was the Europeans’

acquisition of a hegemonic power to define non-European ecosystems. As European colonists extended their presence and power worldwide, they tended to assume that most of the territories they visited, conquered, or administered were still virgin. For them, the world outside Europe appeared mostly as a wilderness, waiting to be conquered and easily amenable to their transformative power.³¹⁹ This misconception is understandable, to a certain degree. As pre-colonial populations in various continents died by the millions, forests and ecosystems greatly expanded. Nature extended its reach in the colonies and so European colonists and commentators alike, who ignored the interconnection between these phenomena, naturally tended to suppose that this was an outgrowth rather than a tragic human-made phenomenon.

Once the natural world outside Europe was conceptualized and represented as a prolific blank sheet, a virgin space to be conquered, it was easy to argue persuasively that in those wild physical spaces society and civilization ought to be forged anew. The power to define the world outside Europe as a wild natural canvass gave rise to an even larger power: the power to build material civilization out of wild nature.

This power, in turn, demanded an authoritative language that legitimized acquisition. Colonial nature ought first to be appropriated so that it could then be exploited. This cosmopolitan idea fit perfectly with a more mundane imperialistic interest in seizing profitable natural resources. As imperialism advanced, slowly but surely the natural environments of several continents became subordinated to the economic

This power, in turn, demanded an authoritative language that legitimized acquisition. Colonial nature ought first to be appropriated so that it could then be exploited. This cosmopolitan idea fit perfectly with a more mundane imperialistic interest in seizing profitable natural resources. As imperialism advanced, slowly but surely the natural environments of several continents became subordinated to the economic