The Invention of Green Colonialism

Author: Guillaume Blanc
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509550909
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
The story begins with a dream – the dream of Africa. Virgin forests, majestic mountains surrounded by savannas, vast plains punctuated with the rhythms of animal life where lions, elephants and giraffes reign as lords of nature, far from civilization – all of us carry such images in our heads, imagining Africa as a timeless Eden untouched by the ravages of modernity. But this Africa has never existed. The more we destroy nature here, the more we fantasize about it in Africa. Along with UNESCO, the WWF and other organizations, we convince ourselves that the African national parks are protecting the last vestiges of a world once untouched and wild. In reality, argues Guillaume Blanc, these organizations are responsible for naturalizing large tracts of the African continent, turning territories into parks and forcibly evicting thousands of people from the lands where they have lived for centuries. Making use of archives and oral histories, Blanc investigates this battle for a phantom Africa and the contradictory claims of nations who destroy nature at home while believing that they are protecting the natural world abroad. In so doing, they enact a new type of colonialism: green colonialism.

Green Imperialism

Author: Richard H. Grove
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521565134
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book Description
The first book to document the origins and early history of environmentalism, especially its colonial and global aspects.

Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe, 1890-1980

Author: Vimbai Chaumba Kwashirai
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604976458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This book examines the debates and processes on woodland exploitation in Zimbabwe during the colonial era (1890-1960). It explores the social, economic, and political contexts of perceptions on woodland distribution and management. Much of the period was characterized by both local and global debates about environmental problems, generating in their wake politically charged and emotive language about the consequences--deforestation, soil erosion, and threats to wildlife. This study analyses the history of exploitation and conservation of the Zimbabwean teak (mkusi or Baikiea plurijuga) and its associated species in Northwestern Matabeleland from 1890 to 1960. Timber exploitation was among the top three colonial economic activities in Matabeleland, including ranching and tobacco cultivation. Concessionaire capitalists and forestry officials dominated the exploitation and conservation of the Zambezi teak woodland or gusu, respectively. On one hand, capitalists sought to extract as much commercial hardwood timber as they could while on the other hand, foresters restricted tree felling. In this first critical work on the topic, author Vimbai Kwashirai focuses on woodland conservation and commercial development in Zimbabwe during the colonial period. Emphasis is placed on the tensions, conflicts, and sometimes the collusions between timber companies and the developing state. This book provides a rich example of Green Imperialism along the lines of Richard Grove, but goes beyond that by giving an economic historical account that situates conservation history within the broader political-economic context. This book is based on broad archival research, and it traces the relationship between conservation and the development of commercial capital from forest enterprises in colonial Zimbabwe. It delivers much insight on the conflicts and tensions of the workings of the British South Africa Company (a capitalist enterprise that was at the same time overseeing the development of a state polity of the then Rhodesia), providing evidence for a strong argument for the development of industrial capital under colonialism. The forestry service was caught in these tensions of supporting and enterprise, but also trying to regulate that green capital and establish the beginnings of protected forests in Zimbabwe. This book casts much light on the environmental impact on a part of Africa caused by the push and pull of politics and economics. This book will be an important addition to collections in African studies, environmental studies, and political science.

Green Imperialism

Author: Richard H. Grove
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521403856
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Book Description
The first book to document the origins and early history of environmentalism, especially its colonial and global aspects.

Ecology, Climate and Empire

Author: Richard H. Grove
Publisher: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
"This collection of essays from a pioneering scholar in the field of environmental history vividly demonstrates that concerns about climate change are far from being a uniquely modern phenomenon. Grove traces the origins of present-day environmental debates about soil erosion, deforestation and climate change in the writings of early colonial administrators, doctors and missionaries. He traces what is known and what can be inferred concerning historic El Nino events centuries before the devastating 1997/98 instance. In an important and wide-ranging concluding essay he analyses the general significance of 'marginal' land and its ecology in the history of popular resistance movements."--Amazon.com.

The Falling Sky

Author: Davi Kopenawa
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674293576
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 649

Book Description
The 10th anniversary edition A Guardian Best Book about Deforestation A New Scientist Best Book of the Year A Taipei Times Best Book of the Year “A perfectly grounded account of what it is like to live an indigenous life in communion with one’s personal spirits. We are losing worlds upon worlds.” —Louise Erdrich, New York Times Book Review “The Yanomami of the Amazon, like all the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia, have experienced the end of what was once their world. Yet they have survived and somehow succeeded in making sense of a wounded existence. They have a lot to teach us.” —Amitav Ghosh, The Guardian “A literary treasure...a must for anyone who wants to understand more of the diverse beauty and wonder of existence.” —New Scientist A now classic account of the life and thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami, The Falling Sky paints an unforgettable picture of an indigenous culture living in harmony with the Amazon forest and its creatures, and its devastating encounter with the global mining industry. In richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation as a shaman and first experience of outsiders: missionaries, cattle ranchers, government officials, and gold prospectors seeking to extract the riches of the Amazon. A coming-of-age story entwined with a rare first-person articulation of shamanic philosophy, this impassioned plea to respect indigenous peoples’ rights is a powerful rebuke to the accelerating depredation of the Amazon and other natural treasures threatened by climate change and development.

Empireworld

Author: Sathnam Sanghera
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541705076
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
Bestselling author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera explores the global legacy of the British Empire, and the ways it continues to influence economics, politics, and culture around the world. 2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to the shaping international law. Even today, 1 in 3 people drive on the left hand side of the road, an artifact of the British empire. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. Following in the footsteps of his bestselling book Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, Empireworld explores the ways in which British Empire has come to shape the modern world Sanghera visits Barbados, where he uncovers how Caribbean nations are still struggling to emerge from the disadvantages sown by transatlantic slavery. He examines how large charities--like Save the Children and the World Bank--still see the world through the imperial eyes of their colonial founders, and how the political instability of nations, such as Nigeria, for instance, can be traced back to tensions seeded in their colonial foundations. And from the British Empire's role in the transportation of 12.5 million Africans during the Atlantic slave trade, to the 35 million Indians who died due to famine caused by British policy, the British Empire, as Sanghera reveals, was responsible for some of the largest demographic changes in human history. Economic, legal and political systems across the world continue to function along the lines originally drawn by the British Empire, and cultural, sexual, psychological, linguistic, demographic, and educational norms originally established by imperial Britons continue to shape our lives. British Empire may have peaked a century ago, and it may have been mostly dismantled by 1997, but in this major new work, Sathnam Sanghera ultimately shows how the largest empire in world history still exerts influence over planet Earth in all sorts of silent and unsilent ways.

Green Imperialism

Author: Richard H. Grove
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195637243
Category : Caribbean Area
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Book Description

The Invention of Decolonization

Author: Todd Shepard
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801443602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
In this account of the Algerian War's effect on French political structures and notions of national identity, Todd Shepard asserts that the separation of Algeria from France was truly a revolutionary event with lasting consequences for French social and political life. For more than a century, Algeria had been legally and administratively part of France; after the bloody war that concluded in 1962, it was other--its eight million Algerian residents deprived of French citizenship while hundreds of thousands of French pieds noirs were forced to return to a country that was never home. This rupture violated the universalism that had been the essence of French republican theory since the late eighteenth century. Shepard contends that because the amputation of Algeria from the French body politic was accomplished illegally and without explanation, its repercussions are responsible for many of the racial and religious tensions that confront France today. In portraying decolonization as an essential step in the inexorable "tide of history," the French state absolved itself of responsibility for the revolutionary change it was effecting. It thereby turned its back not only on the French of Algeria--Muslims in particular--but also on its own republican principles and the 1958 Constitution. From that point onward, debates over assimilation, identity, and citizenship--once focused on the Algerian "province/colony"--have troubled France itself. In addition to grappling with questions of race, citizenship, national identity, state institutions, and political debate, Shepard also addresses debates in Jewish history, gender history, and queer theory.

Fevered Planet

Author: John Vidal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1526632195
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
A timely and urgent investigation from John Vidal, Environment Editor of the Guardian for nearly thirty years, into how the destruction of nature is releasing disease into our societies 'Urgent, fascinating and essential' GEORGE MONBIOT 'A searing, vital work' BETTANY HUGHES Covid-19, mpox, bird flu, SARS, HIV, AIDS, Ebola; we are living in the Age of Pandemics – one that we have created. As the climate crisis reaches a fever pitch and ecological destruction continues unabated, we are just beginning to reckon with the effects of environmental collapse on our global health. Fevered Planet exposes how the way we farm, what we eat, the places we travel to and the scientific experiments we conduct create the perfect conditions for deadly new diseases to emerge and spread faster and further than ever. Drawing on the latest scientific research and decades of reporting from more than 100 countries, former Guardian environment editor John Vidal takes us into deep, disappearing forests in Gabon and the Congo, valleys scorched by wildfire near Lake Tahoe and our densest, polluted cities to show how closely human, animal and plant diseases are now intertwined with planetary destruction. He calls for an urgent transformation in our relationship with the natural world, and expertly outlines how to make that change possible.