Overview
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.
Full Product Details
Author: Guillaume Blanc , Mathieu Guérin , Grégory Quenet
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Imprint: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781805398912
ISBN 10: 1805398911
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 01 March 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
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College/higher education
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Professional & Vocational
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Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print 
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Protecting Nature in Africa and Asia. Towards a Small-Scale Global History Guillaume Blanc Chapter 1. Laissez-Faire Conservation. Nature Protection in Colonial Vietnam Pamela McElwee Chapter 2. Setting up a Wildlife Department. Kenyan Expertise in Malaya Mathieu Guérin Chapter 3. Imperial Forests and Nature Reserves in Singapore, 1883-1959 Timothy P. Barnard Chapter 4. Rambouillet, Agricultural Stations, and French Colonial Africa. Conserving and Improving Nature (1900-1930) Raphaël Devred Chapter 5. Missing Conservation? On the Puzzling Dearth of Nature Conservation in Mandate Syria and Lebanon Diana K. Davis Chapter 6. Between Empire and Development. The Ubiquitous Life and Career of Arthur Hugh Bunting Joseph M. Hodge Chapter 7. The Adamsons, Born Free, and the Late Colonial Era. Images That Helped to Change the Animal World William Beinart Chapter 8.Conservation in the Days of Independence. the Case of the Seychelles, 1968-1974 Grégory Quenet Chapter 9. Tracking Wildebeests. the Technological Mediation of Spaces for Humans and Wildlife in the Serengeti since 1950 Simone Schleper Chapter 10. Conserving Nature in Mozambique. Relaying Conservation Practices and Imaginaries since Colonial Days Rozenn Nakanabo Diallo Chapter 11. Catfights and Crocodile Tears. Conflict, Charismatic Species, and Nature Professionals in India’s Conservation History Meera Anna Oommen Chapter 12. Representing Space to Structure Time. Tropical Deforestation Fronts in the Light of Human-Territory Relations Johan Oszwald Conclusion: Studying Nature, Networks, and Power. What Next? Guillaume Blanc Index
Reviews
“The book raises a major issue: social and environmental justice. Those who advocate protection are not those who suffer its constraints.” • Steve Hagimont, 20&21. Revue d'histoire, n° 159, 2023 “The book as a whole insists on a contradiction that seems inherent to conservation: ""this policy does not exist alongside destruction but with it"". Highlighted by the title of the book, this contradictory association is found in two logics: protecting in order to exploit and exploiting in order to protect.” • Colin Vanlaer, Moussons, n°41, 2023
Author Information
Guillaume Blanc is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Rennes 2 and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2021-2026). His work focuses on the global governance of nature, with a particular concentration on Ethiopia and East Africa. He has recently published La nature des hommes (La Découverte, 2024) and The Invention of Green Colonialism (Polity, 2022).
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