Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History

Contemporary anxieties about global warming and climate change impacts have unsettled the ways in which we think about environmental politics and human history. Intense discussions have already begun over whether we need to reconsider what we understand by the term 'environmental change' and if humans have truly become a 'geo-physical' force. Put differently, how should we recast our understanding of the planet's varied environmental pasts in order to make sense of the Anthropocene present?

This collection of 19 essays on forestry and environmental change in the erstwhile colonies of the British Empire builds on Richard Grove's quest for achieving a 'global synthesis' as efforts towards writing environmental histories on a planetary scale. The Commonwealth of Nations as a single environmental bloc for study, enquiry and historical scrutiny, explores connected environmental histories, compares dissimilar ecological regions and debates ideologies for environmental management.

Vinita Damodaran is a historian of modern India, interested in sustainable development dialogues in the global South, particularly in questions of environmental change, identity and resistance in eastern India and has used historical records to understand climate change in the Indian Ocean World.

Rohan D'Souza is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University (Japan).