Book review: Decentering Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World

This article reviews the book: “Decentering Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World”, by Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy

Climate change, forest conservation and science: A case study of New Zealand, 1860s-1920

To most of its European settlers, New Zealand was a land blessed by Providence. A temperate climate and year-round rainfall, easy availability of land and myriad work opportunities attracted many to the new colony. Climate and health figured prominently in migration considerations and many writers took delight in pointing out, as propagandist John Ward did to intending migrants in 1839, that in New Zealand: A never-failing moisture is dispersed over the country by the clouds which collect on the mountain-tops, without the occurrence of rainy seasons, beyond storms of a few days’ duration. This refreshing moisture, combined with the influence of the sea-breezes, renders the climate very favourable to the health, and development, of the human frame. And vegetation is, from the same cause, highly luxuriant, and the verdure almost perpetual

Book review: Environment and Empire

This article reviews the book: “Environment and Empire”, by William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Oxford University Press, 2007

Book review: Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World

This article reviews the book: “Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World”, by Mark C. Elliott

Seeing the wood for the trees: empire, nation-making and forest management

Seemingly operating in an inverse relationship to the declining area of actual forest, the vast wood of publications on the topic continues to grow (thereby likely adding to the deforestation of the books’ subject). The reader can consult global surveys of world forestry, thanks to the outstanding efforts of Michael Williams and Stephen Pyne. National and micro studies also abound for those wanting information about a particular geographical area. All such studies displaying an array of different perspectives on forests: their symbolism, exchange, arrangement in gardens, art, cities—even their biological espionage (the cinchona’s ‘abduction’ from South America to South Asia, for instance)—are all covered. For some scholars, forests are objects of ecological imperialism; for others, tokens of enlightened colonialism, precursors to environmentalism

Imperial landscapes of health: Place, plants and people between India and Australia, 1800s-1900s.

In the nineteenth century, place bore immediately and urgently on questions of imperialism, race, and health. This article considers European strategies to control local environments and improve healthiness through the exchange of people, plants, ideas and garden designs between India and Australia. Migration removed Europeans from unhealthy environments, either permanently (to Australia and elsewhere) or temporarily (to hill stations in India). Trees like the eucalyptus were introduced into India to enhance European health, based on belief they drained sources of disease. I argue a crucial new understanding of the intersection between health and place in the nineteenth-century British Empire can be provided by tracing the networks through which people, plants, and ideas moved to consider the broader imperial frameworks

Global influences and local environments: Forestry and forest conservation in New Zealand, 1850s-1925.

This article examines the multiple factors that shaped the establishment of forest conservation and tree-planting in the colony of New Zealand. It presents a new perspective on forest history in New Zealand from the 1850s to the 1920s by examining the interplay of local and global factors in the development of forestry, while also suggesting future research topics in this area. Using the case-study of New Zealand, as an ancillary focus the article presents new interpretations of the exchange and introduction of forestry ideas, suggesting a need to re-examine the importance of locality in the period leading up to the emergence of ‘empire forestry’ in the twentieth century. With this in mind, it takes as one of its perspectives the work of historian of science David Livingstone, who has emphasised the importance of local factors in shaping the spread of scientific ideas. In light of Livingstone’s ideas, we demonstrate that while it makes sense to consider New Zealand forest policy both nationally and internationally, there were also significant local variations in policy according to geography, politics and other factors. These included uneven forest distribution throughout the country, slower growth-rates of indigenous trees and the impact of geography on forest removal and conservation. As well, long-standing political aversion to government interference in society restricted the role of the state in active forest management, giving greater latitude to private tree-planters. Meanwhile, New Zealand’ smaller government and population offered greater power to individuals than perhaps would be open to those living in larger societies with bigger government bureaucracies

Rethinking science, religion and nature in environmental history: drought in early twentieth-century New Zealand

Gegenstand des Beitrags sind Vorstellungen von Wissenschaft und Religion bei einfachen Leuten wie bei Angehörigen der Elite in einer Gesellschaft europäischer Siedler zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Auf der Basis einer Fallstudie über Experimente und Gebete mit dem Ziel des Regenmachens in North Otago, Neuseeland im Jahr 1907 sollen zwei verbreitete Paradigmen über die neuseeländische Gesellschaft in Frage gestellt werden: zum einen die Auffassung, dass der wissenschaftliche Rationalismus der Religion automatisch feindselig gegenüberstand, und zum anderen die Auffassung, dass die wissenschaftlichen Vorstellungen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts die Gesellschaft Neuseelands säkularisierten. Die Einwohner von North Otago sahen Gebete und Experimente als komplementäre Wege zur Erreichung desselben Ziels. Es gab keine hermetische Trennung zwischen Säkularem und Profanem. Das Regenmachen bietet darüber hinaus eine faszinierende Möglichkeit, unterschiedliche Auffassungen von Wissenschaft zu untersuchen. Während die lokale Bevölkerung den Einsatz von Sprengstoffen zur Erzeugung von Regen enthusiastisch begrüßte, lehnten die Meteorologen solchen Methoden aus unwissenschaftlich und amateurhaft ab und versuchten damit, die Legitimität ihrer eigenen Profession zu steigern. Die Reaktion auf das Regenmachen mittels Gebeten und Experimenten in North Otago unterscheidet sich beträchtlich von der Reaktion in anderen Gesellschaften wie England und Australien, wo man zu ähnlichen Mitteln griff. Diese Unterschiede spiegeln die besonderen sozialen und kulturellen Merkmale jedes Landes und im Fall Neuseelands das höhere Maß an religiöser Toleranz und sozialen Chancen wider. (ICEÜbers)'This article investigates popular and elite conceptions of science and religion in an early twentieth-century European settler society. It uses the case-study of rainmaking experiments and prayers in North Otago, New Zealand, in 1907, to challenge two dominant paradigms about New Zealand society: first, that scientific rationalism was automatically antipathetic to religion and, second, that by the early twentieth century scientific ideas were secularizing New Zealand society. North Otago's residents viewed prayer and experiment as complementary activities designed to meet the same ends; there was no distinctive, hermetically sealed division between the secular and the profane. Rainmaking also offers a fascinating way of exploring contested notions of science. While local residents enthusiastically embraced the use of explosives to bring rain, meteorologists decried these measures as unscientific and amateurish, thereby attempting to increase the legitimacy of their own profession. The reaction to North Otago's rainmaking prayers and experiments differed considerably from that of other societies such as in England and Australia in which similar prayers and experiments were undertaken. These differences reflected the special social and cultural characteristics of each country and, in New Zealand's case, its greater religious tolerance and social opportunities.' (author's abstract

Biota Barons, ‘neo-eurasias’ and Indian-new Zealand informal eco-cultural networks, 1830s–1870s

Abstract: This article examines informal (private and commercial) imperial networks and environmental modification by former English East India Company (EIC) employees in New Zealand, as well as the introduction of subcontinental species into that colony. Several very wealthy settlers from India, it argues, single-handedly introduced a cornucopia of Indian plants and animals into different parts of nineteenth-century New Zealand and used money earned in India to engage in large-scale environmental modification. Such was the scale of their enterprise ‘in the business of shifting biota from place to place’ and in remaking environments in parts of New Zealand1 that these individuals can be considered ‘biota barons’. A focus on the informal eco-cultural networks they created helps refine the thesis of ecological imperialism

The relation between the true and observed fractal dimensions of turbulent clouds

Observations of interstellar gas clouds are typically limited to two-dimensional (2D) projections of the intrinsically three-dimensional (3D) structure of the clouds. In this study, we present a novel method for relating the 2D projected fractal dimension ($\mathcal{D}_{\text{p}}$) to the 3D fractal dimension ($\mathcal{D}_{\text{3D}}$) of turbulent clouds. We do this by computing the fractal dimension of clouds over two orders of magnitude in turbulent Mach number $(\mathcal{M} = 1-100)$, corresponding to seven orders of magnitude in spatial scales within the clouds. This provides us with the data to create a new empirical relation between $\mathcal{D}_{\text{p}}$ and $\mathcal{D}_{\text{3D}}$. The proposed relation is $\mathcal{D}_{\text{3D}}(\mathcal{D}_{\text{p}}) = \Omega_1 erfc ( \xi_1 erfc^{-1}[ (\mathcal{D}_{\text{p}} - \mathcal{D}_{\text{p,min}})/\Omega_2 ] + \xi_2 ) + \mathcal{D}_{\text{3D,min}}$, where the minimum 3D fractal dimension, $\mathcal{D}_{\text{3D,min}} = 2.06 \pm 0.35$, the minimum projected fractal dimension, $\mathcal{D}_{\text{p,min}} = 1.55 \pm 0.13$, $\Omega_1 = 0.47 \pm 0.18$, $\Omega_2 = 0.22 \pm 0.07$, $\xi_1 = 0.80 \pm 0.18$ and $\xi_2 = 0.26 \pm 0.19$. The minimum 3D fractal dimension, $\mathcal{D}_{\text{3D,min}} = 2.06 \pm 0.35$, indicates that in the high $\mathcal{M}$ limit the 3D clouds are dominated by planar shocks. The relation between $\mathcal{D}_{\text{p}}$ and $\mathcal{D}_{\text{3D}}$ of molecular clouds may be a useful tool for those who are seeking to understand the 3D structures of molecular clouds, purely based upon 2D projected data and shows promise for relating the physics of the turbulent clouds to the fractal dimension.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. Accepted 2019 May 1