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    Adams Nature and The Colonial Mind

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    “ Hae g, Wem. CIAIG) “Nahe oud Ss ein i Adee er VA Mulligans (£45. Decrlontrnrg nabwie | Seah on IA eo for Chapter 2 ie er wWovid = Lowden Garrs (nn, Nature and the colonial mind pp-16-#} Notare andthe colonial mind 17 sho authenticates the wise ruler and endorses the good management of the Pride Lands. Only the lions understand their decp responsibility to work within limits and respect che citcle of lif. They must cherefore govern for those lesser creatures who might otherwise deviate from the necessary balanced path, ‘Of course, paradise is severely challenged. Governance collapses when ‘Mufasa is kiled; Simba wimpe out fora while, and degradation stalks the land in the shape of the evil and destructive hyenas. This is 2 thinly racialized presentation of the threat to the environment of Africa: black actors voices lasher in destruction, a lack of integrity on all sides, unsustainable hunting practices drought and famine, The new ruler is weak, camp, lazy and violent (and English). Inthe end, of course, Simba seruens, ined in self-sufficiency (ike Mowgli in Tae angle Book) by an unlikely combination of a warthog and 2 meerkat (some very add eeniogy hers), reminded af his deep duty by the baboon and empowered by 2 feisty female ro do the decent thing. At the last ‘minute, Simba fight, Scars ousted, the world burns and evils overvarned. The fm finally ends where ie began, with the lios on Pride Rock and their admiting subjects around them, the world green and fertile once more, ecologieal order and moral governance restored under th firm but wise paternalism of the new COPY MADE ON BEHALF OF [NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE DATE OF DECLARATION O7 AUG 2008 William M Adams Arts & Social Sciences Fooly tn INTRODUCTION One of the unsung delights of having children is that you get to ses fms and 5 books that adults typically disdain. Sometimes these turn out toe re ey ped ay of king and ding igs Forme on Fo cy Conprsuons cartoon Th Laon King FOE ay 2h Oe Pail prvies a sobeingrefection of deze Nsking aes yc Of coon conservation, i povies the mot ‘wonderful ammunition, ALD computes and peas of the get corponte ce erodes into» acl lane of foweing en or el cosupoana ut at Pie Rock, nee awd yer haemonios ace. The Sm ope ra eaten oder whee Don pls ex with lama in ine ams» Bon one Serengeti o Maus Mar Upon ra ate vl presets Sb, the yous Hon 0s ase “cc ene ni se gov wwe Te 2 I gee and age The bo (ale, of cous) have ae eatin ede forth lene amas: th female as ean rtrd court ~ supportive, intelligent and subservient. Simba has mach to sae canals pce serfs The cae of be aig x a leag of ‘beomang 3 mar be expected he aves Cen wil ale ered neon East Ata the ce of of the Ameri oe, Sb fooks up and he canes nt the princes of Ee a ee enalon, Hee ceed responsi a rahe © ae the baby boom generation, antag” of conseraon to ie Danese ad pls (deol) wei a8 bre by depen ete sabre baboon with doctor Lion King. This is an engaging and sweetly told morality tale, and a fantastically ‘successful one; but its also disturbing. For The Lion King reflects dominant ideologies of nature, and of human governance of nature, only roo accurately. In Africa, ad elsewhere, conservationists do speak like remote rulers, believing that they alone understand how nature works. They call most insistently for ‘management of nature within certain bounds, and the need to respect both ‘the circle of life’ (even if its labelled differently ~ for example, 25 ‘ecological principles for economie development” or sustainable development: Farvar and ‘Milton, 1973; Adams, 2001) and lesser creatures (this is called ‘biodiversity’ Furthermore, when nature is described, i is often in terms that suggest a vision listurbingly Uke Disneys Pride Lands: wilderness a place of simeless natural shythms, a place where ecology, not human choice, determines patterns of life and death. Innumerable television wildlife documentaries present nature in inicate and predetermined (if quaintly brutish) harmony, with humans the external and disruptive force! However, while Tae Lion King reflects ideas that ate eutent today (although by no means universal), it also harks back to the past. Mufasa and Simba are feaized rulers, paternalistic imperialists, selflessly balancing opposing forces and imposing the common good. Today’s ideologies of nature and the governance of nature draw directly upon the inheritance of colonialism. The sense of duty that Mufasa attempts ¢o incsleat into Simba tefleets Kipling’. “white man’s burden’? The Lion King reveals the specific power of colonial ideologies of nature: they cast a long shadow i thinking about conservation, and in many instances they have been built into the structure of established institutions, rom national parks to soi conservation programmes. 18 Decslonizing Nature “This chapter attempts to tease out something of the shape and significance of colonial thinking about nature, partiulaely in the Brish Empire. It is ‘necessarily a partial and personal review of a large and rapidly growing literature, embracing Africa, Australia, South Asia and the Caribbean, and, of course, North America: The point ofthis chapter isco explote the significance of the colonial mind in influencing the east of our own. WHOSE COLONIAL MIND? ‘This chapter’ ticle speaks of ‘a colonial mind! but did such a hing ever exist with respect to conservation? The rapidly growing literature on environmental history suggests not. There has been enormous diversity inthe ways nature has been understood, and the ways conservation has been practised, in colonial countries. There s n0 consistent ‘colonial ming! and no simple account to be given of colonial ideologies of ature "There i, in pariulae, now recognized to be considerable complexity in the interplay of environmental ideas from the colonial metropole and periphery ‘The work of Richard Grove, for example (1990; 1992; 1995; 1997) has challenged the conventional wisdom that envizonmentalism was an Anglo- [American concern, merely‘ local response to Western industrializaion, that ‘was exported around the colonial world (Grove, 1990, p11). Indeed, he argues, that the reverse was the case, with the development of global trade from the 15th century onwards yielding ideas and knowledge that themselves transformed European ideas of nature. The colonized world should be seen asthe hearth of ideological innovation, with ideas forged there during the 17th and 18th centuries (inthe West Indes, in the islands of the Indian Ocean and in India) being layed tothe me:ropole through international scientific newworks (Grove, 1998; 1997; MacKenzie, 197), There is plenty of evidence of diversity in the historical emergence of ideologies of nature and conservation under colonialism. One tisk of post- colonial analysis i cha it homogenizes this diversity in both space and time, inventing a singe discourse without geography or history as a logical source of a hegemonic colonial gaze. It is easy to hypothesize sueh an ideology, with capitalise market rationality transforming diverse indigenous understandings of, and social engagements with, aaure. However, i is clear that such a simplistic ‘wating of history is highly misleading. Place, period, race, clas, caste and gender all offer distinct (although imerlinked) creits forthe formation and exchange (of ideas about nature in the colonial world. Not all actors have left the same signature in the writen archive: there is more recorded about the ideas of governors than governors’ wives; more about the attudes to nature of district ‘commissioners than of engineers running cotton mill, There is more recorded about what all of these individuals chought than about the ideas of thei subjects, or their servants, or members of their households. Refletion suggests that there might be sharp distinctions berween ideas of nature, even at local, Nature and the colonial mind 19 scales; between differen Kinds of actors; and subse imterplays berwen individuals within them. There sever reason to expt cla esage ot natate to bea diverse, confused and contested a hose othe pe dg (Norton, 191). Grove sommes the ideologies sate cone of cary eolonialconservationm iit had developed under uth Bocek oe French colonial ule amounted by the 1850s, toa highly hecrogenne mee of indigenous, oman, Oversea other cement (Gros 1995 However, within this diversity there ae common thmer in Sail discourse. Ths chapter eso dmonstnte th exploring sone ky eos tiong the many dimension of colonial thought about sanre Iedincee colonialism’ pact on nate an the mporene of ralonalty wale underpinning colonial ideas about nature. It explores the roles of ecology and tpplied science inthe serve of developmen pang ad he mere Colonial envronmencalsm. Ir then considers thee parla sheectons of oll we of ate the idea of were he kee of hing ad tn este separate nutreoff in protected teas The chapters puma te idee forged under eolonl rl sl, ike some al of edge eke behind contemporary thinking on ontevaion They bate eadeang soos COLONIALISM’S IMPACT ON NATURE ‘There has been much debate about the extent of the destructive impact of colonialism on nature. The environmentalisin of the lst three decades of the 20th century took as its conceprual premise the unprecedented scale and significance of the impacts of industrial technology on nature. The roots of this view lic deep within Western popular consciousness; but romantic opposition to industrialism, to nuclear weapons, to urbanization and to landscape change are all significant (Veldman, 1994; Bunce, 1994) As Meredith Veldman points out, CS Lewis's Tie Lion, se Witch and the Wardrobe, ice The Lion King a tale of balance destroyed and restored; the pastoral world of ‘olkein’s Middle Earth is dhreatoned by Sauron’ dark arts Alfted Crosby's Ecological Imperatom (1986) gives this rather vague cavironmentalst oppositionism a geography and 2 history. He describes he success of ‘neo-Europes’ in Australasia, and in North and South Amevien, where greedy but manginally competent Europeans were able to gti colonial footholds. In these counties, Europeans became numerially dominant, as dad elements of European biota and production systems. European setless “used guns, taps and poison to kill the wilde, stel axes and ploughs to clea the Jand and tuen the soil; they also placed bounties “on almost anything thet walked, lew, swam or crawied’ (Dunlap, 1999, pp49, 51). The reason for the suecess of this invasion in some places, and its sapping failure in others (cotaby Africa), was not te limited range of developed technologies (whether domestic livestock or guns). Many of these technologies were, anyway, developed in China or the Middle Ease (survival and expansion were, in many 20° Decolonizing Nature cases, dependent upon the bold and effective cooption of proven local technologies, such as Arabic sailing technologies in the Indian Ocean, or indigenous crops in North America). Sul less did ic lie in racial superiority or superior moral fibre, explanations beloved of imperialistic history books. Crosby highlights the influence of pathogens (and particularly human diseases) that decimated local populations and laid lands open to the blind, eruel but ultimately profitable legal fiction of terra ullus* The ravages of disease, killings and (more rarely) open warfare served to clear the land in North America, ‘Australia, New Zealand and the South African Cape (Flannery, 1994; Beinart and Coates, 1995), a clearance entrenched by economic competition and legal process. In places like lowland tropical Africa, however, disease culled European colonizers, often on arsival. Outside the salubrious highlands they weer restricted to exteactive trade, and aot occupation. Even in neo-Europer such as Australia, successive attempts co eradicate malaria in the north through the 19th century failed Flannery, 1994) MacKenzie (1997) places Crosby firmly in an ‘apocalyptic school” of imperial history In its more extreme forms, this school would portray world history as ‘one long free fall, with imperialism as its global accelerator’ (MacKenzie, 1997, p20). Famously, Helge Kjekshus (1977) argued that the advent of colonial rule in what is now Tanzania had remarkably destructive environmental impacts destabilizing established relations berween people and nature, particularly over the control of tsetse fly (and sleeping sickness). In doing this, Kjekshus contrasted favourable descriptions of pre-colonial ‘Tanzania, with horrifying aecounts of colonial times in a way that filed to take account of the complexities of either situation (lffe, 1979; 1995). There was no golden age in pre-colonial Africe. Poverty did not begin in the colonial period, and historians rightly shy away from romantic assumptions about pre- colonial social, economic and ecological equilibrium (Ife, 1987; Sutton, 1990), Moreover, as Beinart (2000) argues, although the ideological impacts of colonization were huge, it did not necessarily or immediately cause a breakdown in social constraints on the exploitation of nature In Africa, as elsewhere in the colonial world, historians need to understand people as ‘one element in complex and evolving ecosystems’ (Weiskel, 1988, 142). However, that evolution was often drastic and dramatic at the onset of ‘colonial annexation. Thus, in East Afria, societies were torn apart by multiple catastrophes at che end of the 19th cenruty: In north-east Africa, pastoral people were made destitute in the 1880s and 1890s by a combination of disease (especially sinderpest, introduced from the Indian subcontinent in the 1880s), drought and warfare (Pankhurst and Johnson, 1988; Waller, 1988). The imposition of colonial rule was a significant factor in some of these, and certainly in thei significance for forare patterns of resource use and rights; but its impact was by no means simple. These political and economic catastrophes, in turn, both reflected and caused environmental change. Thus, when livestock populations crashed and scrub and ssetse fly expanded, Maasai social ‘organization also collapsed. Incoming colonists could imagine a land seantly Nature andthe colonial mind 24 cupid, is people wake and surulet eat eden, Rin oso pla speed w uncapped ad ee tacts oth Moped peso ase eh ey through the 20th century. ee Colonialism and capitalism not only extracted f escebaa arco only extn om eyed Soi hes th ometmes dessus cscs eee Bi ee ke oon sl sulin indo supp ie og de ak lal nay seleaficene made acto ea eed in the mame ofiaperal economia i omic development Drayton, 200) is Rena siesta for nuoduted specs at ume het tap aa cundiy a metaphor for European setters themeche (Cake Throughout he 1th cent ad need for mach of te De von neon ‘usin ough not to adap co he country us tomate Ree co them, tempting to reste + Meco Bran’ Fanseiy Oa nae wide range of temperate and Mediterranean crops and Buoy ex imported to Australia by nturazation or acclimaonton ost oe them sine a wide spectrum of accidental nals Some brought deen ‘ped oot local competion, others an wid ath shores tome a camels tod the water buffalo, among domestic livestock alone); some Propagated prodigiously, reaching plague ps se s lagve proportions (for example he Europea abbitin Austin or the fed deen New Zesbndy ta sae competion, became esting The uns nd fe oe ge and fo of ands ad ‘continents such as Australia were drastically simplified. eck BE Mt Bh century by eich tine seer aon bal exeyhre me a import eter in pulicconers od ane puri Ina world of global eapialsm and cae a have cla and sual val, and thee ate vigoo al to hee ofc os fom oct hooded fom Ba coe tei piu fom Alten, South Asan or Baase Notall colonia introductions led to ecological date: in some cass Thu, for example the Af le the ican slave tade saw the nteiocion oy Ween Coast of a host of new crops fom the New Wold msec oo tomato, maize, sweet potato, cocoyam, pineay le, papaya, avocado, hot Pepper, tobacco and New World cottons, and fom Mee tare ae eet 22. Desolonizing Nature sweet banana, sugar cane, orange, grapefruit, lemon and mango; Weiskel, 1988). The changes in ecology and economy consequent upon colonization could be rapid and complex. The cultivation of cocoa (introduced from South America to the island of Sao Thomé during the 15th century, bur introduced to the West African mainland only in 1878) expanded very rapidly in the Gold Coast and Ivory Coast from the 1880s. Local innovation sought, with considerable success, to recreate some economic autonomy following ‘the brutal destruction of pre-colonial forms of manufacture and trade’ consequent on military defeat (Weiskel, 1988, p167). In the South African Cape, Merino sheep from Spain transformed grazing husbandry on the dry Karoo, and woo! was South Africas main export from1840 to 1930 (Beinart and Coates, 1995). COLONIALISM, RATIONALITY AND NATURE ‘The colonial period saw a distinctive pattern of engagement with natuse: & destructive, utlitaian and cornucopian view of the feasibility of yoking nature to economic gain. Where did these ideas come from? The bedrock of colonial ideas about nature was the European Enlightenment, and the fundamental Cartesian dualism between humans and nature. The idea that ‘man’ and narate were separate formed the world view of the pioneers of imperial wade, and of the annexation of the topics and the new worlds in Asia, the Americas and ‘Australasia. In his book Nature Gavernmen/ (2000), Richard Draycon traces the idea that knowledge of nature allows the best possible use of resources. This, idea emerged in medieval England (as an argument for the enclosure of common land), and was progressively exported to Ireland, tothe plantations of the New World, and then worldwide. Ie was the diving force of imperialism and colonialism, and of the universal ideology of developmentalism that dominated the 20th century as the age oF empire waned and died. Drayton argues thar these ideas about the ways in which nature might be governed shaped goverment both in the empire and in the UK. Colonialism, ‘control by one power overa dependent area or people’, can be seen as an outworking of bureaucratic rationalization (Murphy, 1994) Rationality has four dimensions. The first isthe development of science and technology: “the calculated, systematic expansion of the means to understand and manipulate nate’, and the sciensife worldview’ ‘belief in the mastery of nature and of humans though incensed cat nd technical know! (Murphy, 1994, p28). The second dimension of rasonalization isthe expansion of the capitalist economy (wich its rationally organized and, in eure, organizing ‘market; the third dimension is formal hierarchical organization (the cretion of exceutive government, translating socal action into rationally organized action, “The fourth s the elaboration of Formal legal system (o manage social conilict and promote the predictability and caleulabiliy of the consequences of social action) All these things were features of colonial states Nature and the clenial mind 23 Raymond Murphy argues that thought since the Enlightenment has been characterized by a radical uncoupling of the cultural and the social fom nature, that is, bythe assumption that reason has enabled humanity to escape from ature and remake it’ (1994, p12). The acquisition of colonies was accompanied by, and to an extent enabled by, « profound belief in the possibilty of festructuring nature and re-ordering it to serve human needs and deste Colonial enthusiasm forthe large-scale re-ordering of nature is seen most cleaty in the area of water resources. Mike Heffernan describes the plans of the French topographer and surveyor Elie Rouduite to flood the vat salt depressions of southern Tunisia, (named the Chorts) in the 19th century. He comments that European military and commercial expansion in Afiea and Asia during the 19th century was deven by technical selconfidence and “an slmoxt Jimiess ambition’ (1990, p94). ‘These lands seemed underdeveloped, ‘uamanaged and underexplited, and on the strength of the achievements of the Industrial Revolution, European futh in the power of science to contol and manipulate nature found a significant challenge. Roudaie conceived of project on a seale ‘designed consciously to convey the monolthe power and authority of European rule in Africa’ Heffeenaa, 1990, p10) The Chott ae vast salt pans that lie below sea level, and reach ftom very close to the Mediterranean coast fa into the Sahara. During the 1810s, Roudaire begen suiveys to investigate whether canals could be built flood them in order to reereate a vast inland sea (6700km? in area and up to 30m deep). Roudaire led vo survey expeditions He believed that Qooding would wansform the eimate of the area and provide a route for tade into the interior of Afaca “Fert, and lfe would rake the place of sterlity and death; the power of ivilzation would dive back the forces of fatal” (Helfernan, 1990. p103) Despite advocacy by Ferdinand de Lesseps (buer of the Suez Cana), the ‘anisan scheme was not implemented there were tchaical doubts about the canals the ste’ geology evaporation and (by 1879) about wether the area had ever been a sea at all. The theoreticians and intellectuals of the French seienine community were suspicious of ‘men of action’ such as Rousse and Lesseps. However, grand plans for the reorganization of water flows continued tobe a feature of colonial thinking, In Indi, colonial engineers annexed and extended ‘ast canal irrigation systems, creating tightly regulated bureaucratic worlds of agricultural production in seasonally arid lands In Austalia, colonial entrepreneurs promoted a similar vision of a desert in bloom: the Grand Victorian North-Western Canal Company proposed a 300m irrigation cana in north-western Vicora in 1871 Powel, 1997, In Egypt, «series of barrages and dams were built on the Lower Nile including the ongiaal Aswan Dann 1902. The ist echnical studies of the Upper Nile (ander the Anglo Egyptian Condominium of the Sudan) were caricd out in 1904, and through the 19206 and 1930s a series of further dams were added in the upper basin. In 1946, studies began on a grand canal to catry water past the Sudd wedands in the White Nile o yield water for iergstion in northern Sudan and Egypt anown ae the Equatorial Nile Project). The Jonglei Canal was finally begun (although 24 Decloniging Natare never finished) in the 1970s, by which time the Aswan High Dam had been completed, and there were also dams on the Niger, the Volta, the Zambezi and ‘many smaller rivers (Collins, 1990; Adams, 1992). At the hands of colonial ‘engineers, wild nature was brought under control, its power harnessed (literally, in the form of hydro-clecttic power) to serve the grand purposes of colonial development. NAMING AND CLASSIFYING NATURE ‘The classification of nature was a critical element in the rationalizing gaze of colonialism: the ‘othering’ of natuee in science, ar and society is ‘the ideological practice that enables us to plunder i’ (Kaez and Kirby, 1991, p265). Ia her honk Imperial Ess, Mary Pratt (1992) discusses the significance for imperial consciousness of the work of the Swedish taxonomist Linnaeus during the 18th century. The Linnacan system of classifying organisms not only drew upon biological collections from colonial explorers; it also ‘epitomized the continental, transnational aspirations of European science’ (Pratt, 1992, p25). Arguably, northern European taxonomic science (of which Linnaeus was the most famous practitioner) ~ the naming and classifying of unknown organisms ~ ‘created a ‘new kind of Eurocentred planetary consciousness” (Pratt, 1992, p39). More critically, taxonomy both represented and brought into being a new understanding of the world, one that had profound implications For human relations with nature, and with each other, Natural history “asserted an urben, lettered, male authority over the whole of the planet; it elaborated a rationalizing, extractive, dissociative understanding which overlaid functional, experiential relations among people, plants and animal’ (Pratt, 1992, p38). The scientific definition of species locked them into colonial patterns of global exploitation, New knowledge was a catalyst to intellectual enquiry and speculation in the colonial metropole; but it also stimulated imperial ambition, For Joseph Banks, for example, ‘new wonders bespoke not only new knowledge, but also, perhaps primarily, new economic and spiritual opportunities’ (Miller, 1996, p3) Colonial scientific discourses about nature drew on pre-existing views of nature in the colonial periphery (Pratt, 1992; Grove, 1995), taking possession, institutionalizing and re-exporting them to the colonized world (Loomba, 1998). Colonialism promoted the naming and classification of both people and places, as well as nature, in each case with the aim of control. Landscapes were renamed, and these names were entrenched through mapping and the formal ‘education system. Linda Tuhiwai Smith comments that ‘renaming the landscape vwas probably as powerful ideologically as changing the land? (Smith, 1999, p51) Colonial states occupied human landscapes whose nature, names and boundaries were to them indistinct; but they conceptualized them as specific ‘entities, with ethnicities ‘constructed in their imagination on the model of a Dargain-basement nation state’ (Bayart, 1993, p51). To achieve these ‘specific Nature andthe colonial mind 25 cate he clo sar sd scien and bureaus pow inching cod seenent and eset), conto of migaory morons aan ea of ened trough ih ceria and enn cade eaters of indigenous peopl to dence servations Re Banco ee precipitation of ene iene becomes eompichense renee from colonel Bayar, 195 pS, James Scot argues in Sen Lk Sta that iy and simpleton were cet vo the work of hutesueacy nthe modern sae Te ben language, gl course urban design, population cenas sedan eee ‘tbls wook exeeprnal comple, egies ioe eeu acces excatd anda gid whereby cold be cemaly econ ed nena (1985, p2). This social simplification was scompaned oie oe rates. Smplifenton allowel "sh doe of shemane aoc tod mana’ (pt). Som detox the ocolmieaie eee Pa and Saxony during the 1th cenucy This vas develope ead oe colonia rule or example Ind) and pred in pores ee fae ia many counties though the 2th cntary bee, cea Fake Leach, 1998). . heh ears ‘The th century sw a sted expansion in cen exloaton ofthe ling word This ook pace under the wing of clon sdsenceren incising it served elo purposes Ecologou cael ee a isboundines prong eegonts ovis etceiecspintee tee en aeitues to nature strongly rete! the progrenne es et ccna controled or wiseuse whch developed nthe USitthe ender Oe Dak en unde Presiden Theodore Rooxeel andthe aminsatn Gord Pena, Hay, 1959.The paren of scene nove of mcs tea ee atthe merpol so htt vale cold be avec and sed oe the second half of the 20th century. Robin (997) eocemcn taee International Biologia Programme taste las pros eed ees z

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