EARLY
CONSERVATION HISTORIES IN BENGAL AND BRITISH INDIA :
1875-1922
Brett M Bennett*
Conservation history: Isn’t that American?
Where and
when did conservation history first originate? The field of conservation
history supposedly began first in the United States as a reaction to the
nascent American conservation movement in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. But problems exist within this
primarily American-centric historiographical structure. Many Americans who
advocated a patriotic paradigm of conservation history, with the unquestioned
presupposition that the United States was its intellectual epicenter, failed to
seriously consider the broader international conservation movement for the
later part of the nineteenth century. By looking too narrowly at a few United
States activists and writers, American
conservation/environmental historians from the 1950’s to the 1980’s failed to
acknowledge international conservation efforts. Now, scholarship places
conservationism first as a British imperial creation, before it spread to
British Australia, Africa, and Canada and
the United States. These recent imperial histories have direct bearing on the
true origins of conservation history.
The origins of conservation history were originally placed in the
United States. Frederick Jackson Turner’s ‘frontier’ thesis unintentionally
deterred global perspectives in the field conservation history.[1] This comes
as no surprise because most conservation historians were American, and
specifically, Western American historians. Turner’s leitmotif led many
conservation historians to examine the edges the ‘frontier’ and ‘wilderness’ of
civilization and its impact on the formation American society. Yet historians
who disagreed with the Turner thesis did not look outside the United States
either. They attempted to disprove the theory by using other American sources
and narratives.[2]
American conservation historians never discovered any international origins
because they rarely wrote histories focused outside of the United States.
By the early 1990’s, environmental historians slowly acknowledged that
international conservation efforts in British India, Germany, and France also
constituted the blueprint for later American models.[3] Gregory
Barton’s seminal history, Empire Forestry
and the Origins of Environmentalism traced the beginning of America’s
conservation movement to nineteenth century forestry efforts in colonial India.[4] The book
followed forestry and conservation thought in British India from the early nineteenth
century until it became the model for forestry departments around the world in
Australia, Africa, Canada, and the United States. By 1936, British foresters
using this Indian model managed 10% of the earth’s surface. This study shows
how enlightenment ideals combined with romanticism in a British imperial
context to create modern forestry legislation, organization, implementation,
and (most importantly) justification. Barton’s book placed conservationism into
its current international context.
Key figures in the history of the conservation movement in the United
States—Franklin B. Hough, Charles Sprague Sargent, Bernard Fernow and Gifford
Pinchot are now fit in the international framework that inspired them. These
men helped set up and preserve forest reserves based upon scientific principles
to protect the vast American forests from private development and massive
deforestation. While independent social and economic factors encouraged
conservation legislation in the United States, the ideas, rationale,
legislative format, and institutional practice of conservation were openly
borrowed wholesale from empire foresters teaching at European schools. American
foresters learned the general model of forestry from abroad, and then applied
it to the particular needs of North American forests.[5]
Clarifying the origins of conservationism also clarifies the origin of
conservation history. If conservationism started in an international and
imperial context, did conservation history also begin in this same imperial
milieu? The answer is yes, conservation history occurred first in colonial
British India. Early conservation histories developed first in British India
for a simple reason: India was the first country with a full-fledged
conservation movement, and the officials who ran the world’s first modern
forestry department needed—indeed, depended upon—forest history to make
informed empirical decisions and to construct historical narratives to justify
the control of native forests.
The First Conservation Histories
Early forestry histories were essentially a history of the Indian
conservation movement, its leaders, advocates, and its chronological
development. The first systematic protective organization and sustained
large-scale forestry legislation started in British India in 1864 and 1865,
respectively, ten years before the Indian
Forester’s first printing. By this time, India already had a tentative
legislative pattern for forestry over twenty years old, along with established
forestry officials and officerships seventy years old, and a large
state-controlled reserve system. The head start foresters in India had on
United States forestry programs helped to foster the first conservation
histories in India before conservationists in the U.S. had a movement to write about.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Berthod Ribbentrop’s book Forestry in British India clearly laid
out the first cohesive conservation history. E.P. Stebbing continued on
Ribbentrop’s book with his History of the
Indian Forests in 1922.
In 1872 an India-wide forestry conference led by Baden Powell
commissioned a ‘Forest Magazine’ publishing materials that were ‘generally
interesting…not confining it…to technical forest matters.’[6] The
magazine was named the Indian Forester, [7] and it was published first in 1875
in Calcutta, the center of trade and communications in Bengal and the capital
of British India. For conservationists such as Powell to keep legal control of
India’s forests, they needed the voice of the IF to advance historical and scientific claims in clear, simple
prose. The history of early empire forestry projects within the pages of the IF made a didactic impression upon its
readers and helped justify British control of native Indian lands. IF history articles portrayed forestry
as a newly discovered social benefit bestowed upon India from benevolent
British colonial elites. This historical representation of the conservation
movement solidified the popularity of conservationism in urban India, Britain,
and the other colonies around the British Empire.
In addition to the IF,
Berthod Ribbentrop, the Inspector General of Forests in India from 1884-1889,
wrote the first comprehensive conservation history, Forestry in British India in 1900.[8] His book
outlined the early history of India’s forests, the infancy of conservation
efforts in Bengal, and finally the successful implementation of large-scale
forestry measures. Ribbentrop also wrote abundantly
within the pages of the IF. E.P.
Stebbing’s book, History of the Forests
of India, written in 1922, expanded on Berthold Ribbentrop’s theme of the
Indian forests.[9]
Like Ribbentrop, Stebbing’s book presented an early forest history that traced
the origins of conservation thought in India from the multiple Euro-Asian invasions in India until Dalhousie’s informal forest charter
in 1855, and then followed current events and politics of the Indian
conservation movement.
IF articles trace forest conservation efforts back to
Bengal during the eighteenth century tracing the formation of teak reservations
and botanical gardens. One IF article
explained how Colonel Kyd first conceived of the Royal Botanical Gardens in
1786 as not only a garden but as a plantation where the British and East Indian
Company Navies could easily access timber. The article illustrated the
difficulty Colonel Kyd faced when he attempted to grow teak trees in the hot,
humid Calcutta climate. The article argued that this early form of imperial
forestry failed due to Colonel Kyd’s ignorance of proper forestry technique.[10]
Teak trees were valuable to the British Navy, which relied upon foreign
lumber to build ships. America’s separation from the British Empire took away
once easily accessible East-coast hardwood forests. Concurrent with Britain’s loss
of American forests, the oak forests of Britain that had provided the Royal
Navy wood for centuries continued to dwindle due to chronic over use. The wood
shortages in mainland Britain, coupled with the America’s new economic
independence, forced Britain to maximize lumber yields in the colonies.[11] This is
one factor that drove early conservation attempts in India.
In 1799, a Bengal-Bombay joint commission sent an inquiry to find the
amount of available teak in India’s forests. Ribbentrop wrote that, ‘The
growing demand for teak timber was one of the matters which received early
attention.’ [12]
This early attention led to India’s first formal conservationism act. After the
inquiry, which signaled possible shortages, the commission prohibited the
cutting of teak trees with girths less than 21 inches in circumference to
protect the smaller trees from over cutting. British elites in India enacted
the first of many conservation laws with this ruling.
Six years later, in 1805, under pressure from the Napoleonic war, the
directors of the East India Company commissioned a report to determine the
amount of available teak in India to offset the acute shortage of trees in
Britain. The new dispatch from the court of directors in England prompted
Indian colonial leaders in Bengal and Bombay to enact more stringent forestry
legislation. In response to the timber inquiry, the Bengal-Bombay commission
created a forestry committee to investigate the possible yields and limits of
the Indian forests. Ribbentrop wrote, ‘This enquiry resulted in the immediate
appointment of a forest committee, charged with a comprehensive programme of
enquiry regarding…the forests…[and] the status of
proprietary rights in them.’[13]
The report cast a pall on the future economic strength and long-term
production of the forests of India. These reports, ‘… showed that the capacity
of the forests in mature timber had been over-rated, that the nearer forests
had been almost cut out…’[14] Due to the
alarming rate of forest loss, the enquiry appointed a forest officer to
regulate, improve, and preserve the remaining tree species necessary for
shipbuilding, and on November 10th, 1806, Dr. Watson was selected as
the first Conservator of Forests in India.[15]
Watson received what Ribbentrop called, ‘…great power given to him
under the proclamation of April 1807, which was to say the least, somewhat
vague both as regards to scope and extent of interference contemplated…’[16] With these
‘great powers,’ Watson implemented laws restricting local access to forests,
tightly regulating private timber businesses and companies, thus guaranteeing a
plentiful, inexpensive supply of lumber to the British and East India Company
Navies. During Watson’s tenure, the British government received a steady, cheap
supply of lumber. Poor successors and lackadaisical government oversight
allowed the position to decline in the 1820s. Timber merchants called for an
end to the monopoly, and Sir Thomas Munro, governor of Madras, sided with these
proprietors and ended the conservatorship. Laissez-faire
principles now ruled again in India. Formal conservation polices were placed on
hold until economic and scientific pressure prompted forestry regulations.
While the British in India prompted committees, and even logging laws,
these positive measures were outnumbered by innumerous negative over cuts,
burns and mismanagement of the forests. One history article in the IF article lamented, ‘The watchword of
the day was to increase the rate of cultivation at the cost of still existing
forests… Naturally, incalculable harm was done by such inconsiderate
destruction of forests…’[17] Often, the
IF criticized the history of former
British policy makers and their pyrrhic conservation measures. These histories
lamented that the early efforts simply could not control large tracts of land
effectively. Over-grazing, heavy logging, manmade and natural fire destruction
across India all took a devastating toll on the forests. The introduction of
railways continued the deforestation at an accelerated pace. ‘Railways soon spread
over the country, and forest growth disappeared with an incredibly
rapidity…partly on account of the direct demands which were frequently supplied
in a wasteful and reckless manner…’[18]
Ribbentrop cited Nathaniel Wallich, the Director of Calcutta
Botanical Garden in Bengal, as an early forest activist who understood the
economic value of Indian forests, and labored to protect them using a
systematic method. Wallich warned that the forests in India were limited
resources that needed protection with general laws banning cuts in conjunction
with vigorous replanting, fire-protection, and removal of ‘inferior’ tree
species schemes. Ribbentrop quotes Wallich,
Unless the principal be acted
upon from the very outset…I will venture to predict that private enterprise
will very soon render fruitless all endeavors to perpetuate the supplies for
the public services, and one of the principal and most certain sources of
revenue of this Province will thus be irrevocably lost.[19]
However, his plans to protect teak forests failed to protect India’s
forests. Instead of limiting tree cuts, his plan involved cutting down all
full-size teak trees. He proposed his plan, ‘in order to speedily realize a
large consignment of valuable timber and to afford room for supplying fresh additions
to the number of trees in the forest.’[20] This
policy allowed speculators to plunder vast reserves and pay minimal duties to
harvest as many trees as they could fell. Wallich’s plan failed to alleviate
industrial needs and local pressures on the forests. In 1823, the
conservatorship was repealed due to ineffectiveness.
The IF, along with the
historical works of Ribbentrop and Stebbing described the then nascent
conservation movement as an economic reaction to the continual felling of
forests. But after delineating these initial forestry efforts, these authors
proceeded to portray the influence of new scientific theories on the next stage
in forestry conservationism—large-scale forestry projects overseen by
scientists who were specialized in forestry methods and nineteenth century
climate theories. India provided the testing ground for new silvicultural
methods, empirical models of nature, and replanting schemes. Many Indian
histories focused on the individuals who pioneered scientific forestry methods
in India. These individuals generated the intellectual framework for the Indian
model of conservationism that later spread around the world.
Ribbentrop credited three men for helping develop scientific
forestry: Bishop Herber, Ronald Martin, and Dr. Helfer. Bishop Herber in 1824
pointed to the process of aridification that followed deforestation in the
Siwalik foothills. His ideas were just one of the many climate theories in
India in the nineteenth century. In 1836 Surgeon Ronald Martin in Calcutta
wrote a report that cited the need for cleaner water in Calcutta. One year
later, Dr. Helfer, proposed the creation of plantations because he, ‘…found a
great absence of young growth..,’ in the forests of India.[21] These
three men provided the three needed ingredients for conservationism. Herber
provided empirical evidence that humans damaged the forests, Helfer proposed a
scientifically sound method to replant the forests, and Martin propagated the
need for civic duty to take proper care of nature.
The dissemination of these scientific ideas throughout India prompted
formal conservation efforts to start again in 1842 under the guidance of
scientists. The Madras Board of Revenue reattempted forestry efforts in the
form of plantations, and they selected a revenue officer from Madras to
implement new plantation measures based upon scientific principles. They picked
the Collector of Malabar, Lieutenant Conolly, to head the new Nilambur teak
plantation.[22]
In addition to Conolly as the managerial leader, the former conservator
of the Calcutta Gardens, Dr. Gibson was chosen as the scientific director of
Nilambur. The IF believed this
represented a watershed mark for conservationism. For the first time in India,
a specially trained scientist managed a forestry scheme. Botanists such as
Gibson played a critical role in bringing modern science into forestry
management. As one IF article pointed
out, ‘No doubt many of the pioneers of Indian forestry were
botanists…’[23]
These botanists helped change the early conservation
movement from an economically driven to a scientifically driven leadership.
‘The dawn of forestry in India,’ occurred in 1852, Ribbentrop wrote,
when ‘the Province of Pegu was annexed.’[24] Lord
Dalhousie, the Governor General of India, annexed the Province of Pegu[25] and
forestry gained the legal precedence of ‘absolute property.’ The Timber forests
of Rangoon in southern Pegu had been under the royal authority of the Alompra
dynasty before British rule. Dalhousie, when he annexed Pegu, brought the
forests of the region under British control. With this act the British also
enacted effective forestry legislation. After the annexation of the Rangoon
forests, the rest of the Pegu forests were annexed with the same legal justification.
Dalhousie’s authoritarian-based forest policy stated, ‘all the forests are the
property of Government, and no general permission to cut timber therein will be
granted to anyone.’[26]
To protect the forests from misuse, the Indian government appointed Dr.
John McClelland as the superintendent of government property and assigned him
to, ‘mark the trees which may be bought and felled.’[27] As
McClelland began to study the composition of forests he realized the diverse
forest composition needed for teak trees. He estimated that teaks did not grow
in large monoforests but were, ‘confined to certain localities of small extent
where it constitutes the prevailing tree for a few hundred yards, seldom for a
mile continuously.’[28] McClelland
began to believe in the necessity of scientific management for the forests of India in order to protect
the forest diversity necessary for growing teak trees.
He also noted how the British Indian Government lost money with the
current forestry markets. Unscrupulous loggers cut teak trees for merchants in Rangoon, often with detrimental effects. McCelland believed the
destruction came from the fact that, ‘In Pegu there is no such class of
forester or
professional woodcutters, that is, persons who have been accustomed employment
or be in any way injurious affected by any alterations in the forest laws or
rules.’[29] Because
there was no professional class of foresters in Pegu, the loggers did not
differentiate between saplings and old growth trees, and they felled trees
without abandon. McCelland sent a letter to Dalhousie proposing to protect the
forests by setting up vast forest reserves controlled by the government.
Stebbing cites him as arguing, ‘If we fail in the comparatively simple duty of
preserving the old forests, we can scarcely hope to succeed in the most
difficult task of creating new ones.’[30]
Both Ribbentrop and Stebbing give
McClelland’s letter credit for setting the last stage of conservation in
motion: the development of the Indian Forestry Charter and the Forest Service
of India. Ribbentrop wrote, ‘This report evoked a memorable reply by the
Government of India, dated 3rd August 1855, in which Lord Dalhousie
laid down, for the first time, the outline of a permanent policy for forest
administration.’[31]
Stebbing believed Dalhousie’s informal policy for forest administration, which
outlined a permanent forest charter, later provided the foundation for the
conservation movement around the world.[32]
The letter inspired Dalhousie’s interest in forestry, and he soon
looked to Germany to find scientists to control the vast India forests
effectively. One IF article discussed
how Dalhousie went to ‘the University of Bonn, and there found the man [he]
…wanted in its Professor of Botany…Sir Dietrich Brandis, Ph.D.’[33] Dietrich
was appointed on January 1856 as the Superintendent of Forests in Pegu.
Ribbentrop believed that, ‘With this appointment, the dawn of scientific
forestry in India began.’[34]
Brandis became India’s first Inspector General of the
Forests in 1864. Ribbentrop wrote that Brandis,
… Introduced from the outset
principles of enumeration and organization of the working of the forests, which
still form the basis of our working plans, as well as the system of native
contractors…In fact he created a practical system for the working of the
forests under his charge. He also introduced measures for the protection and
improvement of the forests, and correctly foresaw that if the people of the
country could ever be brought to plant Teak in their shifting cultivation, this
would be likely to become the most efficient mode of artificially reproducing
the tree.[35]
The same year, Lord Dalhousie appointed Dr Hugh Cleghorn as chief
forest conservator of Madras. Dr. Cleghorn developed his original forest ideas,
‘…when marching about the sepoy regiment, [I] had seen…the waste caused by the Roomri cultivation under which the
peasants burned down the whole forest tracts to form fertile soil for their
crops.’[36] He
persuaded governmental authorities in southern India to adopt his plans, and
was then placed to work in the Madras forests. Cleghorn established a
systematic conservancy organization in Mysore and Madras that later became the
model for the Forest Service of India. In one IF article Brandis wrote that, ‘His long services from the first
organization of forest management in Madras…and in the Punjab…prepared the way
for the establishment of an efficient system of conservancy and working forests
of the provinces.’[37]
Between 1852, and 1864 conservancy crystallized into its modern form.
In 1864, Dietrich Brandi was appointed the first General Conservator of India,
head of the Forest Service of India. The IF, Stebbing, and Ribbentrop credited Dalhousie, Brandis, and
Cleghorn during this period, as the founders of the full-fledged conservation
movement in India. These men labored to protect the diversity and
quality of the Indian forests from over-felling and forest fires. From 1864 on,
the groundwork for the conservation movement had been laid, and it continued to
grow incrementally. Indian conservation histories note a few key dates in its
development.
In 1864, the Indian Government created the Forest
Service of India to monitor and protect the forests. The forest service
provided forest protection officers to the various provinces of India. IF articles described the Forest Service
of India as an organization that, ‘…surveyed forest resources…to supply to the
natives timber, firewood, bamboos, canes and other produces, and to the State
such articles of foreign demand as teak, sandalwood, and rubber…’ The forest
service expanded its reservations yearly, and by 1891 India had approximately
60,000 square miles marked and reserved. One IF predicted, ‘Every year this is being increased at an average
rate of 2,000 square miles…[eventually] yielding a
revenue of considerably more than a million sterling a year.’ [38] The
creation of the forest service marked one of the most important points in
Indian conservation history. By 1864, scientific foresters in India were able
to manage the forest, and protect the valuable trees from degradation. This
organization oversaw and implemented silvicultural, fire protection, and
replanting systems throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.
After the forest service started to manage the
forests of India, legislation became necessary to define the rights of natives.
Ten years after Dalhousie’s informal forest policy, the Indian Forest Act was
passed in 1865 to create the legal framework necessary for the forest service
to operate. This bill was continually promogulated by local rules in Burma, the
Central Provinces and Rawalpindi in 1865, and Bengal, Coorg, Oudh, Berar and
the North-Western Provinces between 1866-1869.
However, this act did not give enough legal scope for British Burma within act
VII of 1865, and a new act XIII of 1873, The Burma Timber Act, was instated.
Act XIII also had many flaws and eventually had to be repealed due to
ineffectiveness. This law drew criticism because it,
… drew no distinction between
the forests which required to be closely reserved…and those which merely needed
general control…It also provided no procedure for enquiring into and settling
the rights which it so vaguely saved…On control over private forests…it was
absolutely silent…Protection for government forests, so interlaced with private
ones as to be in chronic danger of plunder, there was none.[39]
In 1878, the Indian Forest Act VII was enacted, and it encompassed all
the provinces of British India, except Burma, Madras, and the Hazara District
in Ajmer, Berar, Baluchinstan, Coorg, and Punjab. The IF noted, ‘Even [with] this new Act, however, faults were and once
recognized and separate bills were passed for Burma and Madras in 1881 and 1882
respectably.’[40]
The same article described how the laws, ‘…provide for the formation of
Government reserves and the settlement rights within them; also for the
constitution of villager forests; and they contain forest police rules
necessary for the protection of Government forests and forest-produce.’[41]
These three acts allowed for the expansion of formal conservation
efforts in India. Ribbentrop wrote, ‘In 1889-90 there were 56,000 square miles
of Reserves and nearly 30,000 square miles of Protected
forests.’[42]
Each of these two types of forests, Protected, and Reserve forests were under
the jurisdiction of the Forest Service who managed, demarcated, and policed the
forests. By 1878, India had clearly delineated forest laws, precedents, and the
oversight of the forest service to uphold these laws. Indian forestry laws
allowed conservationism to flourish in colonial India and by the 1900s, 8
percent of the land in India was under the protected of the forest department.
British Indian conservation histories traced each of these steps from Bengal to
larger India.
Conservation History: from Colonial India to America
The spread of conservation ideals from imperial to democratic
governments in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century forced
conservation history, which began in India, to gradually move away from the
subcontinent to its modern home in America. The men who
wrote the first American conservation histories, Bernard Fernow and especially
Gifford Pinchot, patterned their conservationist beliefs from British India
foresters, and British Indian techniques and histories influenced the creation of America’s
conservation movement as well as conservation history.[43] These two
men provided the bridge between Indian conservation history and American
conservation history.
Gifford Pinchot, the man considered to be the mastermind behind
America’s national forest system, gleaned his forestry knowledge from Indian
foresters with Indian forestry literature in England, France, and Germany. At
Cooper’s Hill in England, the first and premier English forestry school,
Pinchot met with Wilhelm Schlich, the onetime Inspector General of Forests in
British India, who gave him his famous Manuel
of Forestry. After leaving England in 1889, Pinchot enrolled at L’Ecole Nationale Forestière, the elite French forestry school in Nancy. Nancy
forestry teachers trained, and were in many cases experienced, British Indian
foresters. When he left school at Nancy, Pinchot met with Dietrich Brandis and
a group of English forestry students and traveled throughout Europe studying
various methods of forestry on the continent. Brandis and Schlich’s Indian
experiences and histories profoundly influenced Pinchot’s forestry beliefs.
Pinchot never forgot his experiences, especially Brandis’s help. He wrote, ‘[I]
owe [Brandis] more than I can ever tell…After I came home I sent him news and many
questions about what he was doing and about what needed to be done in America…’[44] It was his mentor Brandis whom, ‘had made forestry to be
where there was none before,’ that could provide the intellectual, scientific,
and historical blueprint for American conservation.[45] During his trip he
continually immersed himself in British Indian forestry literature and upon his
return, he published an article ‘Forestry Abroad and Home’ that discussed Indian
conservationism, and the paper described historical accounts of forestry in
India as well as Europe.[46]
Bernard Fernow, the German born North American émigré, also brought
with him German forestry knowledge, much of which was honed from Germans who
went to British India. As the third chief of the U.S. Bureau of Forestry from 1886 to 1898, and the
founder and head of Cornell’s forestry school in 1898, he had a strong hand in shaping
both American conservation history and the conservation movement. He personally
knew both Brandis and Schlich, using Schlich’s fifth volume of Manual of Forestry, the standard
American forestry text at the turn of the century, as a textbook at Cornell.
Fernow’s conservation history book, A
Brief Primer on Forestry, paid attention to forestry around the world,
including India.[47]
In another of his books, Economics of
Forestry, which featured an extensive history of forestry around the world,
he recommended
reading Ribbentrop’s book Forestry in
British India as a history of Indian forestry when Ribbentrop’s book was
the only forest history book in the world, showing the continual progression of
conservation history.[48] In addition to writing a
number of forestry books, Fernow also created and edited the Forestry Quarterly and its printed successor, the Journal
of Forestry. The Journal of Forestry
became one of the most influential mouthpieces for conservation history and
environmental history in the mid and late twentieth century.
Fernow and Pinchot’s
aforementioned works, in addition to
Pinchot’s Breaking New Ground, constituted the earliest conservation and
forest histories in America. These histories were patterned off the writings of British Indian
conservationists such as Ribbentrop, and IF
articles. They are the continuation of Indian conservation history. As the American conservation
movement grew in popularity after the turn of the century, Fernow and Pinchot’s
histories became antiquated secondary sources and they were used more
frequently as original sources.
Conclusion
British
Indian conservation histories covered the growth of forestry from Bengal to
larger colonial India in a period a little over one hundred years. IF articles, Ribbentrop and
Stebbing’s histories helped disseminate the conservation movement to
other British colonies, the United States, and much of the world. Early
conservation historians wrote through ‘Victorian lenses’—they saw the world
with the rational enthusiasm of the enlightenment and they felt the evangelical
need to proselytize these beliefs through forestry. While the
moral beliefs of the first conservation historians differ wildly from that of
modern academics, these writers still produced the seminal works of
conservation history.
Conservationism and its ancillary conservation history were not always
ends themselves—they often justified imperial expansion. As scientific
knowledge accrued in India at forestry schools such as Dehra Dun and botanical
gardens in Calcutta, the continual push for knowledge forced British scientists
to continually gather more empirical evidence about the forests, climate, and
history of India. The build up of this empirical knowledge eventually led
imperial foresters to believe in the progress of their scientific forestry
methods. Modern environmentalists are not the first to believe they could
‘save’ the world. British conservators and
historians inculcated this belief in their students and British public through
conservation history. American foresters like Gifford Pinchot further
propagated this idea until modern environmentalism took the lead.
The first conservation histories were published in Calcutta in the nineteenth century. Americans inherited both the legislative pattern and rational for the conservation movement and conservation history from Bengal and greater colonial India. The examination of these histories should correct American-centric historiography. As scholars become cognizant of where conservationism first evolved, and the role that early conservation history played in the global spread of forestry ideas, rationale, and legislation, they will be enabled for the first time to place conservation history in its proper international perspective. In a global age that requires broad and comparative interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the past, the international context of conservationism and conservation history is long overdue.
* 1375 Aspen Court, Richmond,
Indiana, 47374, USA
[1] Frederick Jackson Turner,
‘The Significance of the frontier in American History,’ Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893,
Washington, D.C., 1894.
[2] See Martin Ridge, ‘The Life of an Idea: The
Significance of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis,’ Montana: The Magazine of Western History,
41, Winter 1991, pp. 2-13; Martin Ridge, ‘Turner the Historian: A Long Shadow,’
Journal of the Early Republic, Vol.
13, No. 2, Summer, 1993, pp. 133-144; William Cronon,
‘Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner,’ The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol.
18, No. 2, April 1987, pp. 157-176.
[3] Ben T. Twight, ‘Bernard Fernow and Prussian
Forestry in America,’ Journal of
Forestry, February, 1990.
[4] Gregory A. Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002, Gre.
[5] Gregory A. Barton, ‘Empire Forestry and
American Environmentalism,’ Environment
and History, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000, pp. 187-203.
[6] B.H Baden Powell and J.C Macdonell, Report of the Proceedings of a Conference
of Forest Officers Held at Lahore, January 2 and 3, 1872, Lahore, 1872, pp.
84-85.
[7] An abbreviated IF will be used instead of Indian
Forester for the duration of this paper.
[8] Berthold
Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India,
Calcutta, 1900.
[9] Edward Stebbing, The Forests of India, 4 Vols. Reprint, New Delhi, 1984.
[10] ‘The Beginnings of the Royal Botanical Gardens
at Calcutta,’ Indian Forester 11
(March 1894), pp. 481-482
[11] G. Albion, Forests
and Sea Power: the Timber Problem of the Royal Navy, 1652- 1862 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1926).
[12] Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, p. 10.
[13] Ibid, p. 10.
[14] Ibid., pp. 63, 69.
[15] Ibid., p. 69.
[16] Ibid., p. 69.
[17] ‘Forest Conservancy in India,’ Indian Forester 19 (May, 1893), pp.
259-264
[18] Ibid., p. 261.
[19] Ribbentrop, The Forests of India, p. 72.
[20] Ibid., p. 72.
[21] Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, pp. 11-73.
[22] Ibid., p. 71.
[23] ‘Botany and the Indian Forest Department,’ The Indian Forester (1899), pp. 485- 488
[24] Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, p. 73.
[25] Burma, now named Myanmar.
[26] Stebbing, Forests of India, Vol. 1, p. 244.
[27] Ibid., p. 244.
[28] Ibid., p. 247.
[29] Ibid., p. 269.
[30] Ibid., p. 251.
[31] Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, p. 74.
[32] Stebbing, Forests of India, Vol. 1, p. 257.
[33] ‘The Indian Forest Service and its Founders,’ Indian Forester 19 (1893), pp. 73-77
[34] Ribbentrop, Forestry
in British India, p. 74.
[35] Ibid., p. 74.
[36] ‘The
Indian Forest Service and its Founders,’ Indian
Forester 19 (1893), pp. 73-77.
[37] Dietrich Brandis, ‘Pioneers
of Indian Forestry; Dr. Hugh Cleghorn’s Service to Indian Forestry,’ Indian Forester 31 (1905), pp. 227-234.
[38] Ibid., p. 75.
[39] Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, p. 98.
[40] ‘Forest Conservancy in India,’ Indian Forester 22 (1896), pp. 262-265.
[41] Ibid., p. 262.
[42] Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, p. 99.
[43] For a more thorough account of Indian influence
on United States forestry, see Gregory Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, pp. 130-143,
and, ‘Empire Forestry and American Environmentalism,’ Environment and History, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2000), pp. 187-203.
[44] Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1947),
p. 17.
[45] Ibid., p. 7.
[46] Gifford Pinchot, ‘Government Forestry Abroad,’ Publications of the American Economic
Association,, Vol. 6(3), May 1891, pp. 7-54.
[47] Bernard Fernow, A Brief Primer on Forestry, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1911).
[48] Bernard Fernow, Economics of Forestry, (New York: T.Y. Crowell & Co.,
1904), p. 279.