Reforestation, landscape conservation, and the anxieties of empire in French colonial Algeria

American Historical Review

Volumn 113, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 341-362

  Ford, Caroline ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 46649107703     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.113.2.341     Document Type: Review

References (167)

1. For a discussion of recent literature on French colonialism, see Eric T. Jennings, "Visions and Representations of French Empire," Journal of Modern History 77, no. 3 (September 2005): 701-721.
2. Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, 1995);
3. Diana K. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa (Athens, Ohio, 2007);
4. David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha, eds., Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia (Delhi, 1995);
5. Arnold, The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856 (Delhi, 2005);
6. Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History (London, 1987).
7. William Beinart has also traced the origins of conservationism in South Africa from the eighteenth century on. Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment, 1770-1950 (Oxford, 2003).
8. For a discussion of indigenous responses, see Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Delhi, 1989);
9. and Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India (Delhi, 1999).
10. For British policies regarding colonial forests, see, for example, Dane Kennedy, Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley, Calif., 1996);
11. Ravi Rajan, "Imperial Environmentalism or Environmental Imperialism: European Forestry, Colonial Foresters and the Agendas of Forest Management in British India, 1800-1900," in Richard Grove, Vinita Damodaran, and Satpal Sangwan, eds., Nature and the Orient: The Environmental History of South and Southeast Asia (Delhi, 1998), 324-371;
12. and Richard Tucker, "Non-Timber Forest Products Policy in the Western Himalayas under British Rule," ibid., 459-483.
13. Initiatives in Algeria also differed from those undertaken in other parts of the French Empire. For Indochina, see Frédéric Thomas, Histoire du régime et des services forestiers français en Indochine de 1862 à 1945: Sociologie des sciences et des pratiques scientifiques coloniales en forêts tropicales (Hanoi, 1999);
14. and Thomas, "Ecologie et gestion forestière dans l'Indochine française," Revue française d'outre-mer 85, no. 139 (April-May 1998): 59-86.
15. For a discussion of pluralized colonialisms, see Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton, N.J., 1994);
16. Ann Laura Stoler, "Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 135;
17. and Eric T. Jennings, "From Indochine to Indochic: The Lang Bian/Dalat Palace Hotel and French Colonial Leisure, Power and Culture," Journal of Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (2003): 161-163.
18. In her excellent study of narratives of environmental decline in North Africa, Diana Davis tends, in contrast, to see French environmental policy as fundamentally the same in Algeria and the protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia as well as being chiefly determined by a single project, which was to expropriate land for commodity production. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, 165-166.
19. For stimulating new reflections on the varieties of European settler colonialism, see Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen, eds., Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies (London, 2005);
20. and for some recent essays on the environmental history of settler societies, see Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin, eds., Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Edinburgh, 1997).
21. Theodore S. Woolsey, French Forests and Forestry: Tunisia, Algeria, Corsica (New York, 1917), 47;
22. and Paul Boudy, Economie forestière Nord-Africaine, vol. 4: Description forestière de l'Algérie et de la Tunisie (Paris, 1955), 1.
23. See also Achille Fillias, Etat actuel de l'Algérie: Géographie physique et politique de l'Algérie - Dictionnaire géographique et historique de toutes les localités (Algiers, 1862);
24. Fillias, Notice sur les forêts de l'Algérie: Leur étendue, leurs essences, leurs produits (Algiers, 1878);
25. Henri Lefebvre, Les forêts de l'Algérie (Algiers-Mustapha, 1900);
26. Henri Marc, Notes sur les forêts de l'Algérie (Algiers, 1916);
27. and Marc, Notes sur les forêts de l'Algérie (new ed., Paris, 1930).
28. Charles-Robert Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France (1871-1919), 2 vols. (Paris, 1968), 1: 103-106;
29. David Prochaska, "Fire on the Mountain: Resisting Colonialism in Algeria," in Donald Crummey, ed., Banditry, Rebellion, and Social Protest in Africa (London, 1986), 230-235;
30. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, 28-32.
31. Paul Marès remarked in a publication associated with the universal exhibition in Paris in 1878 that "the natives have still kept, under our domination . . . the disastrous custom of setting fires." Marès, Histoire des progrès de l'agriculture en Algérie (Algiers, 1878), 13.
32. The 1827 code was not, however, finally legalized in Algeria until 1883. Prochaska, "Fire on the Mountain," 235. For a history of fire and environmental practices in Algeria, see Stephen J. Pyne, Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World (Seattle, 1997), 120-125.
33. For the "Guerre des Demoiselles," see Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).
34. An extensive literature was generated during this period on the probable cause of the fires, most of which was published in Algeria. See M. Ch. de Chabannes, Lettre sur les incendies périodiques des forêts en Algérie adressée à M. Le Baron G. Martineau des Chesnez (Algiers, 1866);
35. Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, Mésures à prendre à l'occasion des incendies des forêts: Rapport presenté à son excellence le gouverneur général de l'Algérie au nom de la commission de Conseil du gouvernement (Algiers, 1866).
36. J. Reynard, Restauration des forêts et des paturages du sud de l'Algérie (Province d'Alger) (Algiers, 1880);
37. Département de Constantine, Conseil Général, session d'octobre 1881, Incendies des forêts du département de Constantine (août 1881): Rapport de M. Treille (Constantine, 1881);
38. Réponse des conseillers généraux indigènes au rapport de M. Treille sur les incendies (Constantine, 1881);
39. Paulin Trolard, La cause des forêts de l'Algérie devant la réunion d'études algériennes (Paris, n.d.);
40. René Rousseau, Contribution à l'étude de la question forestière an Algérie (Algiers, 1931).
41. Rebattu, "Le régime forestier en Algérie," Bulletin de la réunion des études algériennes, March-April 1900, 57-63.
42. Dr. Trolard, La question forestière en Algérie et le programme de reboisement de gouvernement général (Algiers, 1885), 442. Trolard simplified the map of Algeria, claiming that there were only three zones -the Tell, the high plateau, and the desert. The Tell was home to sedentary farmers, whereas nomads inhabited the other two zones.
43. See Davis's extended and thorough discussion of how this narrative came to be constructed in Algeria from its conquest to the twentieth century in Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, esp. chaps. 3 and 4.
44. For the place of this Roman heritage in the French imagination, see Patricia M. E. Lorcin, "Rome and France in Africa: Recovering Colonial Algeria's Latin Past," French Historical Studies 25, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 295-327.
45. Nabila Oulebsir explores the French initiatives to save the archaeological vestiges of North Africa's Roman past as French patrimoine in Les usages du patrimoine: Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830-1930) (Paris, 2004).
46. See Diana K. Davis, "Desert 'Wastes' of the Maghreb: Desertification Narratives in French Colonial Environmental History of North Africa," Cultural Geographies 11, no. 4 (2004): 362.
47. A number of historians have debunked the "granary of Rome" myth. See Will D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912-1986 (Princeton, N.J., 1987);
48. B. D. Shaw, "Climate, Environment and History: The Case of Roman North Africa," in T. M. L. Wrigley, M. Ingram, and G. Farmer, eds., Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man (Cambridge, 1981), 379-403;
49. and G. Barker, "A Tale of Two Deserts: Contrasting Desertification Histories on Rome's Desert Frontiers," World Archeology 33, no. 1 (2002): 488-507.
50. See also Diana K. Davis, "Potential Forests: Degradation Narratives, Science, and Environmental Policy in Protectorate Morocco, 1912-56," Environmental History 10, no. 2 (2005): 211-238.
51. Ibn Khaldun, Les prolégomènes d'Ibn Khaldoun, trans. W. M. de Slane, 2 vols. (Paris, 1863-1865);
52. Ibn Khaldun, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique Septentrionale, trans. Baron de Slane, 4 vols. (Algiers, 1852-1856).
53. Also see Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldun: The Birth of History and the Past of the Third World (London, 1984).
54. Davis, "Desert 'Wastes' of the Maghreb," 370. Some have suggested that massive deforestation occurred worldwide during the nineteenth century, which coincided with the expansion of European empires. Richard P. Tucker and J. F. Richards, eds., Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth-Century World Economy (Durham, N.C., 1983).
55. Woolsey, French Forests and Forestry, 50.
56. Quoted in Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages, 29.
57. See André Fribourg, L'Afrique latine: Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie (Paris, 1922);
58. José Germain and Stéphane Faye, Le nouveau monde français: Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie (Paris, 1924);
59. Stéphane Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du nord, vol. 8: Jules César et l'Afrique: Fin des royaumes indigènes (Paris, 1928).
60. Prochaska, "Fire on the Mountain," 229-252.
61. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome, 166.
62. A. Becquerel, Traité élémentaire d'hygiène publique et privée, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1864), 307.
63. He drew on a work by his father, the physicist Antoine-César Becquerel, Des climats et de l'influence qu'exercent les sols boisés et non boisés (Paris, 1853),
64. which was also read by George Perkins Marsh for his work Man and Nature (1864; repr., Cambridge, Mass., 1965).
65. See Ilhem Saida, Mysticisme et désert (Manouba, 2006);
66. and Jean-Claude Vatin, "Désert construit et inventé, Sahara perdu ou retrouvée: Le jeu des imaginations," in Jean-Robert Henry et al., eds., Le Maghreb dans l'imaginaire français: La colonie, le désert, l'exil (Aix-en-Provence, 1985), 107-127.
67. For the impact of forests on moisture and climate during this period, see Caroline Ford, "Nature, Culture and Conservation in France and Her Colonies," Past & Present 183, no. 1 (May 2004): 173-198.
68. For the "theory of ruined landscapes" in the Mediterranean, see A. T. Grove and Oliver Rackham, The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History (New Haven, Conn., 2001), 8-9.
69. Alexis de Tocqueville took up the question of acclimatization in his "Second Report on Algeria," written in 1847. In Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery, ed. and trans. Jennifer Pitt (Baltimore, 2001), 176.
70. Trolard reiterated it in his Les forêts de l'Algérie et la colonisation (Algiers, 1890), 28.
71. Eric T. Jennings has demonstrated that it was no accident that the French developed a network of colonial spas in the empire, and that Vichy was a central metropolitan place to cure the colonial body exposed to the rigors of climate in France's colonies. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas (Durham, N.C., 2006).
72. See also Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600-1850 (New Delhi, 1999).
73. The relationship between climate, politics, and human nature was, of course, an old question, and one that Aristotle, Buffon, and Montesquieu addressed. Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley, Calif., 1967).
74. Michael Osborne suggests that acclimatization was "the essential science of colonization." Osborne, Nature, the Exotic, and the Science of French Colonialism (Bloomington, Ind., 1994), xiv.
75. Becquerel, Traité élémentaire d'hygiène publique et privée, 307.
76. Fillias, Etat actuel de l'Algérie, 13.
77. Ibid.; Becquerel, Traité élémentaire d'hygiène publique et privée, iii.
78. Paulin Trolard, L'Institut Pasteur d'Alger: Sa fondation, sa réorganisation, mon expulsion (Algiers, 1910). This work was published posthumously by his sons, who argued that Trolard's unjustified dismissal for allegedly distributing contaminated vaccines hastened his death.
79. Trolard was a prolific publicist and wrote, among other works, La forêt, conseil aux indigènes (Algiers, 1883);
80. La question forestière en Algérie: Les incendies forestiers en Algérie (Algiers, 1892);
81. Le testament d'un assimilateur (Algiers, 1901);
82. and La politique de la France en Algérie: Aux membres d Parlement (Algiers, 1897).
83. Anne Bergeret, "Discours et politiques forestières coloniales en Afrique et Madagascar," Revue française d'outre-mer 80, no. 298 (1993): 23-47.
84. Trolard, "Appel aux Algériensl" Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, January 15, 1882, 2.
85. M. Reynaud, in Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, May 15, 1882, 4.
86. Ibid., 91-92.
87. "Est-il possible de nier que l'occupation française marche à sa fin et à grand pas; et que l'on peut déjà fixer le moment où elle aura le sort de l'occupation romaine?" Trolard, "Appel aux Algériensl" 5. Trolard had his critics. The head of the Société de Climatologie in Alger, Oscar MacCarthy, questioned Trolard's reading of Roman history, arguing that the Roman Empire did not disappear as the result of droughts but because of political revolutions that forced the Romans out. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, December 15, 1886, 1186. He argued that Trolard presented Algeria in a "fantastical and exaggerated light" (1182).
88. MacCarthy, a Frenchman of Irish origin who had emigrated to Algeria as the leader of a group of eight hundred colonists in 1848, was a local savant and a formidable critic. Sanford H. Bederman, "Oscar MacCarthy, 1815-1894," in T. W. Freeman, ed., Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, 26 vols. (London, 1984), 8: 57-60.
89. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, December 15, 1886, 1182.
90. The geographer Onésime Reclus, who coined the term "francophonie" in the 1880s, saw the Italians and Spanish of North Africa as natural allies in the conquest of the African continent in Lâchons l'Asie, prenons l'Afrique: Où renaître? et comment durer? (Paris, 1904), but he curiously anticipated the future mixing of all races: "L'humanité future ne sera pas faite seulement de blonds et de bruns.
91. Qu'on le veuille ou non, tous les peuples se mêleront. " Reclus, L'Atlantide: Pays d'Atlas - Algérie, Maroc, Tunisie (Paris, 1918), 14. Reclus spent a considerable amount of time in North Africa, and reflected on the problem of colonial expansion in much of his work.
92. Reclus, Lâchons l'Asie, 73.
93. Quoted in Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (London, 1999), 198. Bertrand, who first came to Algeria in 1891 to assume a post at the lycée of Algiers, visited the Roman ruins of Tipasa in 1895 and declared that he had rediscovered ancestors who spoke his language and believed in his gods, so that he was no longer a "lost Rumi in an Islamic land" (200). Rumi was the term used by Arabs and Berbers to designate foreigners, especially Christians. It is derived from the Arabic rum, meaning land dominated by Rome. This designation survives among the native population of the Maghreb. In her study of collective memory in Tunisia, the ethnohistorian Jocelyne Dakhlia found that the people of the Jérid spoke of the Romans as the "ancient French" and explained that archaeologists and tourists came to North Africa in search of traces of their ancestors.
94. Dakhlia, L'oubli de la cité: La mémoire collective à l'épreuve du lignage dans le jérid tunisien (Paris, 1990), 56-57.
95. Lorcin, Imperial Identities, 200;
96. and Louis Bertrand, "Le centenaire du cardinal Lavigerie," in Bertrand, Devant l'Islam (Paris, 1926), 83.
97. "Habitée par les populations indigènes hostiles et quasi réfractaire à toute civilisation européene, l'Algérie présentera toujours une hetérogeneité ethnique qui ne s'accorde guère avec les aspirations de la France à l'égard de sa grande possession africaine." Paoli, "La question des étrangers en Algérie," Bulletin de la Réunion d'Etudes Algériennes, nos. 2-3 (February-March 1906): 93.
98. Trolard was skeptical about the new Latin race and preferred to encourage emigration from France, but the issue of climate was all-important for this project. Trolard, De la mentalité algérienne (à propos de la question des étrangers) (Blida, 1905), 17.
99. Albert Billiard, "Le péril étranger," Bulletin de la Réunion d'Etudes Algériennes, nos. 8-9 (October-November 1905): 270-273.
100. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, September 15, 1882, 184.
101. Prochaska, "Fire on the Mountain," 229-252;
102. Pyne, Vestal Fire, 120-125;
103. Grove and Rackham, The Nature of Mediterranean Europe, chap. 13.
104. Courrier de Bône, August 29, 1878, 3.
105. Centre des archives d'outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence [hereafter CAOM], ALG GGAP/128, Incendies en Algérie, années 1860, 1863, et 1865: Rapport de la Commission d'enquête nommée par l'Assemblée générale des concessionnaires de forêts de Chênes-Liège. Adoption du rapport et de ses conclusions (Paris, 1866), 29.
106. Ibid., 34.
107. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, January 15, 1892, 1920.
108. Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France, 1: 268.
109. For the development of the Kabyle Myth, see ibid., 267-292; and Lorcin, Imperial Identities, 2-6.
110. See also Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery, 171-172.
111. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York, 1976), 1: 95-96. Braudel based his observations on the work of Xavier de Planhol, a geographer and Islamologist who held a post at the Sorbonne.
112. See Planhol, "Caractères généraux de la vie montagnarde dans le Proche-Orient et dans l'Afrique du Nord," Annales de Géographie, no. 384 (1962): 113-129;
113. and Planhol, "Nomades et Pasteurs," pts. 1 and 2, Annales de l'Est 1 (1961): 291-310, 2 (1962): 295-318.
114. Braudel taught for several years in lycées in Algeria as a very young man and began his thesis on the Mediterranean, which Lucien Febvre hoped would focus on "La Méditerranée des Barbaresques," but which was later to become The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Braudel's experiences and interest in Algeria in his youth have hardly been explored.
115. See Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine, 325.
116. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, 96-97.
117. Ibid., 97.
118. J. Russell Smith, "The Desert's Edge," Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 47, no. 11 (1915): 813. This narrative-without the purple prose-persisted into the 1940s and 1950s in the North American academic community.
119. See, for example, A. N. Sherwin-White, "Geographical Factors in Roman Algeria," Journal of Roman Studies 34, pts. 1 and 2 (1944): 1-10;
120. and Rhoads Murphey, "The Decline of North Africa since the Roman Occupation: Climatic or Human?" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 41, no. 2 (1951): 116-132.
121. Smith, "The Desert's Edge," 813.
122. Robert Randau, Les algérienistes: Roman de la patrie algérienne (Paris, 1911), 310.
123. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, November 15, 1882, 204.
124. Ibid. The Société d'Acclimatation of Algeria gave Ollive a first class medal for his speech on reforestation. Bulletin de la Société du Reboisement de l'Algérie, September 15, 1883.
125. Trolard, "A Colony in Danger," Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, November 15, 1886, 1176.
126. Tocqueville, who visited Algeria twice, voiced similar views as early as 1841. See his "Travail sur l'Algérie," in Alexis de Tocqueville, Sur l'Algérie (Paris, 2003).
127. "L'Algérie sera colonisée entièrement, ou elle ne sera pas. L'Algérie doit etre peuplée presque entièrement de français, ou elle ne sera pas française. " P. Trolard, La colonisation et la question forestière (Algiers, 1891), 15.
128. Ibid., 18, 19.
129. Ibid., 80.
130. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, January 15, 1892, 1916.
131. Ibid., November 15, 1886, 1172-1173.
132. Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France, 1: 447-477.
133. Dr. Trolard, La question forestière algérienne devant le Sénat (Algiers, 1893), 57.
134. Quoted in Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France, 1: 456.
135. Letter, January 11, 1893, CAOM, ALG, GGA P/89.
136. Letter, June 13, 1893, ibid.
137. CAOM, ALG, GGA P/89.
138. Letter, September 2, 1908, CAOM, ALG, GGA P/91.
139. Letter, February 26, 1895, ibid., P/89.
140. Ibid. He also noted that one forest official himself kept thirty-five goats on forested land.
141. Ibid.
142. Ageron, Les algériens musulmans et la France, 1: 489-490.
143. Ibid., 491-493.
144. Rebattu, "Le régime forestier en Algérie," 59.
145. Woolsey, French Forests and Forestry, 50.
146. Ibid., 51-52.
147. Bulletin de la Ligue du Reboisement de l'Algérie, November 30, 1905, 111.
148. February 20, 1903, CAOM, ALG, GGA 5 O 14. Protests over the project began in 1896, and the matter was not closed until 1911.
149. Letter, Subprefect of Oran to Prefect, April 30, 1904, and Letter, Governor-General to Prefect of Oran, July 2, 1904, CAOM, ALG, GGA, 5 O 14.
150. Letter, Governor-General to Prefect of Oran, October 10, 1906, ibid.
151. Petition, October 15, 1911, ibid.
152. Letter, Governor-General to Direction des Forêts and Prefect of Oran, ibid.
153. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York, 1995), 18.
154. Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome. William Cronon makes a similar point with respect to the creation of national parks and wilderness areas in the United States.
155. Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," in Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, 1996), 79.
156. P. de Peyerimhoff, "Les 'parcs nationaux' de l'Algerie," in André Aubreville et al., Contribution à l'étude des réserves naturelles et des parcs nationaux (Paris, 1937), 132.
157. Ibid.
158. For colonial Algeria's "national parks," see Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, Service des Eaux et Forêts, Commissariat Général du Centenaire, Les parcs nationaux en Algérie (Algiers, 1930).
159. John H. Elliott, "Introduction: Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World," in Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Princeton, N.J., 1987), 9-10.
160. William Cronon makes a similar point and highlights the divergent perceptions of landscape among settlers in North America and Native Americans in the seventeenth century. Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983).
161. Cronon, Changes in the Land, xv.
162. Jennings has shown how the French sought out landscapes that resembled those in France as sites for colonial spas. Antsirabe, Madagascar's spa retreat, was admired for its "Frenchness" because of its physical resemblance to the Massif Central, for example. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers, 141.
163. Grove, Green Imperialism, 481.
164. Ibid. I borrow the term "violence of environmentalism" from Ajay Skaria, who explores the conflicts between the British and Dangis in western India. Skaria, Hybrid Histories, 192.
165. Fillias, Etat actuel de l'Algérie, 10. He also said that the climate of Algeria was analogous to that of the Midi in France (1).
166. Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, N.Y., 2004).
167. For "pluralized colonialisms," see Thomas, Colonialism's Culture, and Ann Laura Stoler, "Rethinking Colonial Categories," 135.