The El Dorado of Forestry: The Eucalyptus in India, South Africa, and Thailand, 1850–2000

International Review of Social History

Volumn 55, Issue S18, 2010, Pages 27-50

  Bennett, Brett M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY   (Australia)

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EID: 84928783044     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: 1469512X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020859010000489     Document Type: Article

References (135)

1. Historians are beginning to see the trend towards developmentalism as a more general feature of the modern world. See Kenneth Pomeranz, “Introduction”, in Edmund Burke III and Kenneth Pomeranz (eds), The Environment and World History (Berkeley, CA, 2008).
2. Donald Worster calls these new ecological patterns “agro-ecologies”; Donald Worster, “Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History”, Journal of American History, 76 (1990), pp. 1087–1106.
3. Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986).
4. In the second edition of Ecological Imperialism, Crosby cited the genus as the one example of species from the “Neo-Europes” that successfully spread and colonized Europe. This account places the ecological success of the tree in the context of its biological ability to flourish in a variety of locations and climates. See Prologue and p. 166.
5. For a discussion of the larger evolutionary history of Australia and its plants see Eric Rolls, “The Nature of Australia”, pp. 35–45
6. and Tim Flannery, “The Fate of Empire in Low- and High-Energy Ecosystems”, pp. 46–59
7. in Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds), Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Edinburgh, 1997).
8. Tom Griffiths, Forests of Ash: An Environmental History (Melbourne, 2001), pp. 32–87;
9. John Dargavel, Fashioning Australia's Forests (Melbourne, 1995), pp. 16–59.
10. For Mueller see A.M. Lucas, “Baron von Mueller: Protege Turned Patron”, in R.W. Home (ed.), Australian Science in the Making (Sydney, 1988), pp. 133–152.
11. For Maiden see Jodi Frawley, “Botanical Knowledges, Settling Australia: Sydney Botanical Gardens, 1896–1924” (unpublished Ph.D., University of Sydney, 2009).
12. See Robin Doughty, The Eucalyptus: A Natural and Commercial History of the Gum Tree (Baltimore, MD, 2000), pp. 24–59, 189–191.
13. Key works on botanical gardens include Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, CT, 2000);
14. Donal McCracken, Gardens of Empire (London, 1997);
15. and Lucile Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion (New York, 1979).
16. James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, Impressions of South Africa (New York, 1897), pp. 29–30.
17. See John Noble, History, Productions, and Resources of the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, 1886), p. 150.
18. Its first recorded entry into Natal was in 1846. See Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens, Kew), vol. 1900, no. 157/168 (1900), pp. 12–15.
19. Soon after, “[T]he growth of these exotics became a prominent feature in the Colony. Every farm had its plantation, which embraced numerous species”, pp. 13–14.
20. Richard Grove, “Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa 1820–1900”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 15
21. as cited in William Beinart and Peter Coates, Environment and History: The Taming of Nature in the USA and South Africa (London, 2002), p. 41.
22. This belief continued in some circles until the end of the nineteenth century. Missionaries hoped eucalypts would render Mashonaland healthy. See William Brown, On the South African Frontier: The Adventures and Observations of an American in Mashonaland and Matabeleland (New York, 1899), p. 309;
23. William Parr Greswell, Geography of Africa South of the Zambesi (Oxford, 1892), p. 363.
24. For the Transvaal, see M.A. Carey-Hobson, At Home in the Transvaal (Aberdeen, 1896), p. 51.
25. The South African forest research officer R.J. Poynton suggested in the 1950s that the E. globulus “was at one time perhaps the most ubiquitous exotic tree in South Africa”. See his Notes on Exotic Forest Trees in South Africa (Pretoria, 1957), p. 35.
26. For a description of how desiccationist narratives helped create forestry legislation and state control in South Africa, see Gregory Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 99–104;
27. William Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770–1950 (New York, 2003), pp. 95–98.
28. For a discussion of early conservation efforts in the Cape Colony, see Richard Grove, “Early Themes in African Conservation: The Cape in the Nineteenth Century”, in David Anderson and Richard Grove (eds), Conservation in Africa: Peoples, Policies and Practice (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 21–38;
29. Richard Grove, “Scotland in South Africa: John Croumbie Brown and the Roots of Settler Environmentalism”, in Griffiths and Robin, Ecology and Empire, pp. 139–153.
30. This process has been covered by a number of studies. For North Africa, see Diana Davis, Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa (Athens, OH, 2007);
31. for west Africa, see James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge, 1996);
32. for southern Africa, see Kate Showers, Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho (Athens, OH, 2005).
33. See the argument of Showers, Imperial Gullies.
34. Beinart, The Rise of Conservation, p. 96.
35. For a description of how “noble” eucalypts lined the farms of Natal, see Henry Brooks, Natal: A History and Description of the Colony (London, 1876), p. 278.
36. For example, see the romantic discussions of eucalypts and farming in Leonard Flemming, “The Romance of a New South African Farm”, Journal of the Royal African Society, 21 (1922), pp. 115–128, 123–124. Flemming said that on his farm alone he planted 40,000 trees.
37. See Brett Bennett, “‘Fit the Tree to the Climate’: Australian-South African Botanical Exchange and the Origins of the Climatic School of Silviculture in South Africa c. 1880–1950”, in “Creating an Indian Ocean Rim Ecosystem: Forestry, Science and the British World 1864–1963” (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 2010).
38. Thomas Sim, Tree Planting in Natal (Pietermaritzburg, 1905), pp. 139–140.
39. For a discussion of exotics in Natal see Harald Witt, “The Emergence of Privately Grown Industrial Tree Plantations”, in Stephen Dovers, Ruth Edgecombe, and Bill Guest (eds), South Africa's Environmental History: Cases and Comparisons (Athens, OH, 2002), pp. 90–112, 93.
40. Gertrude Rachel Hance, The Zulu Yesterday and To-day: Twenty-Nine Years in South Africa (London, 1916), p. 78.
41. Alice Balfour, Twelve Hundred Miles in a Wagon (London, 1895), p. 46.
42. By 1941, around half of all afforestation projects in the Union were in the Transvaal. See Division of Forestry Annual Report for the Year Ended 31st March, 1941 (Pretoria, 1941), p. 11.
43. Jacob Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei (Athens, OH, 2006).
44. Showers, Imperial Gullies, pp. 60–61.
45. D.E. Hutchins, Transvaal Forestry Report (Pretoria, 1903).
46. See Statutes of the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, 1913).
47. Poynton, Notes on Exotic Forest Trees in South Africa, p. 14.
48. R.N. Parker, Eucalyptus Trials in the Simla Hills (Calcutta, 1925), p. 1.
49. Hutchins, Transvaal Forestry Report, pp. 6–7.
50. Transvaal Forestry Report., p. 7.
51. See Jacob Tropp, “Roots and Rights in the Transkei: Colonialism, Natural Resources, and Social Change, 1880–1940” (unpublished Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 2002), pp. 326–328. I would like to thank Jacob Tropp for this citation.
52. Republic of South Africa Department of Forestry, Investigation of the Forest and Timber Industry of South Africa: Report on South Africa's Timber Resources, 1960 (Pretoria, 1964), p. 7.
53. Investigation of the Forest and Timber Industry of South Africa: Report on South Africa's Timber Resources. 1960., p. 27.
54. T. Fair and G. Maasdorp, “Swaziland”, in Harm de Blij and Esmond Martin (eds), African Perspectives: An Exchange of Essays on the Economic Geography of Nine African States (London, 1981), pp. 115–135, 120.
55. See Nancy Jacobs, Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge, 2003);
56. Timm Hoffman and Ally Ashwell, Nature Divided: Land Degradation in South Africa (Cape Town, 2001).
57. There is a vast literature on the commodification of the South African economy and society. See William Beinart and Saul Dubow (eds), Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth-Century South Africa (London, 2003).
58. The numbers of displaced people remain unknown owing to a lack of research. See Jacob Tropp's pioneering study of the forced removal of around 1,900 people in Gqogqora in the Tsolo District in the Transkei during the late 1950s and early 1960s; Jacob Tropp, “Displaced People, Replaced Narratives: Forest Conflicts and Historical Perspectives in the Tsolo District”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29 (2003), pp. 207–233.
59. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change, pp. 102–109.
60. Joseph Davy, “Transvaal”, South African Association for the Advancement of Science/Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif Vir Wetenskap (Johannesburg, 1904), p. 275.
61. Maryna Fraser (ed.), Johannesburg Pioneer Journals 1888–1909 (Cape Town, 1986), p. 80.
62. “Eucalyptus Screens as Fire Protection Belts”, Indian Forester, 31 (1905), p. 297.
63. Sim, Tree Planting in Natal, pp. 10–11.
64. R. Crawshay, “Basutoland and the Basuto”, The Geographical Journal, 21 (1903), pp. 645–655, 651.
65. See National Archives of South Africa Pretoria [hereafter, NASAP], CEN 151, E/5/3/10.
66. W.K. Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919–1950 (Cambridge, 1968), p. 411.
67. NASAP, FOR 336, A1054/7/18. See the final publication, Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Forests in Relation to Climate, Water Conservation and Erosion (Pretoria, 1935).
68. See, for example, the work of the forest researcher C.L. Wicht during the 1940s-1960s.
69. Sally Argent and Jeanette Loedolff, Discovering Indigenous Forests at Kirstenbosch (Cape Town, 1997), p. 8.
70. Robert Rotberg, Suffer the Future: Policy Choices in Southern Africa (Cambridge, MA, 1980), p. 124.
71. Ricardo Carrere and Larry Lohmann, Pulping the South: Industrial Tree Plantations and the World Paper Economy (London, 1996), p. 145.
72. Edward Waring, Pharmacopæia of India: Prepared Under the Authority of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council (London, 1868), p. 71.
73. See also the discussion of Lord Kerr's ideas by Surgeon-Major E. Morton in “Arboriculture in its Relation to Climate”, Indian Forester, 1 (1875), pp. 142–155.
74. See James Sykes Gamble, A Manual of Indian Timbers: An Account of the Structure, Growth, Distribution, and Qualities of Indian Woods (Calcutta, 1881), p. 189.
75. See Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1995)
76. for colonial forestry before 1860, and Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism for 1855 to the present.
77. For an overview of the capitalist policies of the British in India see P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688–2000 (London, 2001). State forestry, in many ways, arose as a reaction to gentleman capitalists.
78. See Gregory Barton and Brett Bennett, “Environmental Conservation and Deforestation in India 1855–1947: A Reconsideration”, Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, 38 (2008), pp. 83–104, 83–89.
79. Edward Balfour, The Timber Trees, Timber and Fancy Woods, as also, The Forests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (Madras, 1862), pp. 111, 179;
80. Hugh Cleghorn, Report upon the Forests of the Punjab and the Western Himalaya (Roorkee, 1864) p. 125;
81. W. Francis, The Nilgiris (Madras, 1908), pp. 201–221.
82. For official discussions of eucalyptus plantings in Madras in the mid to late nineteenth century see Report of the Conservator of Forests for the Official Year 1860–61 (Madras, 1861), p. 8;
83. Report of the Conservator of Forests for the Official Year 1862–63 (Madras, 1863), pp. 13, 25, 64–65;
84. Report of the Conservator of Forests for the Official Year 1865–66 (Madras, 1867), pp. 3, 7–8, 65–68;
85. Report of the Conservator of Forests for the Official Year 1868–69 (St George, 1870), p. 19;
86. Annual Administration Report of the Forest Department. Madras Presidency for the 12 Months Ending 30th June 1898 (Madras, 1899), p. 33.
87. W. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: The Nilgiris (Madras, 1908), pp. 215–216. This figure does not include private plantations and plantings, which were also extensive.
88. Annual Administration Report of the Forest Department 1898, p. 33. Anthropologists tended to view the growth of eucalypts around the regions where hill tribes lived with approbation.
89. J. Shortt, “An Account of the Tribes on the Neilgherries”, Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, 7 (1869), pp. 230–290, 234.
90. Francis, Madras District Gazetteers: The Nilgiris, p. 130.
91. Hugh Cleghorn, The Forests and Gardens of South India (London, 1861), p. 177;
92. Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Oxford, 1992), pp. 123–134.
93. Kativa Phillip, Civilizing Natures: Race, Resources and Modernity in Colonial South India (New Brunswick, NJ, 2003), pp. 95–96.
94. Deborah Sutton, Other Landscapes: Colonialism and the Predicament of Authority in Nineteenth-Century South India (Copenhagen, 2009), pp. 134–135.
95. Other Landscapes: Colonialism and the Predicament of Authority in Nineteenth-Century South India., pp. 94–96.
96. Other Landscapes: Colonialism and the Predicament of Authority in Nineteenth-Century South India., pp. 101–105.
97. Sutton, Other Landscapes, pp. 138–139.
98. Part of the criticism of eucalypts was that they “overgrew” in Ootacamund and dominated the landscape. See Edgar Thurston, The Madras Presidency with Mysore, Coorg and the Associated States (Cambridge, 1913), p. 266.
99. R.N. Parker, Eucalyptus in the Plains of North West India (Calcutta, 1925), pp. 4–5.
100. As cited in Gadgil and Guha, This Fissured Land, p. 194.
101. This Fissured Land., pp. 183–189.
102. The most prominent work published by the FAO in the 1950s was André Métro, Eucalypts for Planting (Rome, 1955). Australians also played a prominent role in increasing yields of eucalyptus in India.
103. See Doughty, The Eucalyptus, pp. 163, 133.
104. The Eucalyptus., p. 134.
105. Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (London, 1995), pp. 50–51.
106. S.J. George, B. Kumar, and G.R. Rajiv, “Nature of Secondary Succession in the Abandoned Eucalyptus Plantations of Neyyar (Kerala) in Peninsular India”, Journal of Tropical Forest Science, 5 (1993), pp. 372–386, 377.
107. Doughty, The Eucalyptus, p. 134.
108. Vandana Shiva, J. Bandyopadhyay, and N.D. Jayal, “Afforestation in India: Problems and Strategies”, Ambio, 14 (1985), pp. 329–333, 331.
109. In the 1980s, the Economic and Political Weekly hosted a number of articles debating the pros and cons of eucalyptus planting. For a sampling of these rich and spirited debates see Mahasveta Devi, “Eucalyptus: Why?”, 18 (6 August 1983), pp. 1379–1381;
110. V.J. Patel, “Rational Approach Towards Fuelwood Crisis in Rural India”, 20 (10 August 1985), pp. 1366–1368;
111. J. Bandyopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, “Eucalyptus in Rainfed Farm Forestry: Prescription for Desertification”, 20 (5 October 1985); pp. 1687–1688;
112. D.M. Chandrashekhar, B.V. Krishna Murti, and S.R. Ramaswamy, “Social Forestry in Karnataka: An Impact Analysis”, 22 (13 June 1987), pp. 935–941;
113. and Shyam Sunder and S. Parameswarappa, “Social Forestry and Eucalyptus”, 24 (7 January 1989), pp. 51–52.
114. For example, see the works of Jayanta Bandyopadhyay.
115. See Ramachandra Guha, “Chipko: Social History of an ‘Environmental’ Movement”, in idem, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Oxford, 1989), pp. 152–184.
116. See Gregory Barton and Brett M. Bennett, “Forestry as Foreign Policy: Anglo-Siamese Relations and the Origins of Britain's Informal Empire in the Teak Forests of Northern Siam, 1883–1925”, Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, 34 (2010), pp. 65–86. \
117. See also Peter Vandergeest and Nancy Peluso, “Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 1”, Environment and History, 12 (2006), pp. 31–64.
118. Doughty, The Eucalyptus, p. 190.
119. See James Ingram, Economic Change in Thailand (Stanford, CA, 1971).
120. Sukhum Thirawat, The Eucalypts for Tropical Climates: Based on Experiences Gained from the FAO Eucalyptus Study Tour in Australia 1952 (Bangkok, 1952), p. 1.
121. Sathit Wacharakitti, Pairote Pinyosorasak, and Prasong Sanguantham, Report on Forest Inventory of the Pilot Project Area for Development of Reforestation, Northeast Thailand (Bangkok, 1980), p. 12.
122. Forestry for Local Community Development, FAO Paper No. 7 (Rome, 1978), pp. 85–86.
123. For a discussion of “green capitalism” see Raymond Bryant and Sinéad Bailey, Third World Political Ecology (London, 1997), pp. 61–62.
124. See the report by Narinchai Patanapongsa, Resources and Constraints of Forestry in Thailand: Guidelines for the Establishment of Forestry Extension in the Royal Forest Department, Thailand (Bangkok, 1987).
125. Resources and Constraints of Forestry in Thailand: Guidelines for the Establishment of Forestry Extension in the Royal Forest Department, Thailand., p. 122.
126. Buddhists often spearheaded movements. See Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand (Honolulu, HI, 1997), pp. 245–247;
127. Amare Tegbaru, “Local Environmentalism in Northeast Thailand”, in Arne Kalland and Gerard Persoon (eds), Environmental Movements in Asia (Padstow, 1998), pp. 151–178.
128. See also Carrere and Lohmann, Pulping the South, pp. 235–238.
129. Carrere and Lohmann, Pulping the South, p. 237.
130. M. Patricia Marchak, Logging the Globe (Quebec City, 1995), pp. 223–225.
131. See also Andrew Walker's discussion of the relationship between forestry tenure and agricultural tenure in “Seeing Farmers for the Trees: Community Forestry and the Arborealisation of Agriculture in Northern Thailand”, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 45 (2004), pp. 311–324.
132. Wacharakitti et al., Report on Forest Inventory, p. 12.
133. This criticism is documented by Carrere and Lohmann, Pulping the South, pp. 231–235.
134. Keith Barney, “Re-encountering Resistance: Plantation Activism and Smallholder Production in Thailand and Sarawak, Malaysia”, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 45 (2004), pp. 325–339, 328–331.
135. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, p. 330.