Scientific Forestry and the New Ecological Regime in Colonial India

Abstract: Most of the seminal writings on the Environmental History of Colonial and contemporary India have unfurled the mega and micro narratives of forestry in terms of social conflict or ecological enquiry. Forests have been represented as a contested landscape which exists either in harmony or in conflict with the human world. Forest as a socio-ecological domain has been brought to the forefront by the Indian Environmental historians altogether from a different dimension. They have informed how forest is spatially, materially and culturally distinct as source of food, fuel and material shelter. Such seminal discourses provide forest a place of prominence in the contemporary environmental debate. The present work examines the colonial notion of ‘conservation’ that shaped the forest management in British India during the 1850s. The idea of conservation was implemented through ‘scientific forestry’, a colonial narrative intricately linked to imperialist narratives emphasising progress and western superiority. It emphasised the preservation and a competent western management of the colony’s forests; however, it effectively converted the forests into valuable commodities, resulting in their systematic depletion. Keywords: Scientific Forestry, Colonial Forest Management, Continental Tradition, Environment, German School of Forestry