Author: Ramachandra Guha
David Arnold/
Editor: David Arnold & Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 376
ISBN/UPC (if available): 978-0-19-564075-5
Description
This volume brings together a set of pioneering essays in the environmental history of South Asia, written by some of the best-known historians of the subcontinent.
Environmental history, the study of changing human relations with the natural world, is a fast developing field of historical enquiry. In both ecological and cultural terms, South Asia is characterized by an unparalleled diversity. It thus offers unique possibilities for the environmental historian. Ecological degradation, and the social conflicts that have come in its wake, have further underlined the need for historical research in this field. This volume brings together a set of pioneering essays in the environmental history of South Asia, written by some of the best-known historians of the subcontinent.
Forest and water, the two natural resources perhaps most critical to the economic life of agrarian communities, figure in many of the essays. Other contributions deal with pastoralists and fisher folk, two important social groups neglected by historians; and with urban pollution, an environmental problem of enormous magnitude that has rather longer roots than is sometimes imagined. Some of the essays document the radical reshaping of resource use patterns under colonial rule; Others focus on the environment as contested space, the site of conflict and confrontation.
The authoritative and original essays presented here will help firmly establish environmental history as one of the most exciting fields in south Asian history.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Themes and Issues in the
Environmental History of South Asia
DAVID ARNOLD AND RAMACHANDRA GUHA
I Forests, Pastoralists and Agrarian Society in
Mughal India
CHETAN SINGH
II Pastoralists in a Colonial World
NEELADRI BHATTACHARYA
III Whose Trees? Forest Practices and Local
Communities in Andhra, 1600-1922
ATLURI MURALI
IV British Attitudes Towards Shifting Cultivation
In Colonial South India: A Case Study of
South Canara District 1800-1920
JACQUES POUCHEPADASS
V Maps as Markers of Ecological Change: A Case
Study of the Nilgiri Hills of Southern India
R. PRABHAKAR AND MADHAV GADGIL
VI Small-Dam Systems of the Sahyadris
DAVID HARDIMAN
VII Models of the Hydraulic Environment:
Colonial Irrigation, State Power and
Community in the Indus Basin
DAVID GILMARTIN
VIII The Environmental Costs of Irrigation in
British India: Waterlogging, Salinity and Malaria
ELIZABETH WHITCOMBE
IX Inland Waters and Freshwater Fisheries;
Some Issues of Control, Access and
Conservation in Colonial India
PETER REEVES
X The Conquest of Smoke: Legislation and
Pollution in Colonial Calcutta
M.R. ANDERSON
XI The Conquest of Smoke: Legislation and
Pollution in Colonial Calcutta
M.R. ANDERSON
XII The Resurgence of Community Forest
Management in the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal
MARK POFFENBERGER
Index