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The East India Company and the Natural World

  • Book
  • © 2015

Overview

Editors:
  1. Vinita Damodaran

    1. Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, UK

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Anna Winterbottom

    1. Department of History, University of Sussex, UK

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. Alan Lester

    1. University of Sussex, UK

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History (PSWEH)

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Table of contents (13 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xix
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  2. Introduction: New Imperial and Environmental Histories of the Indian Ocean

    • Alan Lester
    Pages 1-15

  3. Botanical Explorations and the East India Company: Revisiting ‘Plant Colonialism’

    • Deepak Kumar
    Pages 16-34

  4. Medicine and Botany in the Making of Madras, 1680–1720

    • Anna Winterbottom
    Pages 35-57

  5. Robert Wight and his European Botanical Collaborators

    • H. J. Noltie
    Pages 58-79

  6. The East India Company, Famine and Ecological Conditions in Eighteenth-Century Bengal

    • Vinita Damodaran
    Pages 80-101

  7. Colonial Private Diaries and their Potential for Reconstructing Historical Climate in Bombay, 1799–1828

    • George Adamson
    Pages 102-127

  8. Mischievous Rivers and Evil Shoals: The English East India Company and the Colonial Resource Regime

    • Rohan D’Souza
    Pages 128-146

  9. The Rafflesia in the Natural and Imperial Imagination of the East India Company in Southeast Asia

    • Timothy P. Barnard
    Pages 147-166

  10. ‘A proper set of views’: The British East India Company and the Eighteenth-Century Visualization of South-East Asia

    • Geoff Quilley
    Pages 167-192

  11. Unlikely Partners: Malay-Indonesian Medicine and European Plant Science

    • Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells
    Pages 193-218

  12. Plants, Animals and Environmental Transformation: Indian-New Zealand Biological and Landscape Connections, 1830s–1890s

    • James Beattie
    Pages 219-248

  13. St Helena as a Microcosm of the East India Company World

    • A. T. Grove
    Pages 249-269

  14. Afterword

    • Vinita Damodaran
    Pages 270-271

  15. Back Matter

    Pages 272-297
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Keywords

About this book

This book is the first to explore the deep and lasting impacts of the largest colonial trading company, the British East India Company on the natural environment. The contributors – drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines - illuminate the relationship between colonial capital and the changing environment between 1600 and 1857.

Reviews

“These essays present useful, interesting, and informative data gleaned from what is evidently exemplary research. … As valuable contributions to the continuum of interdisciplinary history, they deserve long-term appreciation.” (Arthur Macgregor, Archives of Natural History, Vol. 44 (1), April, 2017)

“These essays are uniformly strong, and this book is a timely and valuable collection. It is one more indication of the multidisciplinary possibilities entailed by environmental history. … This compendium provides us with a more nuanced view of empire, one that greatly expands our understanding of imperial histories.” (Christopher V. Hill, Environmental History, Vol. 21, April, 2016)

“This is a well-rounded and important collection that brings together scholars active in different sub-disciplines. … The East India Company and the Natural world is an important volume, useful for specialists and for the classroom… .” (Jayeeta Sharma, Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 51 (1), January, 2016)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, UK

    Vinita Damodaran

  • Department of History, University of Sussex, UK

    Anna Winterbottom

  • University of Sussex, UK

    Alan Lester

About the editors

George Adamson, King's College London, UK Timothy P. Barnard, National University of Singapore James Beattie, University of Waikato, New Zealand A.T. Grove, independent scholar, UK Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, National University of Singapore Deepak Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Henry Noltie, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK Rohan d'Souza, Shiv Nadar University, UK Geoff Quilley, University of Sussex, UK.

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