The perception, valuation, and manipulation of human environments
all have their own layered histories. So Sumit Guha argues in this
sweeping examination of a pivotal five hundred years when
successive empires struggled to harness lands and peoples to their
agendas across Asia. Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400–1900
compares the practices of the Mughal and British Empires to
demonstrate how their fluctuating capacity for domination was
imbricated in the formation of environmental knowledge itself. The
establishment of imperial control transforms local knowledge of the
world into the aggregated information that reproduces centralized
power over it. That is the political ecology that reshapes entire
biomes. Animals and plants are translocated; human communities are
displaced or destroyed. Some species proliferate; others disappear.
But these state projects are overlaid upon the many local and
regional geographies made by sacred cosmologies and local sites,
pilgrimage routes and river fords, hot springs and fluctuating
aquifers, hunting ranges and nesting grounds, notable trees and
striking rocks. Guha uncovers these ecological histories by
scrutinizing little-used archival sources. His historically based
political ecology demonstrates how the biomes of a vast
subcontinent were changed by struggles to make and to resist
empire.
General
Imprint: |
University of Washington Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Culture, Place, and Nature |
Release date: |
July 2023 |
Authors: |
Sumit Guha
|
Series editors: |
K. Sivaramakrishnan
|
Foreword by: |
K. Sivaramakrishnan
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
268 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-295-75149-8 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-295-75149-5 |
Barcode: |
9780295751498 |
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