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The Rise of Conservation in South Africa - Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950 (Paperback)
Loot Price: R220
Discovery Miles 2 200
You Save: R17
(7%)
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The Rise of Conservation in South Africa - Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950 (Paperback)
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List price R237
Loot Price R220
Discovery Miles 2 200
You Save R17 (7%)
Expected to ship within 6 - 10 working days
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The Rise of Conservation in South Africa is an innovative
contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental
history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist
ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming
districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighboring eastern Cape
grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the
middle of the nineteenth century. The Cape, like Australia, became
a major exporter of wool. Vast numbers of sheep flooded its plains
and rapidly transformed its fragile natural pastures. Cattle also
remained vital for ox-wagon transport and internal markets.
Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the
early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds
was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state
intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion,
overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife
protection as the central preoccupations of South African
conservationists.
The book traces debates about environmental degradation in
successive eras of South African history. It offers a
reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of
aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states. It expands
the understanding of English-speaking South Africans and their role
both as farmers and as protagonists of conservationist ideas. The
book is also a contribution to the history of science, exploring
the way in which new scientific knowledge shaped environmental
understanding and formed a significant element in settler
intellectual life. It paints an evocative picture of the
post-conquest Karoo, analyzing the impact ofself-consciously
progressive farmers and officials in their attempts to secure
private property, curtail transhumance and kraaling, control animal
diseases, enhance water supplies, eradicate jackals, destroy alien
weeds such as the prickly pear, and combat drought. It concludes by
analyzing conservationist interventions in the African areas, and
discussing evidence for a stabilization of environmental conditions
over the longer term.
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