The essays collected in "Cultivating the Colonies" demonstrate how the relationship between colonial power and nature reveals the nature of power. Each essay explores how colonial governments translated ideas about the management of exotic nature and foreign people into practice, and how they literally "got their hands dirty" in the business of empire. The eleven essays include studies of animal husbandry in the Philippines, farming in Indochina, and indigenous medicine in India. They are global in scope, ranging from the Russian North to Mozambique, examining the consequences of colonialism on nature, including its impact on animals, fisheries, farmlands, medical practices, and even the diets of indigenous people. "Cultivating the Colonies "establishes beyond all possible doubt the importance of the environment as a locus for studying the power of the colonial state.

Encountering foreign places, peoples, objects and ideas is not a new phenomenon, although it has become a growing part of modern life. Throughout the ages people have travelled the globe and encountered foreign worlds. In these encounters, they had to adapt to new physical and mental environments, but in the process of dealing with the foreign they transformed both the environments and themselves. Familiar daily home life has also long been marked by, and is increasingly filled with, signs and images of the foreign world abroad. The papers in this session investigate how people of the Nordic countries have interacted with, experienced, and handled foreign things and people either abroad or at home from the 18th century till today. They deal with different aspects of foreignness, but focus especially on how people encounter, perceive and create foreignness. The four main themes are the consumption of foreignness, how foreignness is exhibited, the role of science and travels in creating foreignness, and finally how foreignness is handled and plays a part in the cultural encounter of mission and aid-work.