Environmental Knowledge Transfer from the Mountains of South Asia: Changes in the Landscape and Making of the Empire

• In Event: Ecological Imaginaries and the Making of Trans-regional Landscapes

Abstract

The paper figures on the British inroad to the mountains of South Asia that resulted in the reorganization of the existing landscape and how the resources from and to the mountainous spaces contributed to the global/colonial networks of environmental knowledge transfer from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Studies on knowledge transfer during the colonial era under various Europeans in the context of environmental history marked the emergence of many new institutions and societies as agents or models of imperial projects. The paper further examines the role of the Adivasi and non-tribal populations from the Western Ghats in this exchange of environmental knowledge that eventually contributed to the expansion of many European metropolitan societies and institutions. The Western Ghats are a mountain chain with tropical evergreen forests and home to various endemic faunal and floral species, including the lion-tailed macaque (Macaca Silenus), yellow vine (Coscinium Fenestratum), and others. It’s also home to hundreds of Adivasi communities, including Mannan, Muthuvan, Yeravas, Kanikkar, Cholainaikan, Todas, and Kotas, and one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world. I will also bring the non-human actors, including the floral and faunal world, to the discussion by looking at the forced relocation of non-human actors across the globe that occurred as part of imperial projects and will situate the significance of Western Ghats in the same networks. I will use South Asian and Colonial sources to have a shared understanding of the roles played by various actors.

Author

• Donal Thomas Thomas, State University of New York - Stony Brook / Stony Brook University