Empire forestry and the origins of environmentalism

When and where did the environmental movement begin? To understand how a public endued with the principles of laissez-faire reversed in such short order a century-old policy of government land disposal, this paper examines how public ownership of land came to be celebrated, with a newly defined professional corps of government foresters such as Dietrich Brandis and Gifford Pinchot feted as popular heroes. Hard-headed environmentalists and legislators found in empire forestry a ready-made model to construct vast areas of the public domain as a utensil for not only environmental but state purposes—industrial, settlement, and budgetary. The empire forestry matrix of government reservations, fire protection, and revenue-enhancing forests solved the tension between romantic preservationist notions and laissez-faire ideals and gave the compromise from which modern environmentalism emerged: it posed environmental problems and solutions as a means to construct the state. This article traces the international trail of modern environmentalism from India, under Lord Dalhousie's forest charter, to the British colonies in Africa and Australasia where it matured, and finally to Canada, the United States and other parts of the globe where environmentalism permanently entered the pantheon of democratic political creeds.     

Ithaca transfer

Historiography has never been considered as a source of Veblen's thought. This essay draws on previously unknown archival evidence regarding Veblen's experience at Cornell, where he asked to be enrolled as a Ph.D. student in ‘History and Political Science’ in 1891, to shed light on his relationship with both British and American institutional historiography. It is argued that Veblen's studies at this university, under the influence of local historians, is crucial to understanding his later work, particularly his theory of the leisure class, for two fundamental reasons: (1) Cornell was unique for its tendency to combine the study of history with that of politics and society at a time when historiography tended to emancipate itself from the social sciences; (2) Cornell was one of the main epicentres for the diffusion of British historiography in America. Veblen's theory of the leisure class, to which he devoted his first article at Cornell, is thus presented as the fruit of his effort to reassess the historiographical idea of evolution, against its applications by philosophers, by insisting on the importance of path-dependent mentalities and by differentiating the evolutionary pattern followed by political and social institutions, on the one hand, from economic institutions on the other.     

‘A belated return for Christ?’: the reception of Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History in a British context, 1934–1961

The negative reception of A Study of History at the hands of British historians has masked wider responses to the work in Britain which reflect major tensions within British society and wider attitudes towards the idea of civilisation, the British Empire and religion. The highly critical response to the work from the majority of professional historians reviewing the book is indicative of major debates within British history writing, including the role of empirical and idealist interpretations of history, and the increasingly academic and scholarly role of the historian. Toynbee's position as a public voice and a celebrity historian in the 1950s, whose approach to history eschewed constraints of period or region, represented antithesis to the expanding historical profession and scholarly research. Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History was a weathervane for contemporary cultural and intellectual concerns of the era.     

Imperialism and Internationalism in Early Australian International Relations: The Contribution of W. Harrison Moore

Depicted as an imperialist by historians, William Harrison Moore, law professor, initiator of international relations teaching in Australia, government expert and League of Nations delegate, is shown to have held a positive view of the role and potential of international institutions, a fact hitherto disregarded yet the key to his thought. He clearly regarded the Empire as making a valuable contribution to the society of states and to Australian interests, but also maintained that the creation of the League had transformed the international system especially in relation to security. In particular, he held that Australia derived undoubted advantages from League membership. Consequently, his internationalism must be seen as the wider context for his imperialist sentiments.     

Religion in an Age of Empire: The Salvation Army and British Imperialism, 1878–1914

Debates about the British Empire continue to rage, especially those concerned with its impact on domestic affairs during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The degree to which empire mattered to average Britons at home has tended to generate polarised responses from historians. Some have sought to downplay its overall significance, whereas others have been prone to argue that its effects on society were widespread. The present article speaks into this debate by examining one notable British organisation — the Salvation Army — which came into being in the second half of the nineteenth century. While a number of scholars have addressed the imperialist implications of Army work in the colonies, much less work has been done to scrutinise the empire's influence on Salvationists within Britain itself. Looking at three characteristics frequently associated with imperialist ideology — militarism, racial othering, and devotion to the monarchy — this article contends that the Salvation Army's relationship to the British Empire was remarkably dynamic and complex during the timeframe under review. Demonstrating that Salvationist thinking and practice could both help and hinder the aims of imperialism, it points to the need for more balanced and nuanced approaches to the study of the empire in the metropole.     

The Forgotten Menzies: Cultural Puritanism and Australian Social Thought

Recent debates on the social thought of Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, describe his career as a programme either to realise liberalism, conservatism, or liberal conservatism in Australian institutions and national identity. While these analyses have some merit, they fail to capture the historical context of Menzies' age, particularly the kind of Britishness for which he stood, a Britishness compatible with modes of liberalism and conservatism, but far more comprehensive than either of those traditions conceived narrowly as systematic ideologies. We contend that what Menzies was trying to do for much of his career was to reinvigorate what modern historians, and Menzies' contemporary social commentators, identified as a cultural puritan inflexion to British character. Once the nature of this cultural puritanism is understood, Menzies' political ideas, at least up until the Cold War, look less like attempts to promote liberalism or conservatism, and more as a project to reinvigorate a conception of Britishness that many during Menzies' time feared was in mortal danger by the forces of affluence, individualism, and socialism. We focus on his most well-known speech, “The Forgotten People” (1942), and analyse it in the context of many of his other writings, published and hitherto unpublished.     

Capitalism,Aristocracy and Empire: Some ‘Classical’ Theories of Imperialism Revisited

The recent revival of interest in the relationship between aristocratic and gentlemanly elites and the evolution of the British empire suggests the need for a revaluation of some of the ‘classical’ theorists of imperialism whom a number of prominent historians of British imperialism have acknowledged as important precursors. The major figures considered here are: Hobson, whose roots in British anti-aristocratic radicalism are being re-examined at present; Joseph Schumpeter whose early essay on imperialism is famous but whose later writings have received scarcely any attention at all; and Thorstein Veblen, the American social scientist. Arguably, the last produced a more complex and multi-layered theory of imperialism than either Hobson or Schumpeter but his work in this field is very little known in Britain. Norman Angell's ideas are also considered, not only because he had an influence upon some of Hobson's later writings but because he is a significant figure in his own right. The article ends with a few reflections on the present relevance of this strain of imperial thought.     

Shadow and Light: Louis-Xavier Eyma (1816–76) and French Opinion of the United States during the Second Empire

This article is a study of a neglected yet significant French writer on the United States, Louis-Xavier Eyma (1816–76). In the period of the Second Empire (1852–70), Eyma wrote more about the United States than any other author, and was recognised as a reliable and influential guide to US society. What makes his career particularly interesting is that his work defies any simple categorisation. Whilst elements of his writings smack of anti-Americanism, he wrote with admiration about many aspects of US democracy and society. At the same time, he did not belong to the group of liberal writers who, according to some scholars, used praise of the United States as a coded means of criticising repressive government at home. Eyma was a staunch monarchist who opposed the introduction of democracy in his native France. Eyma's career demonstrates the complexity of French attitudes towards the United States, and points towards the need for a comprehensive study of French writing about the United States in the period of the Second Empire.     

A Flawed Saint: The Popular Image of William Gladstone in the Australian Colonies

ABSTRACT

This article looks at the popular image of William Gladstone which gradually emerged and evolved in the Australian Colonies throughout the nineteenth century. By using a wide variety of newspaper sources and political speeches, the piece shows how Gladstone was extensively discussed and interpreted on the far side of the ‘British World’. It tracks the ups and downs of the turbulent relationship Gladstone had with the Australian Colonies over his long career, as he influenced Australian history both directly through the policies he implemented and indirectly as an inspiration for local politicians. It concludes that although Gladstone repeatedly aggravated Australian opinion both through his time at the Colonial Office and the ‘soft’ foreign policy he pursued as Prime Minister, his domestic popularity as a successful liberal and democratic figure was enough to make him a hero in colonial eyes. This conclusion shows how ‘British World’ popular sentiment was able to trump nominal local interests. This demonstrates not only the predominance of Britishness in Australian identity during this time period, but also how as a simultaneously separate yet intimately linked part of the Empire, Australians abstracted their own significance and meaning from domestic British politics.     

Forestry disputes in provincial France during the nineteenth century: the case of the Montagne de Lure

The nineteenth century in France marked the origins of modern forest management. Two important dates mark the advent of the organisation of forestry: first in 1824, the creation of the Forestry School in Nancy, and then in 1827 the adoption of a Forestry Code specifying to what extent forests were to submit to the forestry regime. Throughout the nineteenth century, forestry administration crystallised the resentment of village communities in the Montagne de Lure through the increasingly strict management of activities linked to the forest. During the 1800s almost all foresters, with a few exceptions, claimed they were the ones who knew the truth and represented collective interests against local populations that they judged to be ignorant and not very concerned with the future. The policy of Restoration of Mountain Terrain (RTM) that was put in place in the Montagne de Lure near the end of the nineteenth century marks the outcome of such a process. It reflects the power of the centralised body of forestry engineers over forest management in France and the decline of local communities, weakened by massive rural depopulation and by a succession of economic crises. Forest space therefore crystallises during these decades of dispute between local and central power.     

The “tribal spirit” in modern Britain: evolution,nationality, and race in the anthropology of Sir Arthur Keith

ABSTRACT

This article re-examines the anthropological scholarship of Sir Arthur Keith (1866–1955), who served as the president of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1914–1917), the Royal Anatomical Society (1918), and the British Association of the Advancement of Science (1927), who wrote prolifically on anatomy, evolution, and the idea of race. While most commonly associated with the Piltdown man hoax, Keith's contributions to the discipline were far greater and more complex. This essay specifically considers how Keith sought to problematize the concept of the nation, considering the nation-state as an evolutionary unit. The first half of this essay examines Keith's theories on the mechanism of evolution (hormonal instincts) and how this informed his ideas of races and nations as evolutionary units. The second half of the essay considers how Keith deployed his ideas about evolutionary instincts, with the goal of advising Britons about how an evolutionary perspective would help understand, if not resolve, modern political challenges, both international and domestic, that faced the British Empire around the time of the First World War.     

From colonialism to theology: encounters with Martin Wight's international thought

Martin Wight's writings range far more widely than those of most leading historians and theorists of International Relations. His thought escapes from the parochialism of particular academic disciplines and departments. It also escapes from the provincialism of the present, our preoccupation with immediate issues of foreign policy, which is a preoccupation with ourselves and our society. He grappled with some of the great questions of his era, from colonialism to nuclear war. But in doing that he tried to get beyond his time, by recalling other times when similar questions were current. The mark of a leading thinker and writer is the heavy weight of his thought on his readers. Martin Wight's writings left me with a number of ideas and suggestions the accumulative effect of which is the view I hold of International Relations.     

‘Dominion over palm and pine’: the British Empire forestry conferences, 1920–1947

During the first half of the twentieth century British imperialists invested ardent hopes in the emergence of a self-sufficient, competitive Empire. World War 1 focused some of those aspirations on the progressive management of forest resources, and in 1920 the UK launched a series of British Empire Forestry Conferences in pursuit of that aim. An uneven, intermittent exchange attempted to address the complexities of imperfectly understood cultural, economic, environmental, political, scientific, social and technical change, the pressure of extra-imperial influences, and the independent trajectories of ambitious settler Dominions. The Depression and World War 2 also entered the dynamic, severely testing the foresters' achievements and their resolve. From today's perspective the main products are a small window on the antecedents of modern forestry and the nucleus of a promising archive for interdisciplinary teaching and research.     

Grey and the Russian Threat to India, 1892–1915

ABSTRACT

As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Liberal Government from August 1892 to June 1895, Sir Edward Grey was exposed to the damage that an anti-British, Franco-Russian Alliance could do to the interests of the British Empire. The experience of those years left an enduring impression upon him. Between June 1895 and December 1905 Grey espoused the cause of agreement with the Russian Empire wherever possible. As Foreign Secretary, he advanced this cause through the Anglo-Russian Conventions of August 1907, whose objectives were to achieve what he described as ‘repose’ on the North West Frontier of India, and the reduction of Russian pressure on Persia in particular. So far as the outbreak of war in 1914 is concerned, Grey's known propensity to maintain good terms with Russia gave the latter a degree of leverage which they exploited to the full in insisting on British support in standing up to Germany and Austria-Hungary following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Grey's position within the Liberal Government, and his clear determination to resign unless Russian demands were met, swung the British government from a neutralist stance to one of full participation in the Great War.     

“An auxiliary,not an usurper”: John Saunders,Temperance, and Secularisation

In his influential account of the political history of early colonial Australia, Michael Roe identified the temperance movement of the 1830s–1840s as a pivotal factor in the secularisation of Australian culture and institutions. The belief system that drove the movement, he argued, was not traditional Christian doctrine but a “new faith” of “moral enlightenment.” In this article I test the validity of Roe's claim, drawing on the work of a more recent generation of historians and sociologists who have argued for more “porous” and “reciprocal” accounts of concepts such as reason, religion, the Enlightenment, and the secular. Its focus is on the writings and activities of John Saunders, whose endeavours on behalf of the temperance cause were such that he was described by his contemporaries as the “life and soul” of the society, the “father” of the movement, and the “apostle of temperance.” It examines the role played by key Enlightenment motifs such as improvement, optimism, reason and cooperation within the rhetoric of Saunders's writings and the reasoning that informed his actions, exploring the various and complicated ways in which he articulated the relationship between evangelical religious conviction and the quest for the common good.     

‘Postponing the Evil Day’: Sir Edward Grey and British Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT

Sir Edward Grey is remembered largely as Britain's Foreign Secretary when ‘the lights went out all over Europe’ in the summer of 1914. His record remains contested. From David Lloyd George's crafty deception in his wartime memoirs to more recent revisionist historians, writers have sought to blame Grey for the outbreak of the First World War. Drawing on substantial research in private and official, British, and foreign archives, this paper will reconstruct Grey's career as Foreign Secretary with an emphasis on his objectives and the means which he employed to obtain them. Crucially, it places Grey's stewardship of British foreign policy within the broader international context, defined by the steep decline and subsequent renaissance of Russian power in the years between 1905 and 1912/13, with the aim of establishing the limitations of British power. More especially the shift in the international balance around 1913/14 shaped towards Russia, and away from Germany, shaped Grey's calculations during Europe's last summer. The July Crisis showed both the strengths and the limitations of Grey's diplomacy, this persistent and subtle pressing for mediation, but also his misreading of Austro-Hungarian policy.     

The Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani and Anglican Conflict in the Swan River Colony,Western Australia 1836–1838*

In 1835, the Western Australian Missionary Society appointed the Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani to establish a Moravian‐style mission in the Swan River Colony. The land grant essential for such a mission was not forthcoming from the government but Giustiniani established a small mission farm employing Aborigines at Guildford and started ministry among the settlers. This change of mission focus set the stage for conflict within the Anglican establishment of the colony, conflict which destroyed Dr Giustiniani's ministry. Giustiniani was well qualified and exerted himself to achieve the mission's objectives and many accusations made against him were essentially false; they reveal much about the prevailing culture and prejudices of the colony. He was defeated, however, because his ideas of church and mission differed from those of the colonial Church and society and because he did not conform to their expectations of the behaviour of a clergyman.     

Halil İnalcık (1916–2016): a preliminary anatomy of a legacy

Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) was the pre-eminent historian of the Ottoman Empire in the world from his establishment as a published scholar in the 1950s until the time of death. This article is an initial examination of his legacy to the study of Ottoman history broadly. His goal was to create an empirically-based narrative of Ottoman history from beginning to end, based on exploitation of the vast resources of the Ottoman archives as well as the extensive library of Ottoman narrative chronicles, together with non-Ottoman sources. In addition, he invested extensive energies in training several generations of Ottoman historians. Overall, his impact on scholarly and public perceptions of the Ottoman Empire has been unmatched to the present day.     

Constitutionalism or Staatssreich? Bismarck,Crown Prince Frederick William,Crown Princess Victoria and the Succession Crisis of 1880-85

Though Otto von Bismarck exercised great power as Chancellor of the German Empire, historians have overlooked the extent to which it was threatened during the 1880s by the imminent accession of Crown Prince Frederick William. The article focuses on the means by which Bismarck strove to maintain his power, and how many of his plans were thwarted by the crown prince. The heir to the throne had to also fend off his wife's campaign to enact radical liberal reforms during her husband's coming reign. The ability of the crown prince to resist the campaigns of both his wife and Bismarck shows that his influence was indeed considerable, and that estimates of Bismarck's power are in need of revision.     

Reading Beside the Lines: Marginalia,W.E. Gladstone,and the International History of the Bulgarian Horrors

This article explores the marginalia found in the personal volumes of William Ewart Gladstone in the context of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875–8). Diverging from previous narratives, which have lionised Gladstone for his apparently prophetic support for the independence of Christian subjects within the Ottoman Empire, this article argues that Gladstone read and understood little about modern South-Eastern European history, Bulgaria, or the Bulgarians before the publication of his influential political pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. Gladstone's powerful interjection, based upon widespread, imagined categories of cultural understanding, directly influenced British foreign policy at a critical juncture with profound international consequences. Britain abandoned its traditional support of the Ottoman Empire - allowing Russia to wage a punitive war against its former ally - and instead supported the independence of the ‘Christian races’ of the Balkans along the budding principle of national self-determination. Gladstone's marginalia provide a unique linkage between studies of cultural languages of understanding, individual decision-making, the mechanisms of political power, and the construction of foreign policy. In certain cases, therefore, marginalia may help reveal the nexus between local histories of cultural production and major events in international history.