Nature, Knowledge and Development: Critical Essays on the Environmental History of India

Environmental history is a broad field of research which explores the relationship between humans and nature and builds upon an extensive wealth of research dating back to the eighteenth century, if not earlier. The consequences of colonialism, industrialization and capitalist interventions in the environment have brought the colonized regions of South Asia into focus and made environmental history a field of great importance. Nature, Knowledge and Development delves deeply into historical research in order to exemplify theoretical claims of historical meta-narratives and to explain the present predicament of environmentalism. The essays included in this volume highlight the importance of comparative studies within the field of environmental history. The contributors address several issues relating to India’s more prominent environmental history, placing them within the comparative frameworks of time, region, society and culture.