The Political Environment

This series explores how environmental change has been created and contested in the past. How can this history widen the scope of our political imagination in response to global ecological crisis today?

The Twisted Histories of a Colombo Canal

Sujit Sivasundaram 13 December 202129 October 2022

What can the twisted histories of one Sri Lankan canal tell us? Sujit Sivasundaram on how the coastal environment of Colombo has been colonised and marketised, but in turn creates its own paths, through winds, waves and waters as well as…

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Knowing Nature

Elly Robson, Vinita Damodaran & Harriet Ritvo 6 December 202119 January 2023

How do we know nature and how has this been political, in the past and today?

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Beyond Planning: Flooding and the Hydro-Archive in Chennai

Aditya Ramesh 29 November 202129 October 2022

"By excavating the archives of urban hydrology in Chennai, we can see how the unequal production, impact, and representation of floods is embedded in property making and belonging." Aditya Ramesh argues that responses to flood must go…

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Wood Scarcity and Empire

Keith Pluymers 22 November 202129 October 2022

How far did wood scarcity in England trigger deforestation in its colonies at the dawn of empire? Keith Pluymers traces a complex story of conservation, commerce, and colonisation in the early modern Atlantic

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Problems of Possession: The Colonial History of Eco-Tourism in the Virgin Islands

Jessica S Samuel 18 November 202130 October 2024

How have US projects to preserve 'paradise' in the Virgin Islands marginalised native Afro-Caribbean people? Jessica S. Samuels examines a cutting-edge ecotourism venture in the 1950s that reveals the colonial nature of American…

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