Description: Green Imperialism is the first book to document the origins and early history of environmentalism, concentrating especially on its hitherto unexplained colonial and global aspects. It highlights the significance of Utopian, Physiocratic, and medical thinking in the history of environmentalist ideas. The book shows how the new critique of the colonial impact on the environment depended on the emergence of a coterie of professional scientists, and demonstrates both the importance of the oceanic island "Eden" as a vehicle for new conceptions of nature and the significance of colonial island environments in stimulating conservationist notions.
Review Quotes: "Anyone who assumes that environmentalism is a twentieth-century phenomenon concerning primarily European and US problems is likely to find this book illuminating. Richard H. Grove, a leading historian of science in the age of empires, shows in fascinating detail, through the experience and writings of scientists who went out to the colonies, that environmental thought evolved in early modern times (1600s-1800s)....This book is remarkable and may well change the prevailing ideas about a major period in the history of science. It is likely to make impossible some of the generalizations that have become current about the origins of environmental concern. Grove's scholarship is impressive, his literary style is congenial and readable, and his narrative constantly presents newly unearthed facts and interpretations that are unexpected but almost always convincing." J. Donald Hughes, BioScience