Decolonizing Anthropocene Origins: Empire, Environment, and the "Invention of Nature"

This seminar explores Environmental History in the Age of Empire from a global perspective. Industrialization, imperialism, and the accelerating global integrations they affected are seen today as central to the emergence of what has been termed the "Anthropocene" (Crutzen and Stoermer), the "Capitalocene" (Moore), the "Plantationocene" (Haraway, Tsing, et al.), and by a variety of other names – marking the beginning of the era in which humans became a "major environmental force" impacting the earth’s bio-, atmo-, and hydrospheric systems. Such rapidly growing human intervention into the natural world did not go unnoticed. Its observance, description, and problematization went hand in hand with the reconfiguration of the concept of "nature" in dominant imperial science. Relations between metropoles and colonies were at the heart of this process, organizing the interlocking practices of exploration, classification, and extraction. But despite imperial monopolies of power, the growing environmental knowledge of empire depended on, exploited, and ultimately sought to replace a plethora of local vernacular knowledges. The origins of the Anthropocene teem with multiplicity, and our view of them needs decolonizing. This is why a multi-scalar global history approach to this crucial period in environmental history is called for. The seminar is designed to introduce students with no or little prior expertise to the field of environmental history in the long nineteenth century, with particular focus on the British Empire. In this history, it will explore how "nature" emerged as a designated domain of colonial policy and knowledge production. Crucially, however, the seminar will contrast this imperial archive with other, vernacular sources that may contradict, expand, or resonate with what have come to be dominant scientific concepts and understandings.