The Nature Of Empires And The Empires Of Nature

Drawing on themes from John MacKenzie’s Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires (1997), this book explores, from Indigenous or Indigenous-influenced perspectives, the power of nature and the attempts by empires (United States, Canada, and Britain) to control it. It also examines contemporary threats to First Nations communities from ongoing political, environmental, and social issues, and the efforts to confront and eliminate these threats to peoples and the environment. It becomes apparent that empire, despite its manifestations of power, cannot control or discipline humans and nature. Essays suggest new ways of looking at the Great Lakes watershed and the peoples and empires contained within it.

Originally delivered as the Callander Lectures at the University of Aberdeen in 1995, this is a survey of the historiography of the environmental history of the British Empire, suggesting new modes of analysis and connections with the Scottish experience.

Completed in 1747, Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands was the first major illustrated publication on the flora and fauna of Britain's American colonies. Together with his Hortus Britanno-Americanus (1763), which detailed plant species that might be transplanted successfully to British soil, Catesby's Natural History exerted an important, though often overlooked, influence on the development of art, natural history, and scientific observation in the eighteenth century. Inspired by a major traveling exhibition of Catesby's watercolor drawings from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, this collection of interdisciplinary essays considers Catesby's endeavors as a naturalist-artist, scientific explorer, experimental horticulturist, ornamental gardener, and early environmental thinker in terms of the interests held by the various, overlapping communities in which he functioned--particularly as those interests related to the British colonial enterprise. The contributors are David R. Brigham, Joyce E. Chaplin, Mark Laird, Amy R. W. Meyers, Therese O'Malley, and Margaret Beck Pritchard.

Richly illustrated 1996 collection on how Pacific plants and peoples were depicted by European explorers.

Surveying Africa, Asia, and the Americas, this important new collection looks at roles of science, medicine, and technology during five centuries of colonialism. This thought-provoking history examines the many intersections of science, politics, and culture during colonialism, including the relation between racism and medical science, "exploration" and its potential for wealth, and the perceived differences between indigenous knowledge and European science. Sixteen chapters focus on such topics as intellectual property rights and biodiversity, "acclimatizing" the world, and science and development. Bringing together contributions from scholars of history and science from around the globe, Nature and Empire forges a new path for readers interested in science and society during the modern era.

In this deeply researched and engagingly argued work, Jeffers Lennox reconfigures our general understanding of how Indigenous peoples, imperial forces, and settlers competed for space in northeastern North America before the British conquest in 1763.

Proceedings of a conference held at University of Western Ontario, London, Ont., Feb. 11-12, 2005.