By: Jan Oosthoek
Around 1850 Britain had no forestry service and there was no formal
training of foresters. Forestry was still practised in the context of
estates mainly owned by the aristocracy and managed by foresters who had
learned the traditional management techniques under an apprentice
system from their predecessors. British forestry was fragmented, not
formalised, and far from centralised during the entire 19th century.
Most of the forestry remained concentrated on large privately owned
estates, especially in Scotland, where it served the double purpose of
ornamental woods and, to a lesser extent, wood production for local use.1
The British Government and many landowners did not feel the necessity
to increase timber production and introduce modern formalised forestry
practices from the continent because the British had direct access to
the large timber reserves of their Empire, of Scandinavia and the Baltic
states. Importing timber from overseas was much cheaper than to produce
it back home in Britain.2
At the same time the expansion of commercial agriculture under the East
Indian Company and later the construction of the railways seriously
depleted timber resources on the Indian sub-continent. In response the
colonial authorities in India created the Indian Forestry Service and
introduced modern scientific forestry from continental Europe in order
to prevent further destruction of the forest resources.3
Back in Britain, some Scottish landowners realised that the potential
for forestry in Scotland was considerable and that by creating and
expanding forestry they could make their estates more profitable. The
creation of demonstration forests, university lectureships and the
introduction of scientific forestry from the Continent were all desired
and encouraged by Scottish landowners and forester alike. However, the
needed expertise was not available in Britain and landowners and
foresters had to look overseas to find people who possessed experience
with the desired scientific forestry methods. In this paper it will be
argued that modern British forestry is rooted within a colonial forestry
ideology based on a reductionist scientific approach which originated
in France and Germany. In addition it will also be shown that Scottish
landowners, foresters and universities played an important part in the
introduction and dissemination of scientific forestry in Britain.
Table: Key events in the introduction of scientific forestry in Britain |
|
1854 |
Establishment of Scottish Arboricultural Society |
1856 |
Dietrich Brandis introduces scientific forestry in India |
1864 |
Creation of the Indian Forestry Service |
1867 |
First Forestry students from India are sent to Germany and France |
1872 |
Hugh Cleghorn elected as President of the Scottish Arboricultural Society |
1877 |
John Croumbie Brown delivers a paper at a meeting of the Scottish Arboricultural Society calling for the creation of a forestry school in Scotland |
1878 |
Forestry school established at Dehra Dun, India, for the training of Indian foresters |
1881 |
Brandis retires as Inspector-general of Forests in India and is succeeded by William Schlich |
1884 |
First International Forestry exhibition is held in Edinburgh |
1885 |
Schlich is succeeded by Berthold Ribbentrop |
1885 |
Forestry section at the Royal Engineering College at Coopers Hill, Surrey, established by Schlich for training of foresters for the Indian Forestry service |
1889 |
Lectureship in forestry established at the University of Edinburgh |
1891 |
Colonel F. Bailey appointed as Lecturer in Forestry at the University of Edinburgh |
1905 |
Institute of forestry at Oxford University founded by Schlich |
1914 |
Forestry course established at the University of Aberdeen |
1919 |
Creation of the Forestry Commission in Britain |
In 1874, in an address to the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society,
Hugh Cleghorn, the first Inspector General of Forests in India4,
told his audience that “the government in India began to be seriously
embarrassed by the scarcity of timber; its attention was directed to the
management of the indigenous forests”.5
Timber resources in India were declining rapidly under the pressures of
the high timber demand in the British Empire, local use and above all
the rapid expansion of colonial agriculture and the associated loss of
forestry cover in India during the first half of the 19th century.6
An important watershed in the history of Indian forestry was the
construction of a railway network after 1850. The network of tracks
increased from only 32 kilometres in 1853 to over 51,650 kilometres in
1910. The construction of the railways required an enormous amount of
timber because to build two kilometres of track almost 900 sleepers were
needed. Indian trees, particular sal (Shorea robusta), deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara), and teak (Tectona grandis)
were much used as sleepers, because of their strength and perceived
resistance against rotting. Already severely depleted by the clearance
of forests for commercial purposes earlier in the century, India
experienced a resource crunch, and the authorities realised that the
intensive extraction of timber could not be sustained indefinitely. In
order to secure a continuous flow of timber the forests had to be
brought under control using a management regime that would protect the
forests and perpetuate the production of timber.7
A second reason why the authorities became increasingly alarmed about
the rate of forest clearing was the observation of the detrimental
effects of overexploitation of the forests on the environment. From the
late 18th century botanists and other scientists in the colonial service
observed the combined impact of imperialism and local overexploitation
of the forests in tropical landscapes. They believed that deforestation
caused desiccation, a drying out of the land surface, resulting in a
decline in rainfall, flash floods, soil degradation, and silting up of
rivers.8
For example, the first Conservators of Forests in India, Dr Gibson in
Bombay and Dr Cleghorn in Madras, warned in the 1840s and 1850s about
the increasing devastation of forests and the resulting silting up of
rivers.9
Alarmed by these developments, Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General of
India at the time, published a paper in which he laid down the first
outline of an India-wide forest policy, including the establishment of a
Forestry Service, in 1854. Two years after the forest policy paper, in
1856, Dietrich Brandis, a German Botanist and forester, was appointed
Superintendent of Forests in Burma. Brandis is widely regarded as the
founder of modern forestry in India, a fact that was gratefully
acknowledged by Indian Government officials:
…the man to whom…must be accorded the proud title of the father of Indian forestry, is not a Briton at all but a Prussian, and that man is Dr Brandis.10
It was Brandis who first introduced practical scientific forestry in
India by carrying out systematic surveys and drawing up management plans
based on growth statistics. The objective of this scientific method was
to measure the annual growth of tree stands and to evaluate how much
timber could be extracted annually without compromising the future
productivity of the forest.11
The British authorities were so impressed with Brandis’ work that he
was appointed as the first Inspector General of Forests in India, a post
he had to share with Scottish botanist Hugh Cleghorn, when the Indian
Foresty Service was established in 1864. It was Brandis’ task to
organise the Indian Forestry Service, recruit foresters and to initiate
proper forestry administration and management. Brandis' biggest
challenge was to achieve full state control over the forests, an aim
that facilitated the development of scientific forestry in India.12
In order to understand the development of forestry in India it is
important to appreciate the tensions between the Indian Forestry Service
and the Revenue Department. The Department regarded the creation of a
separate forestry service as a waste of public money and was convinced
that it would result in greater cost than benefit. It was the general
imperial policy of the British that the administrative machinery in
India had to be self-supporting. Therefore foresters in India had to
prove that state forestry could be an economically viable enterprise,
which made the case for controlled, rationally managed forests even
stronger.13
The first step to achieve control over India’s forests was through
surveying and mapping, to demarcate the forestlands that were state
property. Milward, an officer in the Indian Forestry Service, observed
about a century later that:
Accurate surveys and sufficiently good maps of forests are a sine qua non for successful administration and management.14
The mapping of India's forests also provided data that made the introduction of scientific forestry management practices possible. Scientific forestry was imported from the major continental European powers, France and Germany, where it had developed since the late 18th century. It was during this period that continental administrators and foresters had become alarmed by a dramatic decline of forestry resources. On top of that came the rivalry between the different German States which stimulated the desire to become self-sufficient and not to depend on neighbouring states for resources such as timber. In response the forest authorities in France and most of the German states encouraged the development of quantitative methods to manage their forests, reverse the depletion and to make their states independent from timber imports. The scientific forestry method imported in India stood in direct line with an essentially German continental tradition with a flavour of French forestry management methods mixed in. The dominant paradigm of scientific forestry management is to pursue maximum sustainable yield, and profit, which resulted into a tradition of quantitative forestry management. This tradition was based on the collection of quantitative data on trees and forests by measuring sizes and volumes. The results of field studies were compiled in tables, which organised the various tree size categories and served as a tool to calculate growth rates and loss rates which made it possible to predict sustained yield. Some authors have described the German scientific forestry tradition as ‘bookkeeperish’ and based on a set of rigid rules producing artificial, even-aged, monocultural forest plantations.15
The French forestry tradition, although scientific, was more
diverse and left room for more traditional forms of forest management.
Due to economic and political pressures the French forestry school was
concerned with the conservation of coppices and uneven aged mixed stands
but also with the creation of even aged high forests by converting
coppices and mixed stands. However, the conversion of coppices and mixed
stands into forestry plantations conflicted with the interests of the
French water authorities and the charcoal industry. This produced much
debate and controversy between foresters and other interest groups, but a
compromise was reached and, in the end, a moderately conservative
forestry practice emerged. The French practice was characterised by a
flexible approach to forests with attention for broadleaves, coppices,
mixed stands, and a natural development of forests including natural
regeneration. At the same time forest plantations managed on scientific
principles were also established in France and its colonies.16
Both Continental forestry traditions were blended in the colonial
context of India after the establishment of the Indian Forestry Service.
However, when the British created the Forestry Service there were
hardly any people in the Empire who had direct experience with the
Continental scientific traditions. It is therefore no surprise that the
authorities turned to Brandis to organise the newly established service,
which he modelled after forestry departments in Germany. In order to
fill the higher echelons of the Forestry Service Brandis recruited
forestry officers from Germany, among them William Schlich, who was to
become the founder of forest science in Great Britain and Berthold
Ribbentrop. These two Germans were preferred for high office over local
forest officers for the fact that “the thorough professional training
which Dr Schlich and Mr Ribbentrop had received in their own country,
had been most useful to them in India”.17
This ‘usefulness’ was of course the scientific training in forestry,
which they had brought with them from Germany. In 1881 Schlich succeeded
Brandis as Inspector General of Forests in India, a post he held for
four years before an other German forester, Berthold Ribbentrop,
succeeded him.18
Lower forestry personnel was initially composed of selected civil
servants or military officers who were thought to “possess a natural
aptitude to the work” in the forests.19
Their task mainly consisted of acquiring control over the forests and
preventing unauthorised felling by the local population. However, it was
soon felt that the training of these people was not adequate and that
something had to be done to turn them into proper foresters. Because a
forestry school did not exist in India and the expertise to create one
was lacking, arrangements for the training of foresters were made with
the Imperial Forestry School at Nancy in France and with forestry
schools in Germany. In 1867 the first students from India were sent to
Germany and France, but after 1871 no more students were sent to Germany
because it was cheaper and more convenient to concentrate all
instruction in France.20
The Scientific forestry practice that these foresters imported from
Germany and France was extremely reductionist in nature and did not
seem to take much account of varying environmental conditions. This led
to the belief that a direct transfer of forestry practice from the
Temperate Zone to tropical forests would not cause any serious problems.
However, foresters initially overlooked the fact that environmental
conditions between Europe and India vary considerably and that this
requires different management regimes. Only practice taught European
trained foresters that their methods had to be modified to make it work
under the monsoon and mountain conditions of India. In addition the
diversity21,
large extent and mixed nature of the Indian forests required a more
flexible approach to forestry management. The European experience of
German and French trained foresters and their encounter with the
different environmental conditions in India blended together in the
colonial context, creating a distinct Indian branch of scientific
forestry. This type of forestry management included measures to conserve
the existing forests, countering perceived negative environmental
effects such as desiccation, flooding, and soil erosion but also a
desire to make the forests profitable. The diversity and mixed nature of
the forests as well as the commercial objectives required a management
regime favouring “the valuable commercial species and eliminating the
less valuable and those interfering with the growth of the former”.22
This was partly caused by the fact that the number of commercially
interesting trees in Indian forests is pretty low. For example, the
so-called teak forests had only about ten percent of teak trees. For
this reason it was easier to increase the number of commercially
interesting trees by means of natural generation aided by cultural
operations to suppress the growth of less favourable species. The
variety and density of the Indian forests as well as their large extent
encouraged the use of natural regeneration. Ribbentrop concluded that
the “average cash revenue per acre is too insignificant” to justify
clearance of the jungle and the creation of plantations.23
The creation of forestry plantations was therefore less important,
although a considerable number of teak plantations, especially in Burma,
were created in places were formerly no forests existed.24
However, there was a second factor that produced a brand of
forestry slightly different from the original German type. Brandis had
recommended to constitute village forests of the kind which existed in
Germany and France. The local villagers would manage the forests
attached to their villages, although control would not be entirely left
to the communities in order to protect and preserve the productivity of
the forests. The idea was that village forests would supply produce,
such as fire wood and construction material, to the inhabitants of the
attached village. However, the colonial government in India saw forest
villages as interference with the main objectives of the state forests
to secure timber supply and to make a profit. This resulted in a policy
to restrict access of the local population to the forests they had
previously used as common land.25
The creation of scientifically managed forests and their
commodification contributed to drastic changes in the Indian landscape
and local ecosystems. In addition and probably more significant, was the
social disruption caused by exclusion of local people from the forests.
With the introduction of scientific forestry the use of the forests was
monopolised by the state, customary rights were taken away from local
peoples and access restricted. This led to social protests right from
the beginning of the introduction of scientific forestry around 1850.
From that time onwards many episodes of resistance to colonial rule were
linked to protest against increasing state control over the forests.26
To ban the communities from the forests and leave them out of the
management process planted the seeds for the social conflicts over
forest access which endures to the present day.
The type of scientific forestry that reached Britain was an impoverished one because elements like village forests and even the most basic environmental and ecological considerations were ignored in favour of a limited number of fast growing species which resulted in an impoverishment of forest ecosystems. The interest of the colonial state was mainly economic and not ecological or social. It was this type of hard nosed scientific forestry practice aimed at commercial objectives that was subsequently introduced in Britain by returning foresters. As will be discussed in a subsequent section, these foresters became teachers at the newly created institutions for the training of senior forestry officers for the colonial forestry services in India and other parts of the Empire and Britain.
The successful dissemination of scientific forestry in India and beyond was to a large extent the result of the establishment of a forestry school on the subcontinent. Colonel Frederic Bailey of the Royal Engineers, who had headed the Indian Forest Survey, established a forestry school at Dehra Dun and became its first director in 1878. The main objective of the school was to prepare Indians for the executive charge of state forests and it was organised along the lines of the German forestry schools and included two theoretical exams in forestry theory, engineering and management and a two year practical.27 In 1907 a research institute was added to the Dehra Dun school, which became a breeding ground for British foresters whom later filled the ranks of the British Forestry Commission and university forestry departments. Experienced foresters were also transferred from India, to help establish forestry departments in other parts of the empire, with the Indian experience usually serving as the model.28 However, since the Dehra Dun school was initially only intended for Indian forestry officials, students for higher offices in the forestry service continued to be send to Germany and France for their training. In order to bring the education of foresters entirely under British supervision, the leaders of the Indian Forestry Service, Brandis, Schlich and Ribbentrop pressed for the establishment of a forestry school for the training of senior forestry officers in Britain.29
When Schlich left the Indian Forestry Service in 1885, he returned to Britain and established a forestry training college at the School of Military Engineering at Coopers Hill in Surrey. In 1905 Coopers Hill was eventually closed and Schlich moved to Oxford to become director of the newly established Oxford Forestry Institute at the University. Schlich profoundly influenced British forestry with his teaching and the publication of a five-volume handbook, Schlich's Manual of Forestry, which was used as a textbook at British universities until the late 1930s.30 However, Schlich was certainly not the only forester returning from India who influenced the orientation and direction of British forestry.
Scotland had been the centre of forestry in Britain since at least
the second half of the 18th century. It was around this time that
plantation forestry became fashionable, stimulated by new tree species
introduced from North America. The emergence of forestry plantations as a
core aspect of Scottish forestry was also associated with patriotism,
good taste and above all improvement of the Scottish landscape, i.e. the
aim to make better use of the land in order to make more profit.31
In 1854 the Scottish Arboricultural Society was established by a group
of landowners and foresters who were determined to “place Scottish
forestry on a sounder basis as an important section of rural industry”.32
That sounder basis was thought to be forestry science as it had
developed on the continent and in the colonial context. In order to
promote the idea of scientific forestry the Scottish Arboricultural
Society invited prominent Indian forest officials to deliver talks about
forestry practice, forestry policy, and forestry education on the
Indian subcontinent.
In 1872 Hugh Cleghorn, the first Inspector General of Forests in
India, was elected as president of the Scottish Arboricultural Society.
He delivered several speeches on forestry in India and Britain to the
general meetings of the Society during his presidency between 1872 and
1874. In his acceptance speech Cleghorn praised forestry in Scotland and
England but concluded that the small-scale forest estates in Britain
were predominantly ornamental with additional aims of producing wood to
meet local demands and generating an additional income from the sale of
timber. Although Cleghorn did not doubt the skills of Scottish
foresters, he concluded that professional training was needed in order
to make them fit for service in India and other parts of the British
Empire.33
During his second term as president, 1883-85, his voice was often heard
advocating the establishment of a school of forestry in Edinburgh. This
time not only for training of foresters for the colonial service but
also for improving forestry in Britain, particularly in Scotland.34
Another advocate of forestry education in Scotland was Colonel F.
Bailey, the first director of the Indian Forestry School in Dehra Dun.
In 1885 he delivered a paper on the Indian forestry school at a meeting
of the British Association at Aberdeen. In this paper he did not
directly press for the creation of a forestry school in Britain but he
gave a detailed account of the school at Dehra Dun and how it was
organised.35
This was clearly meant to expose Scottish foresters, landowners and
academics to the only example of a forestry school within the British
Empire and to encourage them to establish a similar school in Scotland.
The list of Indian forestry celebrities visiting the Royal Scottish
Aboricultural Society is incomplete without Dietrich Brandis. In 1887 he
delivered a paper to the general meeting of the Royal Scottish
Arboricultural Society in which he encouraged and backed the
introduction of scientific forestry in Scotland and the establishment of
a forestry school:
Ever since I heard of the plan to establish a forest school in Scotland, I have been of opinion, and have given expression to this opinion whenever I have had the opportunity, that as soon as the desire gains ground among proprietors in Scotland to obtain for their estates the services of wood-managers and foresters who have received a more systematic professional training than is attainable at present, they will find the needful means and take the needful steps for the establishment of a forest school.36
Brandis, Cleghorn and Bailey had all been high ranking officers in the Indian Forestry Service and therefor the most visible. However, after about 1870 foresters who had served in India returned to Britain bringing back the new ideas of scientific forestry which they disseminated further as they continued to work in forestry in Britain. Forbes described this process in his book The Development of British Forestry published in 1910:
Since about 1860, when Cleghorn and Brandis inaugurated the Indian Forestry Service, a small stream of continental trained foresters … has been returning from it. Whatever the exact practical results of this inter-mixture of British and Anglo-Indian ideas may have been, there is little doubt that fresh ideas were instilled into British foresters and proprietors, and a wider knowledge of forestry as an industry instead of a hobby resulted.37
The efforts of these foresters returning from India connected with the desire of Scottish foresters and landowners to improve their forests. It encouraged them to create university lectureships and forestry courses for the education of professional scientifically trained foresters who would help to increase the revenue from estates in Scotland. By the late 19th century, two university courses and a course for working foresters were being established in Scotland and run by foresters with a colonial background.
In April 1877 John Croumbie Brown, a botanist who had just returned
from South Africa, addressed the Town Council of Edinburgh and the board
of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, advocating the
establishment of a forestry school and arboretum in Edinburgh. Brown
considered that it was most desirable to create a forestry school in the
Scottish capital because of its university, the proposed creation of an
arboretum, the numerous tree nurseries and, most importantly, its
central location with regard to the many forest estates in Scotland. He
argued that a lectureship of forestry be established at the University
and that money had to be raised for this purpose. Croumbie Brown’s
address was subsequently published and this pamphlet was widely
circulated among members of the Royal Scottish Aboricultural Society,
politicians and academics and probably stimulated the events that led to
the establishment of a forestry lectureship at the University of
Edinburgh.38
Five years after Brown’s speech the Royal Scottish Arboricultural
Society decided to organise an international forestry exhibition in
Edinburgh with the aim to raise money for the creation of a lectureship
in forestry at the university. The exhibition was opened in July 1884
and nearly all timber producing counties of the world were represented,
showing their forest products and the latest equipment used in forestry
operations. The exhibition was a tremendous success and generated a
great deal of interest and brought the developing forest service in
India and the need for higher forestry education to attention of a wider
public in Britain. However, the exhibition did not succeed in raising
sufficient funds to establish a lectureship in forestry at the
University of Edinburgh.39
In May 1885 the British Parliament appointed a Select Committee with
the task “to consider whether by the establishment of a forest school or
otherwise, our woodlands could be rendered more remunerative”.40
In its final report the Select Committee recommended the creation of a
forestry school or a university course in forestry, but the Government
undertook no action. However, in August 1889 William Sommerville, who
was heavily influenced by the famous German forester Robert Hartig, was
appointed Lecturer in Forestry at the University of Edinburgh, the first
of its kind in Britain. The lectureship was established through grants
made by the newly established Board of Agriculture and the Royal
Scottish Arboricultural Society.41
In 1891, Somerville left Edinburgh on his appointment as Professor of
Agriculture at Durham College of Science, and was succeeded by Colonel
Bailey.
Bailey was on leave from India when the lectureship became vacant in
1891 and, being in the country, the University invited him to take up
the position. He accepted the lectureship and during the next twenty
years Bailey consolidated the forestry department. After Bailey’s
retirement in 1910, Edward Percy Stebbing was appointed to the Chair in
Forestry, which he held for more than forty years, until he finally
retired in 1951. Stebbing had served as a forester in the Indian
Forestry Service and in East Africa, and was educated at the Royal
Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill and in France, which made him
well acquainted with continental and Indian forestry.42
During his forty year career at the University of Edinburgh Stebbing
rose to the rank of professor and created two additional lectureships in
the forestry department. More important was that his experience with
scientific forestry made the University of Edinburgh a breeding ground
for the next generation of foresters who were to join the newly
established British Forestry Commission after the First World War. The
most famous graduates from that period are probably Mark Anderson and
Henry M. Steven. Both men were in the forefront of British forestry
because of their empirical approach, something they were trained in
under Stebbing. In the 1920s Steven and Anderson joined the newly
established research branch of the Forestry Commission and in the 1950s
both men became Professors in forestry at respectively, the Universities
of Aberdeen and Edinburgh.43
These two foresters were no exceptions since most university lecturing
positions in forestry in Britain were filled with former Indian Forestry
Service employees. For example, the Imperial Forestry Institute in
Oxford attracted Troup and Champion, who had both conducted pioneering
research at Dehra Dun, as professors. Through these university courses
scientific forestry imported from India gained a permanent foothold in
the United Kingdom.
The real breakthrough of scientific forestry in Britain came with the
establishment of the Forestry Commission. During the First World War
Britain was cut off from its overseas timber supplies and had to rely on
its own woodlands and forests. The war reduced forest cover in Britain
to less than five percent of its total land surface, the lowest ever
known, and Britain's dependence on foreign supplies of timber during
times of war became a major concern. In order to rebuild stocks and
create a strategic timber reserve the Forestry Act of 1919 was passed
and the Forestry Commission was established.44
The Forestry Commission was organised along the lines of the
well-proved concepts of state forestry in India and continental Europe.
This concept included the establishment of a corps of scientifically
trained foresters, state purchase of land for creating forestry reserves
and forest management according to working plans. Timber reserves had
to be established as soon as possible and scientific forestry was
believed to be the most effective method of creating the new
plantations. The type of plantations chosen was that of even aged,
single species, high forests with a management regime based on
statistical tables to calculate growth rates and loss rates which made
it possible to predict how much timber could be harvested.45
The new plantations were normally established on bare ground in upland
areas and were made up of non-native fast growing conifer species,
mainly Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) and Norway spruce (Picea abies).46
It is important to note that Britain was late in adopting scientific
forestry and that early debates about scientific forestry took mainly
place in the colonial context placing the imperial centre somewhat at
the fringes of imperial forestry.
After the Second World War forestry was further mechanised with the
introduction of large scale ploughing and the application of artificial
fertilisers. This allowed foresters to create uniform forests on an
unprecedented scale in Britaint and to prepare soils which were
previously useless for forestry.47
By doing so forestry was turned into a scientific standardised
production operation in which efficiency became the benchmark. The need
for efficiency and fast growing plantations became even more pressing
after the so called Zuckerman Report removed the strategic objectives
from British forestry policy in 1957. Following the Zuckerman Report an
inter-departmental Cabinet Working Party set up to review forestry
policy concluded:
...although a measure of subsidy may be justified on social grounds it would not be to our general advantage, or accord with our policy of increasing liberalisation of trade, to foster the production of raw materials for British industry at anything other than truly competitive prices… .48
It was this new reality that forced the Forestry Commission to show that forestry in Britain could make a profit.
The concentration on a limited number of species planted as
monocultures driven by strategic and economic pressures contributed to
drastic changes in the British landscape. Large geometric blocks of
conifers appeared in he landscape, forestry roads were bulldozed on
hillsides and drains were dug across the moors.49
Although the landscape and social conditions are different in Britain,
it is striking that, like in India, Forestry Commission officers were
casting a very reductionist eye on forest ecosystems and the landscape
by following specific political and economic objectives. In this process
access to the forests by the local population and tourist was often
restricted and objections to forestry because of its impact on the
landscape were ignored for a long time. Foresters overlooked many of the
social and environmental implications of their actions and dismissed
the value of traditional woodland practices, which were regarded as
unscientific and outmoded.50
These were only revived with the rise of popular resistance to
commercial forestry plantations, the creation of community forests and
introduction of conservation management during the last decades of the
20th century. Perhaps British foresters and conservationists should turn
once more to India to learn from the experiences of the long-standing
social protest movements against modern forestry in that p3rt of the
world.
Scientific forestry was first transported to India from Continental
Europe because of a lack of expertise in the British Empire. It was for
this reason that the Indian Forestry Service employed German foresters
and send forest officers for their education to Germany and France. Back
in India the French and German forestry traditions were blended and
transformed under political and economic pressures, and had to be
adapted to the monsoon environment, creating a distinctive Indian branch
of scientific forestry. This branch of forestry ignored ecological and
social realities in favour of fast growing pure stand forests and
plantations managed with statistical tables in order to satisfy the
economic objectives set by the government. This type of forestry was
introduced to Britain by retired foresters from the Indian Forestry
Service, who subsequently became involved in forestry education in
Britain.
In Britain, in particular in Scotland, a forestry practice existed
which had its roots in estate forest management, but this tradition was
not regarded as being scientific. By the mid-nineteenth century
landowners wanted to get more profit out of their estates and viewed the
introduction of scientific forestry as the means to do so. This
coincided with the first scientifically trained foresters returning from
India who lobbied for the establishment of forestry schools for the
training of officers for the colonial forestry service. It was in this
context that the desire to make better use of Scottish forest estates
and demands of forestry in the empire came together and resulted in the
establishment of forestry courses at universities in Scotland and at
Oxford. Retired colonial foresters taught these university courses,
reinforcing the link between the Scottish forestry scene and colonial
forestry. The real breakthrough of scientific forestry in Britain came
only after the establishment of the Forestry Commission in 1919, fifty
years after the creation of the Indian Forestry Service. The
organisation and practice of Indian forestry was copied without much
modification and large monoculural plantations managed on scientific
principles appeared in the British landscape. Elements like the social
functions of forests and even the most basic environmental and
ecological considerations were neglected in favour of fast growing
monocultural plantations. The interest of the British Government, like
its colonial counterpart in Indian, was mainly economic and strategic
and that would dominate forestry policy in the United Kingdom for most
of the twentieth century.
Notes
2 Mark L. Anderson, A History of Scottish Forestry, vol. 2 (London: Nelson, 1967), 319, 329.
3 Berthold Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1900), 60-62, 72-76.
4 Cleghorn shared the post of Inspector General of Forests in India with Dietrich Brandis.
5 Hugh Cleghorn, ‘Address Delivered at the Twenty-first Annual Meeting’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Forestry Society, 7 (1875), 206.
6 E.P. Stebbing, The Forests of India, vol. 1 (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1922), 61-62.
7 Ramachandra Guha, ‘Forestry in British and Post-British India. A Historical Analysis’, Economic and Political
Weekly, October 29 (1983), 1883-84.
8 Richard Grove, Ecology, Climate and Empire. Colonialism and Global Environmental History (Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 1997), 5-6, 11-20.
9 John M. MacKenzie, Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires. Imperialism, Scotland and the Environment East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997), 44, 70
10 Sir Richard Temple, ‘Lecture on the Forests of India’, Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultural Society, 10 (1881), 17.
11 R.C. Milward, ‘The Indian Forest Service: Its Origin and Progress’, The Empire Forestry review, 26 (1947), 184
12 E.P. Stebbing, The Forests of India, Vol.2 (London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1923), 4, 42-43; Hartig Stiftung, Biographien Beduetender Hessischer Forstleute (Wiesbaden: Georg Ludwig Hartig Stiftung, 1990), 633.
13 Ramachandra Guha, ‘Forestry in British and Post-British India’, 1886.
14 Milward, The Indian Forestry Service, 188.
15 Orazio Ciancio and Susanna Nocentini, ‘The Forest and Man: The Evolution of Forestry Thought From Modern Humanism to the Culture of Complexity. Systemic Silviculture and Management on Natural Bases’, in: Orazio Ciancio (ed.), The Forest and Man (Florence: Accademia Italiana di Scienze Forestali, 1997), 42-43
16 Ciancio and Nocentini, ‘The Forest and Man’, 43-46.
17 Dietrich Brandis, ‘The Proposed School of Forestry’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, 12 (1890), 73
18 Hartig Stiftung, Biographien Beduetender Hessischer Forstleute, 637-639.
19 Frederic Bailey, ‘The Indian Forest School’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, 11(1887), 155.
20 Ibid., 155-156.
21 There are nearly 1500 tree species in India compared to only 158 species in Europe.
23 Stebbing, The Forests of India, vol. 2, 578.
23 Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 166.
24 Sir Richard Temple, ‘Lecture on the Forests of India’, p. 15; Saldanha, ‘Colonialism and Professionalism’, 204.
25 Indra Munshi Saldanha, ‘Colonialism and Professionalism: A German Forester in India’, Environment and History, 2 (1996), 206.
26 Grove, Ecology, Climate and Empire, 206.
27 Brandis, ‘The Proposed School of Forestry’, 72; Saldanha, ‘Colonialism and Professionalism’, 211.
28 Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India, 245.
29 Frederic Bailey, ‘The Indian Forest Scool’, 155-164; Stebbing, The Forests of India, vol 2, 500-501.
30 Harold K. Steen, ‘The first American Forestry Award’, Forestry Today, Spring (2000), 42-43.
31 Judith Tsouvalis & Charles Watkins, ‘Imagining and Creating Forests in Britain, 1890-1939’, in: Mauro Agnoletti and Steven Anderson, Forest History: International Studies on Socioeconomic and Forest Ecosystem Change (Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2000), 374-375.
32 Nairn, David, ‘Notes on Highland Woods, Ancient and Modern’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 17(1892), 191
33 Cleghorn, Hugh, ‘Address Delivered at the Twenty-first Annual Meeting’, 199-210.
34 Charles J. Taylor, Forestry and Natural Resources in the University of Edinburgh. A History (Edinburgh: Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Edinburgh, 1985), 3.
35 Bailey, ‘The Indian Forest School’, 155-164.
36 Brandis, ‘The Proposed School of Forestry’, 76.
37 A.C. Forbes, The Development of British Forestry (London: Arnold, 1910), 252.
38 J. Croumbie Brown, ‘On Forest Schools’, Transactions of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, 8 (1878) 225-232.
39 Mark L. Anderson, ‘Forestry Education in Scotland, 1854-1953’, Scottish Forestry, 8 (1954), 116.
40 Quoted in: John D. Matthews, ‘Forestry’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 84B (1983), 146
41 Matthews, ‘Forestry’, 146-148.
42 Charles J. Taylor, Forestry and Natural Resources, pp. 5-10, 11, 25.
43 John D. Matthews, ‘Henry Marshall Steven’, Year Book Of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1968-69; Charles J. Taylor, ‘Mark Anderson – Scottish Forester’, Scottish Forestry 36 (1982), 297-303.
44 Donald Mackay, Scotlands Rural Land use Agencies. The History and Effectiveness in Scotland of the Forestry Commission, Nature Conservancy Council and Countryside Commission (Edinburgh: Scottish Cultural Press, 1997), 22-24; Mark Avery and Roderick Leslie, Birds and Forestry (London: T & A.D. Poyser Ltd., 1990), 5.
45 Tsouvalis & Watkins, ‘Imagining and Creating Forests’, 381.
46 I.G. Simmons, An environmental History of Great Britain from 10,000 years ago to the present (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 200-201.
47 Avery and Leslie, Birds and Forestry, 49-52, 58-59.
48 Cabinet Working Party on Forest Policy, Draft Report, p. 8. Public Record Office London, Forestry Commission Files, F18/815.
49 Oosthoek, Environmental History of State forestry in Scotland, 28.
50 See for example comments in: I. Bailey Balfour, ‘Forestry in Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Arboricultural Society, 15 (1898), 55-77; Sir Roy Robinson, ‘British Forestry’, The Scottish Forestry Journal, 52 (1938), 26-77.
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