Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Edens, islands and early empires 2. Indigenous knowledge and the significance of South-West India for Portuguese and Dutch constructions of tropical nature 3. The English and Dutch East India companies and the seventeenth-century environmental crisis in the colonies 4. Stephen Hales and some Newtonian antecedents of climatic environmentalism, 1700-1763 5. Protecting the climate of paradise: Pierre Poivre and the conservation of Mauritius under the ancien regime 6. Climate, conservation and Carib resistance: the British and the forests of the Eastern Caribbean, 1760-1800 7. The beginnings of global environmentalism: professional science, oceanic islands and the East India Company, 1768-1838 8. Diagnosing crisis: the East India Company medical services and the emergence of state conservationism in India, 1760-1857 Conclusion: the colonial state and the origins of western environmentalism Select bibliography, Index.