Colonial Natures

International collaboration 

To encourage this, those involved in Colonial Natures are collaborating with international researchers. Mercedes Planta, from the University of the Philippines Diliman, recently visited the Cambridge University Herbarium. She studied Hugh Cuming’s specimens as part of a project on medicinal history in the Philippines.

Going forward, through Colonial Natures, Margocsy aims to establish a forum for discussion about colonialism and the environment both within the university and across the globe. Researchers from outside Cambridge are encouraged to contribute, and Cambridge’s natural history archives will be available to scholars and communities from around the world. Colonial Natures aims to connect Cambridge’s resources and knowledge with expertise, knowledge and resources in other regions, to catalyse new research. Expanding the scope of scientific knowledge is important if we want to engage with the unequal effects of human-made climate change on Earth. There is growing evidence that many such issues are closely connected to the historical legacies of colonialism.

 Deforestation in Indonesia

Margocsy cites the Indonesian historian Bondan Kanumoyoso’s research, on deforestation around the capital city of Jakarta in Indonesia, as an example. Deforestation in this archipelago, particularly for palm-oil plantations, is a highly important contemporary environmental issue. However, Kanumoyoso's pioneering work and Margócsy's current research point to a much longer history of deforestation in this archipelago, going back to the era of the Dutch East India Company. Having established a presence in the Indonesian archipelago in the 17th century to extract and export spices, the Dutch required timber to build more ships, to transport the spices back to Europe.

“So, what the Dutch East India Company needed was access to forests with timber for their purposes” explains Margocsy. “And they found teak forests on Java, which is now the most populated island in Indonesia”.

“They gained direct access to these forests in the 1670s, and within 30 years we have a report saying that it takes twelve days to transport timber from inland to the coast, because there are no teak trees left in between.”

In the centuries since, flooding and soil erosion have become common in many areas of Indonesia. The capital city of Jakarta is so flood-prone that it is likely to be submerged by the end of the 21st century. In preparation, Indonesia has begun the construction of Nusantara, a new capital city on the island of Kalimantan. 

Margocsy argues that it is important to understand this flooding and erosion in the context of the long-term historical processes of deforestation. He points to similar case studies in India or the Americas, which were also the sites of large-scale deforestation under colonialism. The science of forestry was created partly in response to this, to more effectively manage these depleted habitats. 

There are parallels between colonial histories and the ongoing climate crisis, and the Colonial Natures hopes to unveil the complex roles that scientific knowledge plays in navigating these links.  

“What we are saying is that it is not helpful to conceive of climate change and environmental transformation as processes that can be magically solved by quick scientific and technological interventions,” says Margocsy. “We need to understand the social, political and historical processes that contributed to it, and explain why some regions of the earth are more affected than others. And we need to find solutions that involve changing societal attitudes and political hierarchies, as opposed to promising a quick technological fix. And that is where the study of history becomes crucial.”