Peder Anker

Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Winner of the History of Science Society’s Forum for History of Human Sciences Prize. Citation.

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From 1895 to the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the promising new science of ecology flourished in the British Empire. Peder Anker asks why ecology expanded so rapidly and how a handful of influential scientists and politicians established a tripartite ecology of nature, knowledge, and society.

Patrons in the northern and southern extremes of the Empire, he argues, urgently needed tools for understanding environmental history as well as human relations to nature and society in order to set policies for the management of natural resources and to effect social control of natives and white settlement. Holists such as Jan Christian Smuts and mechanists such as Arthur George Tansley vied for the right to control and carry out ecological research throughout the British Empire and to lay a foundation of economic and social policy that extended from Spitsbergen to Cape Town.

The enlargement of the field from botany to human ecology required a broader methodological base, and ecologists drew especially on psychology and economy. They incorporated those methodologies and created a new ecological order for environmental, economic, and social management of the Empire.

Journal Reviews

• Nils Chr. Stenseth and Michale Ruse, Nature 429 (Nov. 2002), 124-125.
• Lloyd Ackert, Metascience 11 (2002), 333-335.
• Helen Tilley, Journal of the History of Biology 35 (2002), 392-394.
• Sanjoy Bhattacharya, History & Philosophy of the Life Sciences 25 (2003), 548-550.
• David Rothenberg, Environmental Ethics 25 (2003), 321-324.
• Piers J. Hale, British Journal of the History of Science 36 (2003), 248-250.
• Rachel Poliquin, Canadian Literature 182 (2004), 141-143.
• Thomas P. Weber, Spektrum der Wissenschaft, May (2003), 124,126.
• Joseph Morgan Hodge, Itinerario 28 (2004), 68-69.
• Stephen Bocking, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 35 (2004), 793-801. [PDF]
• Sofia Åkerberg, Historisk Tidskrift (2004), 161-162.
• Jane Carruthers, South African Historical Journal 50 (2004).
• Thomas Potthast, Isis 96 (2005), 443-444.
• Frank R. Thomas, Human Ecology 33 (2005), 143-145.
• Stephen Howe, Journal of Contemporary History 40 (2005), 585-599.
• Peter Bowler, Annals of Science 62 (2005), 267-268.
• Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Environment and History 14 (2008): 41–65.

Newspaper/Magazine Reviews

• Thomas P. Weber, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 11, 2000.
• Sverker Sörlin, Dagens Nyheter, November 12, 2001.
• Fred Pearce, New Scientist, January 5, 2002.
• J. Burger, Choice Magazine, May 2002.
• David B. Brooks, Alternatives, Winter 2003.
• A. M. Mannion, Biologist, 2003.