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Replacing Karlsbad with Tapolca: Thermal Water Based Modernisation In Interwar Northeast Hungary
No full textThe present study discusses water-society relations in Tapolca, a once neglected Hungarian bath town that became an important development site in the interwar period. Local press releases and archival sources bear testimony to the social, economic and political conflicts centred on thermal water sources in Northeast Hungary as a result of the Treaty of Trianon obliging Hungary to relinquish its most significant bathing resorts. The remaining thermal water sources in Hungary became such an important political symbol of national renewal and racial purity that a campaign launched during World War Two to explicitly ban Jewish people from bathing resorts. In this manner, the deportation of the Hungarian Jewish population in 1944 was celebrated in the far right local press as the Aryanisation of bathing resorts
Plantiness, Multispecies Conviviality and Changing Human-Plant Geographies
Full text linkThe essay examines changing human-plant geographies in Kodagu, situated in the Western Ghats in southern India. Paying attention to Kodagu helps investigate how plantiness impacts resource politics in indigenous landscapes across pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial timeframes. This essay will study Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills (2010) and Kavery Nambisan’s The Scent of Pepper (2010) from a bioregional perspective to understand the importance of native plants, forests, vegetal and feral spaces across Kodagu’s shifting societies and timeframes and examine how human-plant encounters redefine the role of plants in Kodagu’s more-than-human geographies. With a particular focus on the Kodava ritual of Kailpodh, this essay will investigate how humans often classify plants as native, invasive, weeds, sacred and unwanted, depending on their impact on human social life, and how ritualising plants such as rajakirita (Gloriosa superba) helps to reinhabit Kodagu and deepens the Kodava human-plant interaction across space and time
Wetland Plants and Aboriginal Paludiculture in North- and South-Eastern Australia
Full text linkAboriginal peoples in north- and south-eastern Australia practiced paludiculture, the cultivation of wetland plants for consumption, for many thousands of years before Europeans invaded them in the 1830s and 1840s. This article focuses on the yam daisy (Microseris spp.) in south-eastern Australia and the bulkuru sedge (Eleocharis dulcis) in north-eastern Australia in historical and recent accounts of wetlands in both regions. Aboriginal people in both places cultivated and harvested the tubers of both plants. Recent debates about Aboriginal peoples’ cultivation of native plants and whether they constitute agriculture apply the European value-laden yardstick of stages of human development with agriculture as the pinnacle of land use and constitute ‘hunting and gathering’ as lower in a hierarchy of value. They fail to appreciate not only the sophistication of the latter, but also that Aboriginal people cultivated grasses and grains on drylands (agriculture) and yams and sedges in wetlands (paludiculture)
Dangerous Resonances in Charlotte McConaghy’s Once There Were Wolves
Full text linkCharlotte McConaghy’s novel Once There Were Wolves tells the story of the reintroduction of wolves in the Scottish Highlands, thereby bringing the concept of rewilding – an innovative form of biodiversity conservation – into fiction. This novel shows how, within the paradigm of biodiversity, ‘plant perspectives’ and the search for a language of resonance must be considered in the broader ecological context, alongside the wolves. The article analyses how the novel highlights the importance of resonance through the protagonist Inti Flynn’s special relationship with plants, while also critically reflecting on this concept by depicting a resonance catastrophe – arising from Inti’s overly symbiotic relationship with her sister and the wolves. The conservation effort only succeeds, and the trees begin to grow over the bare hills, when Inti and the initially opposed local sheep farmers come together. Thus, this article argues, the novel demonstrates that contemporary conservation issues require a critical discussion of both the lack and excess of resonance in our relations to nature, fostering a mutual transformation of both ecologists and the local population in their relationships with each other and with nature
The use of vegetation fire in Portugal: Historical legislative and normative analysis
No full textFire has been a widely used tool in habitat and landscape management, mainly associated with land use dynamics of deforestation, pasture renewal, hunting, and reclaiming new agriculture and rangeland areas. Ancient societies followed norms and rules to use fire. However, as these societies developed and land ownership changed, the conflicts generated by using fire triggered the need to regulate this practice by establishing the first laws. Such laws became of a broader type and narrower application over time until the 21st century. This research hypothesises that imposing constraints and regulations on using agro-silvopastoral fire throughout legislation in Portugal did not discourage its traditional use by communities. Through the historical legislative reconstruction of fire uses before Portugal's Foundation until 2021, it was possible to confirm the hypothesis and conclude that a paradigm change is needed by setting up an adequate legal framework for the different uses of fire in the land
Conquest of the River: Proby Cautley, Ganges and the spectre of control
No full textMuch has been written about environmental and agrarian history in South Asia. These documented histories provide a fascinating overview of structural changes that were brought through infrastructural development and modes of colonial governance. However, specific, and advanced forms of interventions were introduced in the 19th century, which was defined by the accelerated scale of exploitation of the environmental landscape. This article offers an account of the Ganges Canal, constructed by drawing the water from the river Ganges under British engineer Proby Cautley in mid-19th century colonial India. The paper revisits his motivations, challenges, and scope of his plan to make two arguments. First, it argues that the engineering model of Cautley reflects his deeper entanglement with the ideals of colonial modernity, such as the control of the natural world. Second, the colossal scale of hydrological experiment with the introduction and processes of canal construction, in turn, transformed the imagination of a river into an object.
 
Empire, Nature and Agrarian World: Preservation in the Kaziranga Game Reserve, India (1902-1938)
No full textBritish India was a laggard in terms of wildlife preservation compared to the British colonies of southern Africa where national parks like Kruger became tourist attraction by the 1920s. This article explains the slow progress of India’s wildlife preservation by locating it in the imperial vision of a rural world with a settled and taxpaying peasantry. The case of the Kaziranga Game Reserve (present-day Kaziranga National Park), constituted in 1908, to preserve the near-extinct Greater One-horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), illustrates how preservation concerns had to gain a foothold among the overarching emphasis on the imperial rural order in a resource frontier.
Locating preservation initiatives in the agrarian world also decentres the view that restoration of the charismatic rhino was the sole outcome of the British Empire’s desire to preserve its natural heritage. The Indian peasants creatively negotiated their usufruct rights in the reserve by appealing to the imperial vision of an agrarian order, and in turn, lending support to the rhino preservation efforts. Bringing the ‘agrarian’ into analysis helps assess the extent of the British Empire’s control over the natural environment in its colonies