ABSTRACT
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, British colonial regimes in Trinidad and Zanzibar sought to shape the urban landscape and public spaces of the two colonies in their interest. Here, I interrogate colonialism’s central urban parks and gardens and the roles that these played in using public space in attempts to shape Trinidadian and Zanzibari society. I then work through the alternative landscapes and urban environments produced by the colonized peoples in both places, including the re-appropriations of these main public spaces, from the colonial into the post-colonial era. I examine central natural spaces created under colonialism in the two urban areas – for Port of Spain (Trinidad), the Queen’s Park Savannah, and the Royal Botanic Garden, and, for Zanzibar, Mnazimmoja Park and Migombani Botanical Gardens – and their post-colonial trajectories. My goals are to use these examples to reiterate the ways in which imperialism and colonialism structured the nature (literally and figuratively) of so many cities of the global South, and then also show the agency of ordinary people in changing this environmental-spatial structure over time. Through this, we see the making of heterogeneous yet highly comparable post-colonial cityscapes and public spaces around the world where the British ruled.
