ABSTRACT
For evident contemporary reasons, ecological and environmental issues have drawn ever increasing attention from historians. Imperial and colonial studies are no exception, and are indeed in the forefront of these issues. Richard Grove has been one of the most important pioneers. Environmental deterioration particularly threatened the island economies and the security of supplies for the ships of the new European companies trading to India. The responses of the different nations and their companies to the process were not uniform in character. The initiation of a major programme of conservation on Mauritius arose out of the coincidence of a specialised set of circumstances very specifically related to the objectives and structures of the French polity. Early colonial conservation policies were almost always perceived as being a legitimate concern of the state rather than of the individual.
