ABSTRACT
Like earlier periods, the age of imperialism had distinctive approaches to nature and landscape. Typical ideas about nature and landscape that we highlight in this chapter, include:
a systematic basis for knowledge of nature; approaches to nature and culture informed by Darwinian ideas of survival of
the fittest; scientific justification of European supremacy as ‘natural’; knowledge of nature formalised in institutions linked to government and
military; knowledge of nature that enables the control and exploitation of resources; progress and improvement becoming a moral, religious and cultural crusade.
The development of European trading and colonial ambitions in Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific, epitomised by Captain James Cook’s three Pacific voyages between 1768 and 1779, encouraged new responses to nature in fields as diverse as painting, horticulture, philosophy and ethnography. The publication of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws in 1748 raised interest in the impact of environmental forces on society and the environmental changes that resulted from
human action (Secondat, 1750). With the revival of Hippocratic thought (see Chapter 4), medical discourse increasingly centred on the interdependence of climate, topography and health. Many diseases were attributed to the effects of ‘miasmas’ resulting from swamps, marshes and damp ground. The new enthusiasms for health spa resorts, sea breezes and coastal resorts further testified to intense preoccupation with both the malign and beneficial effects of the environment (Arnold, 1996, 20). Montesquieu’s ideas about the environment became central for political economy, philosophy, history and geography, with echoes in works such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Hegel’s Philosophy of History (Arnold, 1996, 24). H.T. Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England (1857-61), for example, contrasted European and Asian civilisations. Civilisation in Asia, he believed, had natural advantages, particularly the abundant fertile soil of its vast river basins and deltas. Europe was less favourably endowed, but the skill and energy of its inhabitants had overcome its relative disadvantages. Consequently, Europe’s growing sense of superiority and strength relative to Asia and the rest of the world reflected its unique ability to surmount and subordinate the forces of nature (Arnold, 1996, 25).
