ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 introduces environmental problems. The global environment has been shaped largely by agricultural and industrial activities. The negative effects of modern economic development are threatening the well–being of the humanity. Environmental history shows that they started largely with European colonialism that encouraged the extraction of raw materials for their industrialisation in the name of economic development leading to uncontrolled urbanisation. India being the vastest of all the colonial entities, its rich experience had a pervasive influence on other colonised areas of the world. Urban life in modern India is beset with numerous problems of pollution, health hazards, and many infectious diseases. Madras, the first colonial city founded in 1639, had faced most of them in those days. The negative effects of the city’s modern economic development were minimised by growing green gardens followed by well–planned infrastructural facilities and sound housing policies. The main argument here is that though large–scale rural environmental degradation began in the early modern period with the advent of colonial exploitation of the natural resources, it was the opposite in the coastal cities. Numerous gardens were developed by the ruling EIC; and greenery added beauty to the environmental grandeur of healthy Madras.
