ABSTRACT
The chapter asks how and why development processes were influenced by the African environmental crisis hypothesis. It frames the analysis using environmental history by providing relations between nature and society and empire. It uses event history to track changes in the arguments related to environmental crisis in relation to changes in nature attributed to human induced land use. It examines the links between imperial science and development initiatives across time—thereby scrutinizing historical changes in development and research trends. By dissecting the performance of imperial science theories and methods, it shows that the hypothesis provided a powerful tool at the time, for arguing in favor of colonial land-use and development policies. By contextualizing the discussions in relation to the pre-colonial relations between nature and societies, examining the imperial scientific infrastructure, the origin of the crisis hypothesis and tests to verifying the environmental crisis hypothesis among other topical issues, the chapter shows why imperial science failed to relate to planned development. Further scientific research and experimental work caused far greater damage to the environment than that induced by indigenous land-use activities.
