Contents
Maps
Photos
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Approaches to environmental change
Models of environmental change
The modernization paradigm
The declinist paradigm
The inclinist paradigm
Paradoxes of environmental change
Tree castles and population bombs
Tree castles and insecurity on the eve of colonial conquest
Portuguese violence and population fight into Ovamboland
Internal migration in South Africa’s Ovamboland
Tree castles and deforestation in the 1920s to 1940s
Colonial concerns about overpopulation
Population growth in Ovamboland
Woody vegetation resources by the close of the twentieth century
Conquest of Nature: Imperial political ecologies
The political ecology of insecurity
Indirect environmental rule
The colonial conquest of Nature: Direct environmental rule
Fierce species: Biological imperialism
Invading microbes and virgin soil epizootics
Invading microbes and virgin soil epidemics
A plague of donkeys: Fierce invading equines
Fierce indigenous creatures on the rampage
Guns, hoes and steel: Techno-environmental determinism
Guns
Steel tools
Steel plows
Guns and steel in north-central Namibia
Naturalizing cattle culture: Colonialism as a deglobalizing and decommodifying force
The cattle complex and environmental degradation
Ovambo cattle as global commodities
Overstocking and biological time bombs
Colonial barriers: Conservation and fences
Grazing pressure and desertification
Livestock and deforestation
Commodification, deglobalization and deforestation
The Palenque paradox: Beyond Nature-to-Culture
Bush cities and the bush
‘Bushmen’ and the bush
The Ovambo paradox and environmental pluralism
Deforestation in Ovamboland
Reforestation in Ovamboland
Environmental pluralism: Multiprocessual asynchronous environmental change
Bibliography
Index