This paper will explore the continuities between the
"internal colonialisms" of Europe and the more overt imperialisms of the
19th and 20th centuries by discussing the making and unmaking of European
forestry science in India. It will begin by examining the attitudes to
nature and human societies implicit in Continental European forestry science,
the tradition in which successive generations of Indian foresters were
trained. It will then examine the transplantation of European forestry
science in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In doing so,
the paper will apply the work of Karl Polanyi to the history of technology.
It will discuss how the manner in which relations between economy, society
and science were defined in the context of a modernizing Europe in 18th
century compared with the manner in which they were attempted to be redefined
in 19th and 20th century India under both British colonialism and post-colonial
governments. It will argue that despite the obvious and overt differences
between these contexts, they shared what the paper will call "knowledge-economy
matrices" which defined how natural resources were to be deployed to meet
the the needs of the modern state and industry. The paper will then go
on to discuss the implications of these matrices for pre-modern communities,
and the manner in which they related economy, nature and society. Finally,
the paper will briefly explore the "Cognitive Revolutions" that have ensued
in the past two decades of international environmentalism, as new "knowledge-economy
matrices" have emerged, informed by new paradigms of scientific ecology
and a new economics of equity in resource use.