John M MacKenzie's "The Empire of Nature"

 

The Empire of Nature initiates with a comprehensive exploration of hunting as an integral aspect of European, particularly British, culture. The evolution of hunting from a practical pursuit to a symbolic, ritualized display of dominance over nature and lower social classes is traced. The restrictive hunting laws not only influenced social dynamics but also impacted the landscape, designating extensive areas of British countryside as private game reserves. In the nineteenth century, the hunting ethos in Britain reached its zenith, with an elaborate code of manly conduct being exported as part of imperial culture. The colonial frontier transformed into a hunting frontier, serving as both a paradigm and training ground for imperial rule and racial domination.

 

The intertwining of the study of natural history with hunting in Britain's imperial elite is a key focus. Scientific inquiry and collection were employed to rationalize the killing of exotic game, drawing parallels between the taxonomist's classification drive, imperialist territorial annexation, and capitalist exploitation of natural resources. The study underscores how the Romantic visions inspired by Britain's transformation into a game park fueled an expansionist tendency within the hunting cult, eventually influencing the broader drive for national expansion.

 

While Mackenzie's analysis offers valuable insights into the relationship between hunting, imperialism, and the natural history establishment, it provides limited information on the role of science in exporting the British hunting ethos. The transformation of the game preservation movement into the modern conservation movement is also mentioned briefly. However, by highlighting the overlap between the natural history and hunting elites, Mackenzie sets the stage for a deeper understanding of scientific activities across Britain's formal and informal empires during the nineteenth century.

 

Hunting, as portrayed by Mackenzie, served as a metaphor for the control of nature and native peoples, becoming a central justification for imperialism. The hunter symbolized the intermediary between civilization and barbarism, casting man as both predator and conqueror. The heyday of imperialism coincided with the golden age of blood sports, meat-centric diets, and the fervor for collecting hunting trophies, natural history specimens, and ethnic curios. Mackenzie challenges notions that the dark side of Romanticism celebrated violence, asserting that it, in fact, encouraged hunting. He persuasively argues that the game preservation movement originated directly from the elite hunting cult, rather than arising in opposition to it due to a revolution in bourgeois sensibilities.

 

In the subsequent chapters, Mackenzie presents case studies illustrating the impact of the hunting cult on various British territories in Africa and India. He identifies South Africa as the archetype of the imperial hunting frontier, demonstrating how faunal exploitation patterns observed there were replicated, with variations, in central and east Africa. In India, a similar scenario unfolds, characterized by mounting pressure on game stocks leading to the gradual restriction of access for indigenous hunters. Notably, in Africa, hunting became a financial asset that subsidized imperialism, providing both direct and indirect subsidies through the trade in ivory, hides, horns, meat, and hunting licenses. This economic aid benefited pioneers and garnered goodwill among native populations, facilitating European expansion.

 

However, this economic strategy of "asset stripping" quickly led to the depletion of game resources. The escalating scarcity had two significant outcomes. First, it prompted the further curtailment of native hunting rights, affecting both non-elite Europeans and indigenous populations in Africa and India. This not only deprived these communities of a vital protein source but also eradicated valuable skills and social activities.

 

The second consequence of the overexploitation of game was the emergence of the preservation movement, formalized in 1903 with the establishment of the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire (SPFE). With influential members from aristocratic circles, officials, hunters, and naturalists, the SPFE effectively lobbied the imperial government to create game reserves across British Africa. These reserves, functioning as an empire within an empire, aimed to segregate human and animal habitats, marking a new phase of boundary demarcation analogous to the original carve-up of Africa by European powers. This move was accompanied by pseudo-scientific propaganda about the potential extinction of species, reinforcing the need for conservation measures.

 

In the subsequent years, policies focused on tsetse control further facilitated the expansion of these preserves, inadvertently leading to increased European settlement and the dispossession of Africans. Transitioning from preservation to conservation in the 1930s, British Africa's game reserves evolved into national parks. Originally conceived by the conservative imperial hunting elite, these reserves became accessible to a burgeoning middle class during the interwar years, now more interested in observing animals than hunting them.

 

While Mackenzie meticulously details African developments, a more comprehensive examination of hunting in India, North America, Australasia, and a more rigorous comparison between rival European empires would enrich the narrative. The Empire of Nature, despite some typographical errors and less helpful maps and illustrations, stands as a thought-provoking study that strengthens the connections between various research fields. Mackenzie effectively underscores the significance of both the concept and the reality of empire, emphasizing the enduring challenge posed by the idea of "a vast natural world that lay in some respects beyond the full grasp of British power" for historians of European science, scholars today, and past scientists and hunters alike.