Africanists have long criticized the social construction, and consequences, of technical knowledge. Colonial science was seen as a particularly problematic enterprise, moulded by authoritarian colonial states, wherein science ‘delineated the relationship of power and authority between rulers...

This book is the result of a collaborative effort in which environmental historians from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa came together to offer new perspectives on the new and somehow intriguing entity. These scholars forged a dialogue from their own historical traditions to find...