Free Shipping to all UK customers for orders over £25.00
Free Shipping to all UK customers for orders over £25.00
Free Shipping to all UK customers for orders over £25.00
Product Categories
My Shopping Cart
You shopping cart is empty
You may browse our offerings to locate what you're searching for, then put it in your shopping cart.
Reassembling the Strange
Usually dispatched within 3 - 5 business days.
£ 94.50
This book examines how Westerners understood and processed Madagascar and its environment during the nineteenth century. Madagascar’s unique ecosystem crafted its reputation as a strange place full of unusual species. Westerners, however, often minimized Madagascar’s peculiar features to stress the commonality of its fauna and flora with the world. The attempt to understand the island through science led to a domestication of its environment that created the image of a tame and known world capable of being controlled and used by Western powers. At the heart of the exploration of Madagascar and its transformation in Western eyes from a strange world to a cash crop colony were missionaries and naturalists who relied upon global experiences to master the island by normalizing the peculiar qualities of Madagascar’s environment. This book reveals how the environment played a dominant role in understanding the island and its people, and how current environmental debates have evolved from earlier policies and discussions about the environment.