Understanding the Transformation of Colonial Darjeeling Hills Through the Study of South Asian Environmental History

Abstract

While initiating the search for o causal relation between human society and nature, scholars have been able to establish environmental history as an enticing field of academic enquiry. Within the general historiographical discourse on environmental history, two broad trends seem discernable: the American tradition and the French tradition. While the former thrusts upon the dialectics of environmental destruction/ degradation and conservation, with a focus on 'deep' ecology observing nature as possessing intrinsic value in itself which alone entitles it to be preserved and 'shallow' ecology, emphasizing preservation of nature because of its potential as a 'resource' for the use of humansthe latter, represented by the Annales School of France, contradicts the American tradition of perennial changes occurring in the environment. The Annalists attempted to explain social and economic changes in an environmental setting that was subject to slow pace of observable change or no change.