Green Colonialism in Zimbabwe, 1890-1980 By Vimbai Kwashirai

and inactive state attitudes toward forests all help explain ecological crises in Africa and Asia.⁵⁰

This book illustrates that government attitudes toward forests were never uniform but rather were fluid. Various government officials tried to give equal attention to both exploitation and conservationist policies but found the implementation of a reasonable balance between the two very problematic. There were no clear winners or permanent emphatic victories in the struggle between economic activity and conservationist interests. Depicted here are the subtle realities that defy easy theoretical categorisation. Nonetheless, four rough periods seem to exist during which either exploitation or conservationist processes dominated in the Zambezi teak woodland. The company era, discussed in chapters 4 and 5, was characterised by overexploitation. Such overuse of resources generated official awareness of the need for regulation and gave rise to the preponderance of conservationist ideas during the 1930s, as illustrated in chapter 6. However, a high demand for hardwood timber during the Second World War eroded these gains, and overexploitation was again permitted but also stimulated wider concern and made more people environmentally conscious. In the 1950s and 1960s, conservationist ideas became dominant due to the permanent presence and growing influence of conservationists as well as the growth of the Forestry Department, providing checks and balances to capitalist exploitation. Yet exploitation and conservation remained two sides of the same coin, shaped and constantly modified by conflict and accommodation within those periods.

Colonial Agriculture and Forests

Poore notes that agricultural economic development based on forest clearance was possible with limited environmental impact in temperate and moderate climates but damaged the environment in African tropical areas.⁵¹ Over the last two thousand years, deciduous summer forest cover has been reduced to grassland in most countries of Western Europe, but with apparently less disastrous consequences than in the African tropics.⁵² Boughey says fire and other forms of biotic interference, such as