The essays in this volume celebrate Patrick O’Brien's contributions to global economic history and the history of globalization. However, before O’Brien was a global historian, he was a scholar of the British Empire. And one of the central themes of the Global Economic History Network which he organized was “Imperialism and Colonialism.” While this chapter takes the study of imperialism and colonialism in an environmental direction, O’Brien's intellectual commitment to questions of empire serves as an inspiration.

In his Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire, Corey Ross writes, “Without a doubt, European imperialism was a central feature of modern world history… At the same time, the spread of European power was also a central feature of global environmental history.” Ross proceeds to provide us with a magisterial survey of the links between the British, French, Dutch and German empires and environmental change from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth.

The imperial impact on the environment was linked to the new global order that European powers created in the nineteenth century. Tamilnad, the South Indian region that is the focus of this chapter, had been integrated into a global trading system for many centuries. In the nineteenth century, the nature of those links was transformed as its major export shifted from cotton cloth to a range of commodities, including new heat-intensive goods such as iron and sugar. At the same time, new technologies, including the steam engine, and new aesthetic ideas, such as building with exposed brick, transformed the relationship between humans and the environment.

The environmental changes that British rule wrought affected different groups in Tamilnad in different ways and laborers and poor peasants were among the most severely affected. Being economically disadvantaged and politically disempowered, these two groups bore the brunt of the increasingly harsh and impoverished environment. The increasingly unfriendly conditions that emerged under the new British global order reduced the possibilities of self-provisioning, a crucial strategy for survival in Tamilnad. These outcomes illustrate the unequal effects of nineteenth-century globalization under the aegis of British rule.

Labor and Environment

The relationship between laborers and the environment in the past is not a new topic for research and writing.