Conveners: Mirjam Hähnle (German Historical Institute London) and Frank Uekötter (Ruhr University Bochum)

Venue: GHIL

With support from the ERC Advanced Grant Project “The Making of Monoculture: A Global History” (MaMoGH)

Environmental knowledge was crucial for colonial development. All pertinent efforts hinged on a decent understanding of natural conditions, human means, and the interaction between the two. At the same time, knowledge was a precarious asset in more than one respect. Colonial expertise was struggling with limited resources until the end, as manpower and financial endowments were never on a par with expert systems for Western societies. Tools and insights were often imported from other geographic realms, raising questions about their relevance for other places with different conditions. As everything else in the colonial world, knowledge was shaped by inherently unequal power relations, racist thinking, and a disdain for indigenous thought and practice. But in spite of these drawbacks, colonial environmental knowledge had to meet high expectations among authorities and Western publics. Development projects grew in scale and sophistication, and they increased in importance for the legitimacy of colonial rule. Even more, expertise was supposed to showcase the superiority of Western civilization. For colonial authorities, failure to understand local environmental conditions raised troubling questions about why they were there at all.

The conference seeks to assemble scholars who are conducting research projects in and beyond history that deal with the vagaries of colonial environmental knowledge from the early modern period to the heyday of imperialism in the 19^th and 20^th century. The overarching goal is a comparative assessment of the potential and the limits of colonial expertise. What were the crucial pillars (institutional and cognitive) of environmental knowledge? Did some colonial powers develop better knowledge systems than others, and if so, what did these differences mean? How did Western expertise interact with and respond to knowledge among the locals? To what extent did knowledge circulate between different geographic realms and different colonial empires, and how did interregional transfers enhance understanding of specific local conditions? Did geographically diverse empires share a set of common environmental challenges, or was the development of colonial knowledge about patchworking individual responses to different challenges with few if any synergies? And what is the place of knowledge in the trajectory of development projects, many of which failed to meet expectations? Was expertise really an asset for development projects, or was it more of an irritant?

Furthermore, the conference seeks to explore how knowledge mattered for the general history of colonialism. There is ground to suspect that knowledge was often fragmented, tentative and contested on multiple fronts, and it is worth inquiring whether these deficiencies played a role in the ultimate failure of colonial rule. Was there a distinct environmental fragility of colonialism in that available expertise frequently failed to provide a decent knowledge base for colonial governance? Did deficient knowledge enhance the notorious insecurity of colonial authorities, hastening the path towards the ultimate collapse of colonial rule? By exploring these questions, the conference explores in a quite literal way the extent to which imperialism made sense.

Conference discussions will be based on precirculated papers. Presenters are expected to send draft papers, whose length should not exceed 12,000 words including footnotes, at least one month before the conference. We plan to publish a selection of papers.

The conference will take place from 18 to 20 May 2027 at the German Historical Institute London. Limited funding is available to support participants’ travel and accommodation expenses; however, full reimbursement cannot be guaranteed. When applying, please indicate whether you have access to alternative sources of funding to cover these costs.

Please send an abstract of up to 500 words and a short CV to m.haehnle@ghil.ac.uk. The deadline is November 16, 2026.