1. The argument developed in this article is developed at greater length in G. Barton, Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, to be published by Cambridge University Press.
2. See the opening remarks of the Lord Mayor of London and Lord Lovat, The British Empire Forestry Conference (London 1920) 1, 2. The term originated with the first British Empire forestry conference, which met July 7 1920, at the Guildhall, London. From this meeting, held once every four years, grew the Empire Forestry Association, the Imperial Forestry Institute, and the Empire Forestry Journal
3. Radical environmental strains that dissented with scientific forestry existed outside the conservation movement and were often vocal. The conservation movement, as the first phase of environmental practice, contained some of these same radical strains within it. Environmentalism is not here equated with scientific forestry, but rather places scientific forestry as a proximate cause, traced to an imperial setting. To Victorians the word environmentalism denoted the influence of the environment on human behaviour. Here the genealogy of environmentalism is traced to nature management and protection, which included scientific forestry and often (though not always) the dissenting views that later dominated environmental discourse. See F. J. Turner The significance of the frontier in American history, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893 (Washington D.C. 1894) W. Webb The Great Plains (Boston 1931) J. C. Malin The Grassland of North America: Prolegomena to its History (Gloucester, Mass. 1947 For an interesting analysis of the historiography of environmental history in the United States, see M. Williams The relations of environmental history and historical geography, Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994) 3–21; See also R. White American environmental history: the development of a new historical field, Pacific Historical Review 54 (1985) 297–335; W. Cronon Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York 1991 Before the 1960s, environmentalist thought revolved around forests and their preservation. For instance, the journal Forest and Conservation History (founded 1957) only in the 1980s began broadening the concept of environmental history beyond forest issues alone, and is now called the Journal of Environmental History. See M. Williams The relations of environmental history, 3
4. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (New York 1979) defines environmentalism as “Advocacy of the preservation or importance of the natural environment; especially the movement to control pollution.” Pollution control, though not unknown to nineteenth-century environmentalists, defines contemporary environmentalism rather than nineteenth-century environmentalism.
5. Worster defines environmentalism as “a set of environmental ideals demanded by an urban, industrial society. The period from 1860–1915 saw the emergence of these ideals, a body of thought that we can call environmentalism. That man's welfare depends crucially on his physical surroundings was a central premise of the new environmentalism. Another sacred assumption was that it is better for society, through the agency of experts, to design and direct the development of the landscape rather than leave the process in the hands of untrained, self-interested men. Coordinated public planning would end what was viewed as the haphazard and exploitive practices common in the laissez-faire approach. A third dictum of the emerging environmentalism, and perhaps the most important, was the belief that science and scientific methods must become the chief foundation on which environmental plans would be built.” See D. Worster American Environmentalism: The Formative Period, 1860–1915 (London 1973) 2. In this work, Worster equated the conservation movement with environmentalism, asserting as most environmental scholars do, that the conservation of forest lands constituted an early phase of environmentalism—even when those lands were set aside only for issues of timber supply and revenue. Only after World War II did the focus of the environmental movement shift to pollution and health concerns. See Worster, American environmentalism, 85–95.