he Ari

istory, Pow
History for a Sustainable Future The Arid Lands
Michael Egan, series editor; Peter S. Alagona, Benjamin R.
lana K. Da Cohen, and Adam M. Sowards, associate editors History, Power, Knowledge
Derek Wall, The Commons in History: Culture, Conflict, and Ecology
eserts are C;
orthless pia
Frank Uekötter, The Greenest Nation? A New History of German
Environmentalism
ent. This un
esertificatio Brett Bennett, Plantations and Protected Areas: A Global History of
ampaign dri
Forest Management
n this book, Diana K. Davis, The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge
esertificatior Diana K. Davis
ind that de
about. 41 % o'
-Aient and bí

i-tany indigen
1ea.nwhile,
programs an
,pith little suc
nients are n
cal dynamìcE
Davis sh
wastelands
Anglo-Euro
;Nions had
the land.
uently inf
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rait thinkir
(,, Our c:onc(
The MIT Press
ris) and de
Cambridge, Massachusetts
undei standis
London, England
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In/1n.rrt
 I-listory, Pow Very little rain falls in the land of Assyria [Iraq].... Of all the lands
that we know, this is far the most fertile for Demeter's crop [grains]. Contents
Diana K. Davi Herodotus, c. 440 BCE

Present wastelands and sandy deserts were fertile lands in former ages
)exerts are c
[and] the condition might be reversed.
.1vorthless pl,
Trent. This ur George Hakewill, 1627
aesertificatio
;ampaign dri A single forest [planted in Arabia] in the middle of these burning
deserts would be adequate to temper them, by leading rain to them.
n this book,
esertificatio Buffon, 1778
nd that de, List of Illustrations ix
ï about 41 % o Before him lay original nature in her wild and sublime beauty. Behind
him he leaves a desert, a deformed and ruined land. Foreword by Michael Egan xi
:iiient and bi
Preface xvii
nany indigen Schieiden, 1848
List of Abbreviations xxi
eanwhile, c
rograms an( Desertification ... is purely artificial.... It [is] caused uniquely by hu-
man action. 1 Deserts, Dogma, and Dryland Development Policy 1
ith little suc
nents are no Lavauden,1927 2 Strange, Wonderful, and Scary: Deserts in the Classical,
;al dynamics Early Christian, and Medieval Worlds 23
Davis sh The United Nations ... could be considered to have created desertifi-
3 Exploration, Desiccation, and Improvement 49
wastelands d, cation, the institutional myth.
Anglo-Europe Thomas and Middleton, 1994 4 Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 81
Bions had be 5 The Twentieth Century: Desertification Comes
the land. Unf Let deserts be. of Age 117
quently infor El-Baz, 2008
and environm 6 Conclusion: Embracing Variability in the Twenty-first
our ondersta Ergs are like waves in the desert and the desert is like the beach with- Century 155
of the classic out the sea.
desert with si Notes 177
Max and Corbin, 2015
sun7ptiorrs of Index 263
our thinking a
to our conce
erts) and d
understandi
leiut variabi
need impr
a more su
cent drylan
The Ari
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Illustrations
Diana K. Dav

Deserts are
worthless pl
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desertificatio
campaign dri
In this book,
desertificatio
and that de
Figures
about 41 % o
si►lent and bi
1.1 UNEPIUNCOD global desertification map 3
many indigen
Meanwhile, 1.2 Failed "reforestation" in Morocco 6
programs an 1.3 Global Deserts and Drylands Map 11
with little suc
1.4 Drylands Variability Map 16
ments are no
cal dynamics 2.1 Herodotus's world map 26
Davis sh 2.2 Macrobius's zonal map 32
wastelands d
2.3 Detail of Ptolemy's world map 46
Anglo-Europ
gions had be 3.1 Varenius, Geographia generalis, title page 58
the land. Un 3.2 Desert dot symbol, Ricci map 60
quentiy inforr
and environr
3.3 Ile-de-France, Vue de la Montagne de Pieter Bot 66
our ondersta 3.4 Rauch, Harmonie hydro-végétale et météorologique,
of the classic frontispiece 68
desert with s 3.5 Dunes and wastes of the Born region 77
st,trnptíons of
our thinking . 4.1 "Another view of Lake Valencia" 83
to our conce 4.2 A nomad tent 96
erts) and de 4.3 "The Sahara" 101
understandin
but variable 4.4 "Moffat's House at ICuruman" 103
need improv
a more sust
cent dryland
 x Illustrations

e Ai
History, Po 4.5 Rajasthan pastoralists 111
5.1 "A Desert Tree" 120
Foreword
Diana K. Da
5.2 "Point Reached by the Sahara 3 miles north of Michael Egan
Deserts a Maradi" 129
worthless 5.3 "Alcove Lands and Bad Lands south of the Uinta
ment. Thi Mountains" 138
desertifìc.
5.4 "Men against the Desert" 150
campaign
In this bo 6.1 Nomads near Lake Faguibine, Mali 157
desertific 6.2 Cartoon of Mohamed Kassas holding back the
and that desert 159 We creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an and land,
about 410 even though we often seem to guide and rule you.
6.3 Pastoralists in Mali near Timbuktu 165
silient an Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund: A Novel
many indi
Meanwhil Color plates
Did you have a good Pleistocene? The Australian polymath
programs
with little 1 Afghan nomad boy with camels in eastern Afghanistan George Seddon asked this question as part of his geological
ments ar history of Australia.
2 Singing Mountain in the Gobi Desert, China
cal dyna It has long seemed to me that when the continents are being handed
3 Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Davis out, the question one should press hard is "Did you have a good Pleis-
wastelan 4 Dr. Isaac Fanous, Saint Anthony the Great tocene?," because glaciers and continental ice-sheets are among the
Anglo-Eu 5 Jean-Leon Gérôme, Napoléon devant le Sphinx great soil-makers, grinding up fresh rock full of nutrients most plants
gions ha need. The Pleistocene gave America the Great Plains, China its fertile
6 "Aspects of Nature in Different Latitudes" loess, and much of central Europe its good soils. Glaciers, with their
the land.
quently in o 7 "The Land that Became a Desert" deep V-shaped valleys, also provide good dam sites and, when they
and environ meet the sea, deep harbours.'
8 Oulad Rachid pastoralists in the region of Gu6ra, Chad
our underst, In some sense, Diana Davis's book examines the relatively
of the class recent history of the regions of the world that had a "bad"
desert with Pleistocene: those places where good earth and ample waters
suj nptions
have always been scarce. But her history of deserts, desertifica-
Our thinking
tion, and and lands is no deterministic account of deserts on
to our cone
the march or landscapes on the brink. Rather than compare
erts) and d
understandi and bemoan a series of satellite images of receding lakes and
but variabl seas the world over, The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowl-
need impr edge offers a much more nuanced interpretation. Inasmuch as
a more sus
cent drylan
Imperialism and the Desert
Blame Game

By the turn of the nineteenth century, all of the pieces of desic-

cation theory were in place, if not yet widely disseminated, to
facilitate the interpretation of deserts and arid regions as ruined
landscapes, and especially as destroyed forests. Desiccation
theory experienced significant refinement over this century,
transforming from budding ideas in the late eighteenth century
that drew connections between forests and rainfall in isolated
settings to a dominant ideology of global environmental decline
b,v the last half of the nineteenth century. Despite some con-
tinuing debate among foresters, scientists, and savants, the
notion that deforestation caused desiccation and deserts
became ubiquitous and highly influential. In the words of
geographer Michael Williams, "deforestation and consequent
aridity was one of the greatest `lessons of history' that every
literate person knew" as the nineteenth century progressed.'
The period of intense western imperialism/colonialism that
occurred during the nineteenth century played a large role in
the evolution and spread of these ideas. With increased western
experiences in foreign lands came a shift in notions of who
caused the worst environmental damage and what should be
done about it. Earlier, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries, blame for the creation of sterile, arid regions was placed
on European colonial activities such as plantation agriculture
 :- 0s'"L'~`..'•''.~Fr'.'"g.

82 Chapter 4 Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 83

and logging nearly as frequently as on "native" land manage-

ment practices. Beginning in the early nineteenth century,
though, culpability for apparent environmental destruction
was primarily apportioned to the indigenous, local populations
with troubling regularity. Missionaries, colonial administra-
tors, explorers, some scientists, foresters, government officials,
military personnel, and others frequently invoked desiccation
theory, usually blaming indigenous activities for creating
deserts and desertlike conditions. As the century progressed,
colonial environmental policies from rangeland to forest man-
agement plans to irrigation and agricultural development were
increasingly informed by the belief that most deserts were des-
iccated former forests. It was in large part due to their experi-
ences in colonial/imperial territories that Europeans, especially
the French and the British, so strongly came to perceive deserts
as former, ruined forests in urgent need of repair. Such imperial
Oh'a vista del lago de Valencia
notions of arid lands laid the groundwork for the vast majority
of policies at the national and international levels for develop- Figure 4.1
ment in arid lands well into the twentieth century. "Another view of Lake Valencia." This sketch shows both vegetated
and unvegetated areas of the lake's basin. Source: Jorge Campos,
Globalizing Desiccation Bolívar: Biografia ilustrada (Barcelona: Ediciones Destino, 1963), 49.
Reproduced with permission.
The work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the pro-
lific and well-traveled German geographer, is widely cited as 1799-1804, Humboldt deduced that the level of Lake Valencia
proving the link between deforestation and desiccation as well in Venezuela had dropped sharply due not only to increased
as to globalizing this idea, and expanding desiccation theory cultivation but also to extensive deforestation of the hills and
from isolated tropical islands to a global, continental basis. mountains surrounding the lake (see figure 4.1).1 The combi-
Humboldt's descriptions and scientific studies, especially of nation of deforestation with increases in irrigated agriculture,
South America but also of Central Asia, provided analyses and Humboldt wrote, "drove the plain into desert" and threatened
~«~~,~
ideas that many learned people in the nineteenth century to turn the whole basin into "a dry desert."' He further asserted,
;
7"
accepted as proving that deforestation leads to desiccation, and in a very frequently quoted sentence, that "by the felling of
1ú:ti
frequently to the creation of deserts. In the 1819 tome of his trees, that cover the tops and the sides of mountains, men in
multivolume publication Personal Narrative of Travels to the every climate prepare at once two calamities for future genera-
Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years tions; the want of fuel and a scarcity of water.114
~!
00
84 Chapter 4
In his previous book, Aspects of Nature, published more
than a decade earlier in 1808, however, Humboldt did not
describe any deforestation or related desiccation of Lake Valen-
cia, although he did mention the loss of water by evaporation.'
Recent scientific research reveals that the level of Lake Valen-
cia has fluctuated dramatically during the Holocene and that
the average level of the lake has been declining for the last
three thousand years, since approximately 1000 BCE.6 It is
much more likely that the increases in irrigated agriculture,
which completely utilized most of the streams feeding the lake,
accentuated the decline of the lake waters noted by Humboldt
rather than deforestation. As Humboldt noted, other factors
also played a role, including the fact that a major river, the Pao,
had been entirely diverted away from the lake a century earlier,
and the whole region had been experiencing drought for at
least the last decade.7 Later authors, however, privileged the
deforestation aspect of this work.
In his extremely popular Aspects of Nature, Humboldt also
described the "dreadful desert" of the Sahara, "uninhabitable
by man."' He explained, though, in the first edition that the
Sahara exists due to hot winds and to "the absence of large riv-
ers, of lakes, and of high mountains."9 In the later editions of
this book, it is clear that Humboldt had become more inter-
ested in deforestation and desiccation, as he changed this sen-
tence about the Sahara to read: "the absence or comparative
paucity in Africa of large rivers, of widely extended forests pro-
ducing coolness and exhaling moisture, and of lofty moun-
tains."10 He did not, however, directly blame deforestation for
creating the Sahara in any editions of this volume. It appears,
then, that Humboldt likely became attuned to desiccation the-
ory sometime between 1809 and 1819.
After returning from his explorations in the New World in
1804, Humboldt moved to Paris in 1808, where he remained
for nearly two decades and wrote many of his famous
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 8S
books. He read widely in the current literature, including
the writings of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand,
German explorer Georg Forster (1754-1794), and many oth-
ers whom he cites in Aspects of Nature and his other works.
Humboldt may have read the work of Rauch, and he may also
have been aware of Pierre Poivre's ideas on deforestation
and desiccation." It would have been difficult for him to
escape exposure to the desiccationist arguments that were
becoming widespread in France at the turn of the nineteenth
century.
A combination of events in France around that time con-
verged to focus the country's attention on fears of deforesta-
tion and changes in rainfall and climate. The revolution had
loosened restrictions over the forests, leading to more forest
clearance at roughly the same time that the sand dunes of the
Landes were being (re)forested.12 Napoleon's invasion of Egypt
focused attention on deserts and sand dunes abroad as well as
on the supposed degradation of a formerly fertile, brilliant, and
prosperous country.13 The severe drought that occurred during
the summer of 1800 further fanned the flames of fear over
deforestation and desiccation. French chemist and agronomist
Antoine-Alexis Cadet de Vaux (1743-1828), for instance, wor-
ried in the Moniteur Universel, during the hot, dry summer of
1800, that due to deforestation "we are devoured by drought.
... By altering Earth's surface we have changed atmosphere
and seasons.... [Our existence] is linked to the fate of the for-
ests."14 The late-eighteenth-century publications of Buffon,
Poivre, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, combined with works
such as those of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799)
relating deforestation to the lowering of Lake Geneva, and
Jean Antoine Fabre (1749-1834) relating deforestation to tor-
rents in the French Alps, set the stage for desiccation theory to
develop more rapidly and widely in France than perhaps any-
where else.ls
86 Chapter 4
To be sure, interest in the connection between trees and
rainfall/climate was not limited to the French; as discussed in
the last chapter, there was much interest in England and other
European countries, including Germany and Italy.16 But, as
German forestry scientist Franz Heske wrote, "to the French
belongs the credit for having first recognized and safe-guarded
by law some of these effects [on climate, water conservation,
and hygiene] of the forest."" Indeed, French savants, many
associated with the Museum of Natural History, made widely
influential revolutionary arguments about trees and forests
creating healthy, reforming climates that would improve both
agricultural production and the citizenry.18 Cadet de Vaux
made this point in alarmist terms in 1799 when he published a
letter he had sent to the French government arguing passion-
ately against the sale of national forests in the wake of the
revolution. He warned that if France did not remedy the "dev-
astation" of its forests, it would become a sterile desert like
those provinces of Africa and Asia which had once been the
fertile granaries of Europe but were now the most "frightful
deserts ... [with] burning and and soil."" He attributed the
current degraded state of Southwest Asia and North Africa to
deforestation, invoking Le Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier and his
fruitless search for Homer's river Scamander in western Anato-
lia.20 Cadet de Vaux asserted that Choiseul-Gouffier could not
find the Scamander because this formerly large river had
become dried out due to what he believed had been the defor-
estation of Mount Ida, which contained its headwaters .21 The
intellectual milieu in France at the turn of the nineteenth cen-
tury thus allowed several thinkers there to formulate elaborate
desiccationist arguments years before Humboldt had published
on the desiccation of Lake Valencia. It is likely that some of
them influenced Humboldt's thinking about deforestation, cli-
mate, and aridification.
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 87
One of the prime practitioners of this kind of pre-
Humboldtian writing on desiccation was François-Antoine
Rauch, the geographer and engineer whose 1802 book Harmo-
nie hydro-végétale became widely cited and enjoyed a second
edition 16 years later.22 In many of his writings, Rauch empha-
sized repeatedly that deforestation leads to decreased rainfall
and to the creation of and conditions and deserts, and cited
examples from the great desert regions of Africa and Asia,
what today is called the Middle East. As one of the earliest
examples of the relation between trees and rainfall, Rauch
pointed to the deforestation and desiccation of the Isle de
France (Mauritius) from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Études de
la nature .21 He also repeated the example of Choiseul-Gouffier's
search for the Scamander, explaining, as had Cadet de Vaux,
that the river was desiccated by the deforestation of Mount
Ida's cedars .24
This kind of desiccationist thinking about deserts was wide-
spread enough to attract the attention of other writers who
were neither scientists nor foresters. Chateaubriand, for exam-
ple, who became a friend of Humboldt's, was influenced deeply
by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre early in his career.25 In the decade
before Humboldt published on the desiccation of Lake Valen-
cia, Chateaubriand was warning of deforestation and desicca-
tion in Palestine and Arabia, both in his publications and in his
arguments before the Chambre de Paris .26
These ideas about deforestation, desiccation, and deserts
were popularized throughout the nineteenth century and
became the widely believed received wisdom of the century
that few questioned .21 In 1817, the influential agronomist Jean-
Baptiste Rougier de la Bergerie (1757-1836) claimed, for
example, that the deforested Mount Lebanon, the "pride of the
Orient" and the "fertility of the Euphrates," had become, since
its famous cedars had disappeared, "nothing more than the
 88 Chapter 4
king of ruins and of deserts."28 In 1820, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
(1744-1829), the famous French naturalist, cautioned that "by
destroying everywhere the large plants ... [man] rapidly causes
the sterility of the soil he inhabits, causes the streams to dry up,
... and makes large parts of the globe, earlier very fertile and
populated in all respects, now bare, sterile, uninhabitable and
deserted.... [M]an is destined to exterminate himself after hav-
ing rendered the earth uninhabitable ."29 Likewise, the powerful
forester Jacques-Joseph Baudrillart (1774-1832) warned in
1823 that France would become a "vast desert comparable to
that which is today Asia Minor, Judea, Egypt, Greece and many
other countries formerly flourishing and only recognizable
today by their ruins" if deforestation were not stopped.30 And
French agricultural chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault (1802-
1887) wrote an essay in 1837 on the influence of deforestation,
in which he stated definitively: "for me, it is an established fact
that an extensive clearing [of woods] diminishes the annual
quantity of rain that falls on a country."31
Boussingault in particular is credited with extending the
deforestation/desiccation theory and disseminating it widely. 32
Boussingault made his own extensive observations in South
America, including in the Valencia basin, and used these as well
as de Saussure's and Humboldt's work to draw his conclusions.
He elaborated upon Humboldt's assertions about Lake Valen-
cia in his very popular and widely read 1843 book on the rural
economy.33 In this influential volume, translated into English as
Rural Economy in Its Relations with Chemistry, Physics, and
Meteorology, Boussingault also used the example of the coastal
desert of Peru to illustrate his seven general conclusions about
deforestation and desiccation. In contrasting the lush, forested
environments of the northwest coast of Latin America from
Panama to Colombia and Ecuador, he explains that in the port
town of Parta, "the forests have entirely disappeared, the soil is
sandy, agriculture scarcely exists, and here rain is almost
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 89
unknown. The same want of rain is common in the whole of
the country which surrounds the desert of Sechura, and extends
to Lima."34 Boussingault believed that this arid coastal desert
strip was once forested and that this example, among others
related previously, demonstrate, as he makes clear in the final
sentence of the book, that "it may be presumed that clearing
off the forests does actually diminish the mean annual quantity
of rain ."31 However, recent studies have found that the Ata-
cama Desert, of which this region of Peru is a part, has been
hyperarid for approximately the last two million years, and
these deserts have nothing to do with deforestation but were
caused by changes in the Pacific El Nino system.36
By the mid-nineteenth century, the deforestation/desiccation
theory of desert formation was well established in France and
elsewhere in Europe, as many examples attest. The English
translation of Boussingault's book, for instance, contained a
final editorial footnote stating that in Australia, if "every knoll
within a hundred miles of Sydney [could] be crowned with a
thick screen of leafy trees, there can be little doubt that ... the
beds of rivers, instead of being dry for eight or nine months,
would be occupied all the year round by at least a moderate
stream of water."17 In 1847, German chemist Carl Fraas (1810-
1875) wrote of the deforestation and aridification of the
Levant, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Persia.38 The next year, the
influential German botanist Matthias Schleiden (1804-1881)
also described Egypt, Syria, Persia, etc. as deforested and desic-
cated deserts and warned that "a broad band of waste land
follows gradually in the steps of cultivation.... Before [man]
lay original Nature in her wild but sublime beauty. Behind him
he leaves the Desert, a deformed and ruined land; for ...
thoughtless squandering of vegetable treasures have destroyed
the character of Nature."39 Also in 1848, Edward Balfour
(1813-1889), an influential British surgeon in the Indian Army,
wrote in a widely circulated letter to the Indian government
90 Chapter 4
that based on the scientific facts available, no other conclusion
can be reached "than that the abundant or scanty supply of
rain depends on the number or scarcity of trees, and that the
quantity of rain which falls alters as the trees are diminished or
increased ."41 Balfour quoted extensively from the works of
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Humboldt, and Boussingault, among
others, in this long report, which developed 12 principles
regarding deforestation and desiccation. He concluded that in
India, all "unproductive" lands should be planted with trees to
improve the climate and prevent famines.
In 1853, French scientist Antoine Becquerel (1788-1878)
answered the question, "to what cause do we attribute the for-
mation of these vast deserts of the interior of Africa? Defores-
tation."'' Then, following an impassioned discourse about the
immensity of the belt of deserts stretching from the Atlantic,
across the Sahara, and all the way to the deserts of western
China, he concluded that "incontestable historic documents"
had proven that "many parts [of these desert regions] were
wooded at a certain epoch and covered with a beautiful vegeta-
tion, and that deforestation had converted them into lands
stricken with the sterility of today.1142 Becquerel did not identify
the incontestable historic documents to which he alluded here,
but he did cite Bremontier on the Landes dunes in this chapter
on deserts and he cited Boussingault and Humboldt repeatedly
in this section. Becquerel also used the trope of Choiseul-
Gouffier's search for the Scamander River to bolster his desic-
cationist arguments for the general region. He concluded that
the heart of the Middle East, Assyria, "had already been defor-
ested as it is today" since the time of Strabo.41 This region,
today's Iraq, however, has never been forested, other than some
scant riverine growth, and has been so arid as to require irriga-
tion for any crop production since at least 6,000 BCE when the
first civilizations began to appear in the region.44
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 91
Writing on the dangers of deforestation and flooding in the
Provencal Alps, agronomist Charles de Ribbe (1827-1899)
warned in 1857, quoting J6r6me Blanqui, that due to defores-
tation in several of the local valleys "and the Arabia Petraea of
the High Alps that we call Dévoluy, ... in 50 years France will
be separated from the Piedmont, like Egypt and Syria, by a
desert.1141 A few years later, in 1862, French scientist Jules Clavé
(1826—c. 1902) made clear the full implications of desiccation
theory, including the climate benefits of reforestation, when he
noted that "the terrible droughts which desolate the Cape
Verde islands must also be attributed to the destruction of the
forests. In the island of St. Helena, where the wooded surface
has been considerably extended within a few years, it has been
observed that the rain has increased in the same proportion....
In Egypt, recent plantations have caused rains, which hitherto
were almost unknown.1146 The rainfall that Clavé argues was
due to the establishment of plantations in Egypt came at an
unusual time of above normal rainfall in North Africa, includ-
ing Egypt, according to the ecological records. In fact, the claim
that Egyptian plantations had increased the rainfall had already
been well refuted by the time Clav6 was writing.47
Given the ubiquity of the deforestation/desiccation narra-
tive in much of Europe for arid lands in the mid-nineteenth
century, it is notable that Charles Darwin (1809-1882) held
some rather different ideas about deserts and their formation.
Fully cognizant of the power of "received wisdom" about
nature, he volunteered in his 1845 account of the five-year
Beagle expedition that "as the force of impressions generally
depends on pre-conceived ideas, I may add, that mine were
taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal Narrative of
Humboldt."" Darwin then described various arid regions in
Latin America including Patagonia as "arid wastes" and as
"wretched and useless ... without water, without trees, without
92 Chapter 4
mountains.1141 He wondered why these landscapes have left
such a powerful and lasting memory in his mind, especially
since "the picturesque beauty of many parts of Europe exceeds
anything which we beheld [on the voyage]."50 It is perhaps, all
the more surprising then, that the deforestation/desiccation
narrative does not appear to have influenced Darwin, at least
at this time. Elsewhere in this volume he described the "first
true desert" he had ever seen, a part of the Atacama Desert in
southern Peru and northern Chile near Iquique, writing that
"the whole is utterly desert. A light shower of rain falls only
once in very many years."51 In contrast to many writers of the
period, especially Boussingault who deduced that the northern
part of this coastal desert region had suffered deforestation
and subsequent desert formation, Darwin noted instead how
"extraordinarily dry the climate must have been for a long
period." 52 These desert musings by Darwin, though, were not
noticed or repeated by many in the nineteenth century.
The prevailing sentiments regarding deserts and their ori-
gins at midcentury, however, were perhaps best exemplified by
the polyglot American, George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882).
Marsh, a politician born in Vermont, had lived in Europe and
was the US minister to Turkey for several years at midcentury.
He also traveled through Egypt and Palestine before returning
to the United States in 1854. The final two decades of his life,
1861-1882, he spent in Italy serving as foreign minister and
ambassador. His views were influenced by what he believed
to be the "ruined landscape" of much of the Mediterranean
basin. His influential 1864 book Man and Nature, drawing on
a very wide range of European and other sources, made clear
the primacy of forests in Anglo-European environmental
thought at midcentury when he proclaimed, "there is good
reason to believe that the surface of the habitable earth, in all
the climates and regions ... was, with few exceptions, already
covered with a forest growth when it first became the home
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 93
of man."53 He further asserted, "I am convinced that forests
would soon cover many parts of the Arabian and African
deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat
and the camel, were banished from them."54 In singling out the
goat and the camel, both highly adapted to arid environments
and extremely useful to nomads and others living in desert
environments, Marsh highlights that indigenous peoples and
local practices were increasingly seen as the biggest cause of
deserts.
In fact, anti-nomad sentiment was widespread in Europe at
this time, particularly in France, and had been for at least a
century if not longer. The origins of this attitude are complex
and related to several factors, including the anti-fire attitudes
that had been widespread in Europe for a long time and cur-
rent theories about the stages of civilization, which became
commonly accepted in the eighteenth century, in which mobile
peoples such as nomads occupied nearly the lowest rank."
Long-standing European anxiety about "barbarian inva-
sions" further bolstered negative views of nomads. Although
European fears of nomadic invasions can be traced at least to
the ancient Greeks, the eighteenth century marked a significant
turning point in attitudes toward the nomadic tribes of Central
Asia. Whereas earlier many in Europe had held a begrudging
respect for the "nomadic barbarians" like the Tartars and the
Mongols and their leaders, during the eighteenth century these
people became reviled for their devastation. The prominent
historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), for example, wrote in
1776 of these "barbarians" that "from the Caspian to the
Indus, they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, ... that five
centuries have not been sufficient to repair."56 As Montesquieu
had written a quarter of a century earlier, Gibbon indicated
that these nomadic invaders had arisen from the deserts of
Central Asia and destroyed everything in their path, including
the environment, creating wastelands as they swept west to the
94 Cbapter 4
Mediterranean region.57 Such negative views of nomads and
their environmental effects became more popular and more
generalized over the course of the nineteenth century, helped by
such influential figures as Humboldt. In all editions of his
Aspects of Nature (1808 to 1849), for instance, Humboldt
wrote that the pastoral nations of Central Asia "have proved
the source from which devastation has spread over distant
lands.... Thus went forth from the Mongolian deserts a deadly
blast which withered ... [and desolated] those fair and fertile
fields" from the Volga River in Russia to the Po in Italy.58
By the early nineteenth century, then, anti-nomad senti-
ments and the theory of deforestation, desiccation, and desert
formation were well established in Europe. With the expansion
of western imperialism, however, particularly in Africa and
Asia, a great many deserts came to be understood widely as
ruined environments, as formerly fertile and/or forested lands
that had been "desertified."59 The brunt of the blame for per-
ceived desertification, moreover, was shifted nearly entirely to
indigenous populations in subjugated lands as a result of these
imperial adventures, in ways that had long-lasting impacts on
agriculture, forestry, range management, and conservation."
French Colonial North Africa
The experiences of the French in colonial North Africa and the
Sahara provide a particularly important example of how the
incipient conception of desertification was deployed and fur-
ther evolved during the nineteenth century and into the twenti-
eth, when the word "desertification" was coined by a French
forester. As early as the 1830s, desiccation/desertification nar-
ratives blaming the local North Africans, in particular the
nomads and other pastoralists, were developed and then used
by the colonists and the colonial state to implement many of
their goals. Although contested by several figures during
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 9S
the colonial period, the desiccation/desertification narrative
became increasingly influential as the occupation continued,
finally becoming dominant by the 1870s. The desertification
narrative predominated in French North Africa until indepen-
dence and beyond, in large part because it was so useful to so
many in positions of power who used it to justify their actions.61
When the French invaded Algiers in the summer of 1830,
they came with the belief, based on their reading of ancient
classical sources, that North Africa had been the granary of
Rome, a lush environment with thick forests and fertile soils.
Most of the French colonial actors thus misinterpreted the
landscapes they found beyond the coastal and mountain zones
as severely deforested and desertified, since they were arid and
semiarid regions. A majority of those French in positions of
power or influence blamed the local North Africans, especially
the nomadic pastoralists whom they believed were the descen-
dants of the tribes of the eleventh-century nomadic "Hillalian
invasions," for the presumed environmental destruction. 62
By 1834, the year the French government fully committed to
colonial occupation, nomads were being blamed for destroying
the environment. M. Poinçot, the leader of a cavalry troop in
Algeria, stated in an 1834 report that "during all the time that
you have occupied the soil, it [the soil] has been destroyed
because you are nomads.1163 Several years later, an advisor of
the French government and former Icing's commissioner in
Algeria, Baron Jean-Jacques Baude (1792-1862), elaborated
on the damage to the environment by Arab land use. He wrote,
in 1841, that the deforestation of mountains by fires and graz-
ing had caused a great many fountains and springs to dry up,
and stated that "the state of the springs and waters of a coun-
try is, in effect, essentially subordinated to that of the vegeta-
tion, particularly that of woods." 64 These attitudes and beliefs
were widespread and found outside of the academy and the
halls of government in the popular press. A new, highly
96 Chapter 4
f e\
(Tente arabe.)
Figure 4.2
A nomad tent is depicted in this magazine illustration, with several
kinds of livestock and a lone palm tree with a few weeds and sparse
grass emphasizing the "barrenness" of the desert. Source: Anonymous,
"Algérie: Description géographique," L'Illustration, no. 8 (April 22,
1843): 124.
illustrated popular French magazine, for example, carried a
long story in 1843 about Algeria (see figure 4.2), describing
"the nearly complete nudity and the general deforestation of
the part of the province [of Oran] next to the sea" as "a dis-
agreeable sight. The nomad populations that range over the
country are the cause of this desolation. The Arabs never plant,
but constantly destroy by grazing livestock and burning pas-
tures."65 Such claims of degradation and deforestation were
marshalled to legitimize sedentarizing nomads and confiscat-
ing land from this date until Algeria gained independence in
1962. In 1845, for instance, a model village was constructed
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 97
for the primary purpose of "the progressive fixation of the
Arab people [nomads] to the soil" in order to control them and
curb their destructive habits.16
In 1847, the narrative blaming indigenous inhabitants for
the deforestation and desiccation of North Africa was institu-
tionalized in the first of two volumes on the medical sciences
and public health that composed a section of the 39-volume
Exploration scientifique de l'Algérie, the encyclopedic study of
Algeria commissioned by the French government. Nomads and
their livestock were portrayed as particularly destructive and
were blamed for widespread deforestation and desiccation by
the physician who wrote these two volumes, Jean Andre
Napoleon Périer (1806-1880). An adherent of the desiccation/
desertification theory, which he described in the first chapter,
Périer also included a detailed description of what would
become known officially, 80 years later, as "desertification."
Beginning with deforestation, he argued, "the march of the sea-
sons [and] the course of the winds had been without doubt
perverted, the rains ratified, the springs diminished, ... [until]
finally the soil was impoverished .1167 Périer pointed to this pro-
cess to explain the state of the Algerian desert, the "other" part
of Algeria that was not the mountains or the fertile, coastal
region known as the Tell. Like Baron Baude and so many oth-
ers who followed him, his solution was to prohibit indigenous
activities and land uses, such as grazing and agricultural burn-
ing, in order to restore the forests and fertility to Algeria."
As was true throughout most of the colonial period, though,
there were other powerful actors who did not perceive the
Algerian landscape as ruined, subscribe to desiccation theory,
or blame the Algerians for destruction. One of the most inter-
esting examples from this period is the 1849 report on an offi-
cial 1847 expedition by General Cavaignac (1802-1857) in the
Algerian Sahara. The moderate tone and straightforward
descriptions of the different parts of the desert and semidesert
98 Chapter 4
in western Algeria are all the more remarkable given that many
of the sources most commonly cited for desiccation theory,
including Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Hum-
boldt, Boussingault, and Buffon, are mentioned in the report.ó9
Yet this 335-page report displays a rather sophisticated under-
standing of the indigenous populations' use of their meager
resources, including their use of fire to prepare agricultural
land, the nomads' organization of migratory grazing patterns,
and the productive relations between the populations of the
Tell and the desert. The report even gently criticized common
European perceptions of the Sahara as a sea of sand with no
vegetation, no water, and no life at all as "a dream of the imagi-
nation."" This type of dissenting voice had little effect, how-
ever, on policy formulation and implementation in the French
Maghreb.
Early in the colonial period beginning in the 1830s, the view
of the arid zones as ruined by the "natives" began to be written
into laws and policies governing agricultural, forest, and envi-
ronmental management in Algeria (and later Tunisia and
Morocco), a process that continued throughout colonial occu-
pation. These laws and policies, especially in the sector of for-
estry, restricted and criminalized many local land uses
appropriate for arid lands that had been used sustainably for
centuries by the North Africans; at the same time, the laws
facilitated colonial activities and enriched European settlers."
The condemnations of Algerians became more rancorous as
the colonial period continued, and accusations of degradation
became more common and vitriolic. In 1865, for instance, an
influential French politician in Algeria, Dr. Auguste Warmer
(1810-1875), wrote that due to the Arabs' destruction, Alge-
ria, "long ago a sort of terrestrial paradise covered in groves ...
is [now] a sterile desert, bare and without water, that all call the
land of thirst," a commonly held view.7' The fear of spreading
deserts and related levels of xenophobia reached a fever pitch
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 99
in the last half of the nineteenth century in French Algeria.73
Warmer, for example, wrote in his typical style that "France
itself, so prosperous, would soon become a desert if it were in
the hands of the Arabs.1174 Warmer wrote and shepherded into
law significant legislation in the 1870s that instituted private
property rights and destroyed indigenous communal land ten-
ure (while creating a booming market in property).
Others went further than Warmer and called for the refores-
tation of the allegedly deforested and desertified country in
order to improve the climate, enrich the soil, and create an
environment suitable for European civilization .75 Many of
these men were influential in policy development, like the for-
ester J. Reynard, who believed, as did most French foresters of
the period in Algeria, that "the principal cause of the current
dryness is the disappearance of clumps of woods which previ-
ously covered the country. ... [T]he native has created the
dunes and the sand .1171 From the 1870s to the period of decolo-
nization, the deforestation/desiccation narrative was used to
justify increasingly severe forestry laws and plans for reforesta-
tion. Furthermore, this desertification narrative was written
into many of these laws and related policies. The most signifi-
cant of these was the 1903 Algerian Forestry Law, 77 which was
primarily developed by Dr. Paulin Trolard (1842-1910), a
politically powerful physician and president of the Algerian
Reforestation League. Citing all of the primary sources on des-
iccation theory from Rauch to Humboldt to Boussingault and
Becquerel, Trolard blamed the existence of the desert on defor-
estation and overgrazing by the indigenous populations and
vigorously called for the criminalization of their traditional
land uses and the implementation of widespread reforesta-
tion.71 He issued alarmist statements, warning that if no action
were taken, "the Sahara, this hearth of evil, stretches its arms
toward us every day; it will soon enclose us, suffocate us, anni-
hilate us..1179 The French institutionalized the desiccation/
100 Chapter 4 Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 101

desertification narrative with this comprehensive Algerian for-

est law. Its implementation had far-reaching effects, most of
which were not beneficial to the indigenous populations.80
From the passage of this forestry law in the early twentieth
century, the desertification narrative became extremely widely
accepted in French thought and action in North Africa and
beyond. The narrative included standard prescriptions for
restoring desert environments to their "proper," usually for-
ested, state: controlling grazing and burning, destocking and
sedentarization of nomads, and reforestation. Even the idea for
"green dams" (barrages verts) —planting thick bands of trees at
the desert edge to try to prevent the spread of the desert—still
popular today, appears to have originated in 1850s Algeria.81
Descriptions of what would come to be called desertification
became commonplace. In 1906, for example, the influential
geographer Augustin Bernard (1865-1947) described it when
he wrote that due to burning and overgrazing by nomads, "the
forest gives way to scrub, the scrub to herbaceous vegetation,
the herbaceous vegetation to bare soil, which finished by being
Figure 4.3
itself detached and which becomes the victim of the wind."" "The Sahara: Fine sand shaped into small waves by the wind; rocky
Deserts, exemplified by the Sahara, were thus commonly imag- outcrops. Not a trace of vegetation: the desert." Source: Jean Blottière,
ined as places of roving sand dunes, wind, and rocks, devoid of Les Productions algériennes (Paris: Publications du Comité national
vegetation (see figure 4.3). The word "desertification" itself métropolitain du centenaire de l'Algérie, 1930), 11.
was not used, though, until 1927 when the French naturalist
and forester Louis Lavauden (1881-1935), based in Tunisia In French North Africa, such notions of deserts and desertifi-
and drawing heavily on the existing French literature on the cation would continue to inform policies related to the envi-
North African environment, wrote that "desertification [d6ser- ronment, from forestry to agriculture to range management,
tification] ... is uniquely the act of humans.... [T]he nomad well into the postcolonial period and in other French territo-
has created what we call the pseudo-desert zone."83 Lavauden ries ringing the Sahara.85 The results of the implementation of
not only echoed forester Reynard from nearly 50 years earlier, such policies for the indigenous populations were grim. By in-
but also displayed the all too common contempt for the indig- dependence, the vast majority of North Africans had been dis-
enous populations and their management techniques by fur- enfranchised of their lands, forests, and livestock, and many
ther explaining that "the genie of destruction that characterizes were reduced to wage labor and deep poverty.86 This had been
the Arab suffices in this region to explain the desert." 84 accomplished, in large part, by the continuous claim over a
 imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 103
102 Chapter 4

century and a half that the ignorant and destructive indigenous

populations had deforested and desertified the environment
and were not fit to own or work the land. The contributions of
French colonial activities to deforestation and environmental
degradation, however, were conveniently overlooked by most.87
This claim of moral failing and environmental destruction by
the "natives" was common across the European colonial world
of the nineteenth century. With respect to deserts, accusations
of moral failing were particularly strong in territories under
British rule.

British Imperial Desert Worlds

Deserts came to be more strongly associated with "evil" in the

Anglo-European imaginary early in the nineteenth century, just
as forests were vigorously associated with "good," and forested
tropical islands with "Eden." As Richard Grove has pointed
out, some even "conceived of drought as the wages of environ-
mental sin or sins of moral disorder ... [who saw] drought as a
form of moral retribution" against the indigenous popula- Figure 4.4
"Moffat's House at Kuruman." Source: William Macdonald, Con-
tion." As noted above, influential writers like Chateaubriand quest of the Desert (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1914), 182.
wrote of the deserts of Arabia: "everywhere the trees have dis-
appeared, man has been punished for his improvidence.""
Desert environments, in this view, were signs of divine retribu- 1820 to 1823.91 As was typical among many Europeans of the
time, Moffat and other missionaries believed that the region
tion against those immoral and destructive "natives" who had
had previously been lush and verdant, but that burning and
ruined the land.
deforestation by the semmomadic Tswana had ruined the land.
An illustrative early example of this kind of thinking about
Furthermore, Moffat and many other South African missionar-
deserts in a colonial setting comes from southern Africa. In
ies during the period blamed the Tswanas' "sinfulness," both in
1817 a Scottish missionary named Robert Moffat (1795-1883)
their destruction of vegetation and in their general way of life
arrived in Cape Colony, under British control, and proceeded
(witchcraft, rejecting Christianity, etc.), for precipitating the
in 1820 to the northern area of Latakoo (Kuruman), just south
of the Kalahari desert, where he was based for 50 years (see drought.92 In 1834, for example, another missionary, Mr. Ham-
ilton, wrote that "the Lord visited this land again with a long
figure 4.4).90 The local people, the Tswana agropastoralists,
and great drought.... [E]very green thing is burned up by that
were then suffering through a severe drought that lasted from
 104 Chapter 4
sun.... This is not to be wondered at when the great body of
the people reject the great salvation." 93 In the eyes of these
early missionaries, the transgressions of the indigenous peo-
ples, particularly veld burning, had, in the words of Richard
Grove, "brought about the drought and the and landscape of
divine retribution.1194 Yet it is interesting to note that the indig-
enous South Africans, as several missionaries reported, tended
to blame the arrival of Europeans for the droughts.95
Twenty-five years later, Moffat's writings and ideas were
propagated by another Scottish missionary who had a much
more significant impact on the region and the colony. John
Croumbie Brown (1808-1895) visited the Cape as a mission-
ary from 1844 to 1848, and then returned in 1862 as the colo-
nial botanist. Both periods were marked by severe drought.
Brown agreed with Moffat's views, and much of his work,
including official government reports as well as books, reflected
European desiccationist thinking about deserts common in the
mid-nineteenth century, citing Moffat and other desiccati.onist
authors.9ó In his capacity as botanist (1862-1866), Brown
wrote numerous reports that laid blame for increased heat and
drought, and the creation of desertlike conditions, on the
destruction of vegetation by those living in the region.97 He
proclaimed that it was urgently necessary to proceed with
"conservation and [the] extension of forests as a means of
counteracting the evil referred to [that is, creating desertlike
conditions]." 91
Brown's many books and reports provided long-lived ratio-
nales for the development of official policies in southern Africa
that controlled lands by criminalizing the livelihood activities
of local Africans in the name of preventing the "desert's
spread." His work became widely known and quoted by sev-
eral very influential people. Joseph Hooker (1817-1911), for
example, the powerful director of the Kew Botanical Gardens
and hub of a global network of scientists, botanists, and
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 105
foresters, quoted Brown's lament that "millions of acres have
been made desert, and more are being made desert annually
through the destruction of the indigenous forests" in South
Africa.99 Brown's work was also influential in the appointment
of a French forestry officer, Count de Vasselot de Régné (1837-
1919), as the superintendent of woods and forests (1880-
1892).101 Count de Vasselot had previously worked on fixing
dunes by reforestation in France and had published on Alge-
rian forests. Another forester, the French-trained David E.
Hutchins (1850-1920), was sent to South Africa in 1881 from
the Indian Forest Service and "chose to revivify Moffat's
vocabulary of moral environmental economy, directly equating
veld-burning and tree-felling carried out by Africans with
moral degeneration and criminality.""' The forest department
was created in the Cape in 1881, and the Cape Colony Forestry
Act was passed in 1888.102 Brown's views on deserts and for-
ests were consistently referenced by later administrators like
Hutchins and informed the development of the 1888 Forestry
Act, which was then applied unchanged to Rhodesia (Zimba-
bwe).101 This Forestry Act criminalized burning, grazing, and
collecting in the forests as well as cutting down trees, and had
a negative impact on the local, indigenous populations."'
Forest reserves and tree planting were therefore encouraged
by the government from the mid-nineteenth century through
the twentieth century, but a great many introduced trees were
also planted by farmers and commercial interests like mining
and railway companies. Indeed, so many introduced trees were
planted, such as eucalyptus, acacia (both varieties from Austra-
lia), and pines, that farmers near the plantations began to com-
plain in the late nineteenth century that their land and water
supplies were drying out."' Research into the question of des-
iccation from forest plantations began following independence
in the 1930s, but it was not until the late 1960s that results
began to validate the farmers' perceptions. This research has
106 Chapter 4
been continued and refined over the last half century and now
shows conclusively that afforestation in this arid to semiarid
region with introduced species such as eucalyptus, conifers,
and acacias has been eliminating springs and reducing stream-
flow and deep soil moisture, with negative results that often
last decades.106 As the soil scientist Kate Showers has shown,
these alien tree plantations have been "major contributors to
landscape desiccation," and have led the government of South
Africa to regulate tree plantations with a permitting process
and to develop plans for mass removal programs of alien
trees.107 Due to the deeply moralistic attempts to "stop the des-
ert's spread," then, lowered water tables and soil desiccation
were actually created and have had long-lasting, detrimental
impacts on the natural and agricultural ecologies across South
Africa.
In British India, the further development and deployment of
desiccationist arguments throughout the nineteenth and well
into the twentieth century had substantial impacts on the sub-
continent's natural and policy environments, most significantly
in the sectors of forestry, irrigation, and range management.10'
Fears of aridification and desert spread informed many laws
and policies in British India that were later exported to several
different parts of the British empire. Colonial surgeons
employed in the East India Company were early advocates of
desiccation theory in India; they lobbied arduously for forest
conservation, preservation, and reforestation in order to pre-
vent what they perceived as the spread of desertlike condi-
tions.109 These desiccationist narratives were deployed from at
least the 1840s to institute increasingly draconian policies
restricting indigenous land uses, especially in the areas of for-
estry and pastoralism. Their efforts resulted in the passing of
what most scholars call the "notoriously unjust" Forest Act of
1878, which followed, in many ways, the ideas and policies
that had been developed by the French in Algeria.
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 107
Indeed, as Grove has argued, "by the late 1880s the typolo-
gies of anti-desiccation forest policy in the French and British
colonial states were so closely inter-related that they can be
said to have constituted a single ruling philosophy rather than
two separate traditions."'10 The inspector general of forests in
India, Berthold Ribbentrop, for example, wrote in 1900 that
there could be no doubt that "the widely-spread notion that
forests tend to increase rainfall, and that in a warm-climate the
denudation of a country diminishes its moisture and conse-
quently its fertility, is correct."11 Sounding very much like
French administrators in Algeria, he further explained that in
the desert and treeless parts of India like the Punjab and Raja-
sthan, constant waves of Central Asian and later "Mahomedan"
nomad invaders "fired and cleared forests to create new pas-
tures.""' Ribbentrop elaborated that "India suffered from
Mahomedan incursions" in the same way as Persia, North
Africa, and Asia Minor, with the result that "Persia, once one
of the granaries of the East, is barren and desolate," while
"North Africa, formerly one of the main corn [grain] markets
of Rome, is subject to the severest droughts."113 To support his
views, Ribbentrop cited texts by Humboldt and Boussingault.
He stated that only 10% of India (at that time including what
is now Pakistan) should not "naturally" be forested, indicating
that 90% of the territory should be forested.114 In fact, at least
25% of British India was arid or semiarid, and much of non-
mountainous northwest India is not appropriate for forest tree
growth except under special conditions such as irrigation.
These climate conditions have been more or less constant, with
minor fluctuations for the last 5,000 years, and much of India
actually would be desert without the monsoon rains.115 Despite
this, far too many scholars have continued to spread the colo-
nial story of deforestation even into the twentieth century,
some with unsubstantiated justifications such as "where there
were wild elephants there must once have been forests.""'
 108 Chapter 4
In the most arid regions of India, the northwest provinces of
Rajasthan and Punjab, these dominant notions of deserts and
and regions as ruined, deforested landscapes were held by a
majority of foresters and other British administrators and
strongly influenced British development efforts for over a cell-
tury with long-lasting impacts. In the arid, predominantly pas-
toralist region of Rajasthan (then often called Rajputana),
long-standing anxieties over the spread of the Thar (Indian)
Desert has resulted in significant landscape transformation
over the last two centuries. Beginning in the early nineteenth
century, the British expressed the belief that the Thar Desert
was growing and that the only thing keeping it from invading
central India was the Aravali mountain range.117 The Aravali
range came to be seen as the line dividing the arid, desert region
to the northwest from the relatively more humid and fertile
southeast region of Rajasthan. A year after the India Forest Act
was passed, a government official explained that the Aravalis
served "to divide roughly the sandy country on the north and
west from the kindlier soil on the south and east ... [and]
stands like a barricade, and effectively protects the country
behind it from the influx of sand ... yet the sand has drifted
through many openings and intervals among the hills, and has
overlaid large tracts on the eastern side of the line.""' Not sur-
prisingly, the British blamed the indigenous inhabitants for cre-
ating these desert conditions because they believed that, in
many places, a "comparatively luxuriant vegetation [would
grow] were it not ruthlessly preyed on by the inhabitants for
fuel and timber for themselves and fodder for their cattle and
camels."119
The widespread conviction that "natives" were destroying
vegetation combined with the historical narrative of deforesta-
tion and desertification by invading nomads over the last thou-
sand or more years led to the belief that this arid region was a
relatively recent creation of human mismanagement when in
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 109
120
fact the Thar Desert is at least 200,000 years old. Moreover,
as geographer Paul Robbins explains, there is "no solid evi-
"121 In the
dence of the expansion of the western [Thar] desert.
late nineteenth century, though, the widespread belief that
more vegetation, and especially trees, would grow if protected
from the "depredations" of the locals and their livestock led
the British to create reserved "forest" areas, whether for timber,
for fuel, or simply for regeneration. Following a discussion of
the environmental destruction of the "half-savage dwellers" in
the region, one official was clearly proud to explain in 1879
that "large wastes have now been set apart in the hope of grad-
122
ually repairing these losses by careful conservation."
In addition to being targeted for the creation of forest
reserves in the region, Rajasthan was also identified in the early
twentieth century as needing afforestation particularly for the
conversion of wasteland to fuel- and fodder-producing areas.lzs
Such a view of the region as a ruined desert wasteland needing
to be repaired with reforestation, conservation, and irrigation
became the driving force behind environmental policy in
Rajasthan over the twentieth century. As a prominent Indian
geographer writing in 1992 about the government's "desert
development program," explained, "it is believed that in the
beginning the desert region was as fertile and full of vegetation
as the Sind-Gangetic plain. The desert development program
envisages to make the same true once again by arresting exten-
sion of the desert any further and by turning the desert region
124
into a green belt full of vegetation and highly fertile land."
The legacy of this false view of an encroaching desert, cre-
ated by deforestation and overgrazing, has had an ironic twist
in western Rajasthan. Belief in the value of afforestation and
forest reserves has combined with the idea that there should
"naturally" be forests in the region to lead the contemporary
Indian forest service to plant large areas of "wasteland" with
introduced, fast-growing tree species such as Prosopis juliflora
 Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 111
110 Chapter 4

Figure 4.5 (facing page)

Rajasthan pastoralists in the Pali district with Prosopis juliflora in
the background. Source: Photo courtesy of Paul Robbins and Anil K.
Chhangani. Reproduced with permission.

(honey mesquite) that are supposed to meet subsistence needs.

This species, which dominates in nearly all artificial plantings,
produces a mediocre-quality wood. However, it represses the
growth of grasses and other herbal communities below and
around it due to phytotoxic substances in its leaves, and its
long roots facilitate fast spreading and compete vigorously for
soil moisture with other species.125 Moreover, although Proso-
pis juliflora has seed pods that are edible for livestock, the
leaves are not edible for livestock, unlike most of the indige-
nous tree species in the region.126 As Paul Robbins has demon-
strated, this has had a detrimental effect on herders due to lack
of browse for livestock and has led to invasive growth that has
impeded agriculture in some areas (see figure 4.5) .127 Prosopis
i juliflora is also extremely hard to control or eradicate. Due to
these characteristics, it has spread robustly and helps to account
for the 180% increase in exotic forest cover in the region
between 1965 and 1992, while at the same time "startling"
amounts of indigenous tree species have declined.128
In the neighboring Punjab, an and to semiarid region with
the Indus River running through it, colonial irrigation projects
based on new canal building dramatically transformed the
landscape and the livelihoods of the indigenous populations.129
Manipulating water to transform and areas in India was a
novel addition to standard European approaches to dryland
development in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Stimulated
in part by a series of devastating droughts and famines during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, British administrators
began early in the nineteenth century to restore some of the
existing waterworks in south India, but at midcentury they
 112 Chapter 4
began building entirely new canal systems that ultimately dis-
placed much of the existing irrigation network.13' In 1885,
canal building began in the Punjab on a grand scale that was
dubbed "canal colonization." By 1892, nearly 45,000 miles of
new canals had been constructed across India."'
The British viewed the Punjab as an "arid waste" because
originally it was mostly a pastoralist area with some ephemeral
agriculture based on an indigenous system of inundation canals
that took advantage of the periodic flooding of the Indus River.
One deputy commissioner described an area of the Punjab, the
Bar, by writing that "it stands probably unrivaled in the world
for its combination of the most desolate features a landscape is
capable of affording.""' The British built the canals with the
deliberate intent of encouraging immigrants who would prac-
tice sedentary, commercial agriculture—hence the name "canal
colonies." The venture was quite successful at building canals,
attracting immigrants from outside the region, and raising
agricultural productivity. By 1915, the region "which 30 years
ago, was an and wilderness" had thousands of miles of new
canals and millions of acres of irrigated fields, and produced
more profit per acre than any other district in India.133 The
desert wastelands had been redeemed with irrigation and made
productive according to European standards, growing primar-
ily commodity crops for export. In the words of historian
Neeladri Bhattacharya, "the extension of cultivation was syn-
onymous with progress, and the `reclamation of waste land'
was a civilizing project." 134
The increased, perennial irrigation was even perceived by
British government officials to be beneficial to the climate in
ways analogous to afforestation. An official gazetteer for the
Punjab reported, for instance, "there is no doubt that the rain-
fall has been greatly augmented by irrigation and the process is
likely to continue especially if irrigation is aided by tree-
growth." 135 And indeed, the forestry department did undertake
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 113
a significant afforestation campaign in the Punjab, beginning
in the late nineteenth century and continuing well into the
twentieth. 131 However, the new irrigation system was not often
accompanied by adequate drainage, and, as in many parts of
India, the increase in waterlogging and standing water led to
massive outbreaks of water-associated diseases such as malaria
and cholera as well as to the salinization of agricultural land.137
The scheme was also plagued by large and growing disparities
of wealth and quality of life, and the impoverishment of many,
especially the pastoralists of the region. As several scholars
have pointed out, the export crops grown on the newly irri-
gated lands of the Punjab actually increased food insecurity of
the local population rather than lowering it, making them
more susceptible to famine."'
Indeed, the nomads and seminomads of the region, whose
way of life was perceived by officials as "crude, criminal and in
need of reform," had been taxed, controlled, and largely seden-
tarized due to the loss of their previously extensive grazing
grounds."' Grazing itself had been officially declared "undesir-
able" by the British government, and those who "wandered,"
or migrated, were criminalized with the 1871 Criminal Tribes
Act.140 This harsh law, which required people to get a permit to
leave their village, had first been applied to the Punjab, but by
the end of the nineteenth century, several amendments to the
law had extended its application to most of India, and it was
not repealed until 1952.141 Wastelands—that is, land not under
permanent, settled cultivation—were declared property of the
state in British India, like forests, and land rights were rede-
fined.142 Adding considerably to the powers of the state to con-
trol the traditional livelihoods of pastoralists was the Cattle
Trespass Act, also passed in 1871, which authorized the seizing
of any livestock that damaged canals, embankments, crops, or
public roads and fining their owners."' Rather than develop a
system of range management as the French had done in
 114 Chapter 4
Algeria, the British simply suppressed and criminalized grazing
as much as possible.144 In the Punjab, this worked in tandem
with the Criminal Tribes Act, the Forest Act, and the building
of the canals to dramatically change the face of the environ-
ment and of traditional livelihoods.
This approach to British colonial development in arid lands
was applied to other territories such as Egypt, where work on
providing perennial irrigation was begun soon after British
occupation in 1882.145 As in India, the primary motive for
increasing irrigation was the production of export crops, in
this case primarily cotton, to increase revenue. In both India
and Egypt, in the words of historians William Beinart and
Lotte Hughes, "cultivation expanded, `wastelands' were
reclaimed, but roaming pastoralists lost out to settled cultiva-
tors, while new canals rode roughshod over local property
rights."146 In Egypt as in India, the British understanding of
land not under agricultural production (i.e., grazing and fallow
lands) as wasted led to the "reclamation" of a great deal of
such land that was placed under perennial irrigation, complete
with its attendant problems.147 British historical imagmaries of
the environment directly informed irrigation development in
Egypt through the works of important technocrats like Wil-
liam Willcocks (1852-1932), the influential British irrigation
engineer who worked in India as well. Willcocks was instru-
mental to the planning and construction of the 1902 Aswan
Dam on the Nile and other important water management
infrastructure.
For Willcocks and many others, "Egypt's biblical past was
... imagined as technologically and agriculturally advanced ...
[since] situating Egyptian history within a biblical narrative
was firmly entrenched within strands of the British historical
imagination.""' The local "Arabs" in many parts of the Middle
East were frequently blamed for what Europeans viewed
as an environmental decline from the ancient biblical Eden.
Imperialism and the Desert Blame Game 115
Willcocks expressed this common sentiment with reference to
Mesopotamia when he wrote, "it is extraordinary how capable
an Arab is of turning a country into a desert. Outside his own
desert home he begins by being little else than a human
locust.11149 David Hogarth (1862-1927), professor at Oxford
and later head of the Royal Geographical Society, placed spe-
cial blame on the nomads (Bedouin), explaining to his readers
that "they impoverish the land [in Palestine] and lightly aban-
don it to denudation and sand-drift.... The Bedawin, born of
the desert, becomes in turn its creator." 'so
Historical imaginaries from the Bible also informed many
British government and military personnel who went to the
deserts of Mesopotamia, known variously as "Arabia," "the
holy land," and "the cradle of civilization," preceding World
War I. Inspired by common Victorian notions of "Arabia" as a
mysterious desert idyll, a biblical land, a place of miraculous
convictions and extremes, they saw the desert environment as
dangerous, foreign, monotonous, and inscrutable, as historian
Priya Satia has explained. 151 At first, some of these people, hav-
ing been raised with tales from The Arabian Nights, saw Ara-
bia as a kind of extraterrestrial utopia and romanticized the
locals, particularly the nomads. The desolation of the land-
scape was usually blamed on previous barbaric conquerors
and oppressive Ottoman tyrants. Once World War I got under
way, however, perceptions of the environment quickly became
more negative, and the desert idyll transformed into an "autar-
kic wasteland, a fallen Eden," a space the British needed to
redeem.152 A small bit of romantic feeling was retained for the
nomads, though, especially by those in the air force, thanks in
large part to the influence of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935). Full
of dreams of the desert sublime and respect for much of the
nomads' way of life, Lawrence thought that the air force could
conquer the desert using tactics similar to those the Arab
nomads had used in their earlier victories. Strong beliefs shaped
 116 Chapter 4

by environmental determinism, though, transformed this strain

of respect for the "noble nomads," so that they were seen as
rugged inhabitants of a harsh environment who "could toler-
ate random acts of violence" not considered possible for village
The Twentieth Century:
dwellers.15' This view of the desert and its people, combined Desertification Comes of Age
with an "environmental imaginary of land so barren that bom-
bardment could not possibly worsen it," identified Arabia as a
"state of exception" that allowed excessive brutality in the
name of its "development." 154
These negative, deterministic views of nomads pervaded
Anglo-European thinking to a large degree at the turn of the
During the twentieth century, colonial understandings of des-
twentieth century, as did the notion of deserts as ruined forests.
erts and the threat of their spread, along with most of the colo-
As the two imperial powers who controlled the most territory
nial dryland policies, became sensationalized and executed on
in and and semiarid lands, Britain and France governed many
a global scale. The widespread drought of the 1930s vaulted
nomads and other pastoralists during the nineteenth and early
concerns of desiccation and soil erosion onto the world stage
twentieth centuries. Their understandings of dryland environ-
during the first half of the century, and the serious drought and
ments and peoples, developed and refined as they administered
famine in the African Sahel in the early 1970s focused atten-
these imperial territories, thus have been especially influential
tion on desertification and overgrazing during the second
in global thinking about arid and semiarid lands and desertifi-
half. The desiccation debates early in the century were impor-
cation. Over the course of the twentieth century, the policies
tant to the development and widespread acceptance of the
created during the nineteenth century to develop colonial ter-
term "desertification." As decolonization took place, colonial
ritories in the and zones grew increasingly dominant globally.
"experts" were especially influential in shaping global under-
These policies included a fairly standard package of prescrip-
standings of the drylands and the best policies for developing
tions including sedentarizing nomads, controlling or eliminat-
them. The history of the American West leading up to the Dust
ing grazing, suppressing fire, improving livestock, creating
Bowl of the 1930s reveals the many linkages between Euro-
forest reserves and reforesting, and increasing agriculture, both
pean colonial experiences and those in the American West, as
irrigated and rain-fed.
analogous conceptions of deserts and desiccation drove many
of their similar environmental policies. After World War II, the
new United Nations played a key role in the production of
scientific knowledge about deserts and drylands that replicated
and institutionalized much of the earlier colonial knowledge
and practice about these regions. With roots in one of UNES-
CO's earliest projects, called the Arid Zone Program, the 1977