‘Sisters of the South’: Australian-South African botanic exchange and the origins of comparative climatic forestry in South Africa c.1881-1994

Brett Bennett, University of Texas at Austin/University of Western Sydney

Wednesday, 29 September, 4.15-5.30 pm
McDonald Room, Menzies Library, ANU

Recently many historians have argued that the development of forestry within South Africa and the larger British Empire was merely an extension of continental European forestry methods and culture. This paper places the origins of one important part of South African and British imperial forestry, the formation of plantations of exotic trees, within an Australian and southern African context. I argue that environmental and cultural comparisons between South Africa and Australia by white South Africans, combined with widespread failures of the first Australian trees planted in southern Africa during the nineteenth century, fuelled the rise of what I call a comparative climatic school of forestry in the Cape Colony in the 1890s. Foresters in the Cape Colony started to compare supposedly similar South African and Australian climates to find the “correct” Australian tree to plant in South Africa, or in the words of this school’s leader, David Ernest Hutchins, to “fit the tree to the climate”. This Cape comparative school of climatic forestry then spread to the rest of South Africa after 1902 when Cape foresters staffed newly created forestry departments in the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal during the reconstruction period. From 1902 and onward, foresters continued to refine their knowledge of Australian climates and the habits of Australian trees planted in South Africa to select the proper trees for plantations. This knowledge helped lead to the rise of large plantations of Australian trees throughout southern Africa in the twentieth century.

All welcome. Please contact barry.higman@anu.edu.au if you have any queries.

School of History, Research School of Social Sciences
Seminar Series: Semester 2, 2010

Tuesday 29th June, 5-6pm

Lecture Theatre, Forestry Building (48) Linnaeus Way (comes off Daley Road)

Charles Lane Poole (1885-1970) and Edward Harold Swain (1883-1970) are perhaps the two most influential foresters in Australia’s history. Born in Britain and trained in France, Lane Poole served as the conservator of forests in Western Australia from 1916-1921 and as the principal of the Australian Forestry School and the inspector general of forests for the Commonwealth government from 1927-1945. A patriotic and idiosyncratic Australian, Swain served as the chairman of the forestry board in Queensland from 1924-1931 and as the forestry commissioner of New South Wales from 1935-1948. Both men had strong and often conflicting views about forestry education, silviculture, management, and economics.

Swain sought to make an Australian forestry suited to its unique climate, culture, and socio-economic conditions. Lane Poole tried to remake a continental European and British imperial forestry tradition in Australia that emphasized a strict professional training and a conservation program based upon the management of existing forests. In many ways, Lane Poole’s professionalism won out over Swain’s bold vision, but over time Swain’s assessments about Australian forestry proved to be a more accurate predictor of the direction that forestry and Australian society would take in the 1950s until the present day. But in spite of his professional success, Lane Poole failed to achieve his single goal to centralize research and forestry policy within the federal government. His failure and vision still reverberates with Australian forestry to this day.

I argue that we can use the historic examples of Lane Poole and Swain to better situate the present and future of Australian forestry. Many of the problems they identified still remain today, and their ideas can provide us new ways of thinking about old problems.

Brett Bennett is currently a PhD candidate in history at the University of Texas at Austin and a visiting resident in the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University. In 2011 he will take up a position as lecturer in modern history at the University of Western Sydney. He has published widely on forestry history in Australia, India, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. His masters thesis and article in the May 2009 issue of Environment and History explored the founding of the Australian Forestry School. Most recently he wrote an editorial in the 28 April Canberra Times calling for the protection of the former school buildings.

Time: 4.15-5.30pm, Wednesday 10 March 2010

Venue: McDonald Room, Menzies Library, Australian National University

Some foresters began to question the dominance of agriculture during the early to mid twentieth century. They did so by advocating massive global afforestation programs that would redefine state land management policies. E.H.F. Swain is one such example. A forester who served as chair of the forestry board in Queensland from 1920- 1931 and chief commissioner of the New South Wales forestry commission from 1935-1948, he voiced the most extreme perspective of any forester throughout the British Empire. He used his position as a chief commissioner in New South Wales during and after World War II to advocate an entirely new vision of society and its economy: instead of supporting the advance of the wheat belt across the world, he sought to create a society more heavily based on forestry. A prophet and bureaucrat that wrote in the style of Thomas Carlyle, he advanced a radically green vision of wholeness that died with the British Empire.

Dr Gregory Barton is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University.

All welcome. Please contact Shino Konishi (shino.konishi@anu.edu.au) if you have any queries.