Brett M Bennett
Biographic Data
| ID | 966437 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brett M Bennett |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brett M |
| FAMILY NAME | Bennett |
| SIGNATURE | BENNETT B M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Sydney University |
| ORCID | 0009-0005-6197-7784 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Golf Diplomacy, Elite Sociability, and the Plural Society in British Colonial Malaya and Malaysia
Golf as a form of elite sociability shaped the diplomacy, high politics, and economic affairs of the Federation of Malaya and Malaysia. Playing golf at exclusive private clubs generated social capital that promoted individual advancement, bridged people from different backgrounds, and bonded them into a cohesive elite. Asian golfers first joined golf clubs in the Federated Malay States in the early twentieth century as part of an informal policy …
Decolonisation and Environmentalism
This article argues that the decolonisation of European empires influenced the origins and spread of environmentalism throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. It demonstrates how many of the social movements and institutions associated with decolonistion – such as civil rights activism, the criticism of imperialism, and the growth of international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organisations – inspired and shaped environmentalism globa…
Growing the Game of Golf in Colonial Kuala Lumpur
Golf courses played an important, yet understudied role, in urban colonial town planning in Southeast Asia during the first half of the twentieth century. This article explores the establishment and growth of the Selangor Golf Club, the pre-eminent golf club in Kuala Lumpur during the colonial period of British rule. Club members lobbied and worked for the Selangor and Federated Malay States governments to expand the physical size of the course a…
On Life History and Network Analysis
This article explores how living and working in South Africa has shaped my career as a global environmental historian. It focuses on the concept of network analysis to highlight how theoretical and empirical research is informed by life experiences and by our engagement with the profession of history. The article concludes by thinking about how the study of our own lives can lead us to have more introspection as scholars and teachers
Temporality, Space, and Networks in Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories
This special issue of Pacific Historical Review, “Crossroads of Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories,” is guest edited by Gregory A. Barton and Brett M. Bennett. The special issue explores how environmental historians can use the concept of the Indo-Pacific to understand both the deep and contemporary histories of regions that are frequently viewed through Indian Ocean world or Pacific Ocean world perspectives. A preface and this introduction pro…
Decolonizing Informal Empire
This article traces the decolonization of Britain’s informal empire over the teak trade in Thailand in the mid-twentieth century. It argues that British influence over the teak industry, which dated to the second half of the nineteenth century, began to wane in the 1920s due to the gradual nationalization of teak leases. Still, British firms and the Foreign Office remained dominant in the export industry in the 1920s and 1930s because of Britain’…
Environments of Empire
Generalizations in Global History
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
If we go along with the mood of the moment, our books become tombstones in graveyards no one visits anymore”
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Decolonization, Environmentalism and Nationalism in Australia and South Africa
Decolonization influenced the rise of environmental activism and thought in Australia and South Africa in ways that have been overlooked by national histories of environmentalism and imperial histories of decolonization. Australia and South Africa’s political and cultural movement away from Britain and the Commonwealth during the 1960s is one important factor explaining why people in both countries created more, and more important, public indigen…
Margaret Levyns and the Decline of Ecological Liberalism in the Southwest Cape, 1890–1975
This article analyses the life and ideas of Margaret Rutherford Levyns (née Michell), a South African botanist who worked from 1918 to 1946 as a lecturer in botany at the University of Cape Town and continued to write about the Cape flora (known today as the Cape Floristic Region) until her death in 1975. Until the early 1960s, Levyns maintained a neutral scientific and moral understanding of invasive species, defined here as ‘ecological liberali…
The Rise and Demise of South Africa's First School of Forestry
This article examines the unexplored history of South Africa's first school of forestry. It argues that leading South African politicians and foresters created a school of forestry in the country because they wanted a school where South Africa's future forestry officers could gain practical and theoretical experience of forestry in local conditions rather than going to Britain, Europe or India, where environmental conditions differed. The school …
Ecology, forestry and the debate over exotic trees in South Africa
Mad Dogs and Meerkats
Brown's well-presented and readable history of rabies in southern Africa charts the prevalence of rabies, and responses to this epizootic disease, from the early nineteenth century until today. Bro
Prickly Pear
Prickly Pear: The Social History of a Plant in the Eastern Cape." Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(4), pp. 1002–1003
Troubled Natures
Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan Peter Wynn Kirby Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011 xii, 199 pp. + notes, refs, index; figures ISBN 978-0-8248-3428-9 hb http://www.uhpress.hawa
Science and Empire
Offering one of the first analyses of how networks of science interacted within the British Empire during the past two centuries, this volume shows how the rise of formalized state networks of science
The El Dorado of Forestry
S ummary : This article argues that because of the perceived and real biological characteristics of the different species of the genus Eucalyptus , imperialists and settlers, and later governments and the elites of developing nations, planted eucalypts widely and created new socio-ecological systems that encouraged and reinforced divergent patterns of economic, social, and ecological development. Planting eucalypts changed local ecologies and enc…
Edward Harold Fulcher Swain's Vision of Forest Modernity
Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883–1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences…
Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa
‘There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods’
Forestry as Foreign Policy
Nineteenth-century Europeans visiting Southeast and South Asia eulogised teak trees ( Tectona grandis ) for their value and beauty. Diplomatic diaries, travel memoirs, literary descriptions and geography books for children described the teak as a universal sovereign of the sylvan world, the regal “lord” of the forests. With dwindling supplies of oak in Britain, British elites saw teak as a vital component of the country's global naval supremacy i…
The El Dorado of Forestry
This article argues that because of the perceived and real biological characteristics of the different species of the genus Eucalyptus , imperialists and settlers, and later governments and the elites of developing nations, planted eucalypts widely and created new socio-ecological systems that encouraged and reinforced divergent patterns of economic, social, and ecological development. Planting eucalypts changed local ecologies and encouraged a m…
An Imperial, National and State Debate
A variety of debates that surrounded the opening of the Australian Forestry School at Canberra in 1927 illuminate the divergent beliefs about forestry education and conservation policy that many British imperial and Australian foresters and politicians held during the 1910s-1940s. A controversial English-born forester, Charles Edward Lane Poole, lobbied for the School's creation and headed it for many years. The Commonwealth Government supported …
Environmental Conservation and Deforestation in British India 1855–1947
The history of forestry in British India has evoked a wide range of responses from environmental historians. Debates often centre in particular on the ethic of the bureaucratic organisation responsible for managing the government-controlled forests of India: the Indian Forest Service. Born on the subcontinent and rooted in the European scientific tradition, the Indian Forest Service model, or “empire forestry” as it came to be called from the 192…
Ecology, forestry and the debate over exotic trees in South Africa
Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa
Forestry as Foreign Policy
Nineteenth-century Europeans visiting Southeast and South Asia eulogised teak trees ( Tectona grandis ) for their value and beauty. Diplomatic diaries, travel memoirs, literary descriptions and geography books for children described the teak as a universal sovereign of the sylvan world, the regal “lord” of the forests. With dwindling supplies of oak in Britain, British elites saw teak as a vital component of the country's global naval supremacy i…
The El Dorado of Forestry
This article argues that because of the perceived and real biological characteristics of the different species of the genus Eucalyptus , imperialists and settlers, and later governments and the elites of developing nations, planted eucalypts widely and created new socio-ecological systems that encouraged and reinforced divergent patterns of economic, social, and ecological development. Planting eucalypts changed local ecologies and encouraged a m…
Environmental Conservation and Deforestation in British India 1855–1947
The history of forestry in British India has evoked a wide range of responses from environmental historians. Debates often centre in particular on the ethic of the bureaucratic organisation responsible for managing the government-controlled forests of India: the Indian Forest Service. Born on the subcontinent and rooted in the European scientific tradition, the Indian Forest Service model, or “empire forestry” as it came to be called from the 192…
Margaret Levyns and the Decline of Ecological Liberalism in the Southwest Cape, 1890–1975
This article analyses the life and ideas of Margaret Rutherford Levyns (née Michell), a South African botanist who worked from 1918 to 1946 as a lecturer in botany at the University of Cape Town and continued to write about the Cape flora (known today as the Cape Floristic Region) until her death in 1975. Until the early 1960s, Levyns maintained a neutral scientific and moral understanding of invasive species, defined here as ‘ecological liberali…
Prickly Pear
Prickly Pear: The Social History of a Plant in the Eastern Cape." Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(4), pp. 1002–1003
Edward Harold Fulcher Swain's Vision of Forest Modernity
Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883–1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences…
Environmental Conservation and Deforestation in British India 1855–1947
The history of forestry in British India has evoked a wide range of responses from environmental historians. Debates often centre in particular on the ethic of the bureaucratic organisation responsible for managing the government-controlled forests of India: the Indian Forest Service. Born on the subcontinent and rooted in the European scientific tradition, the Indian Forest Service model, or “empire forestry” as it came to be called from the 192…
An Imperial, National and State Debate
A variety of debates that surrounded the opening of the Australian Forestry School at Canberra in 1927 illuminate the divergent beliefs about forestry education and conservation policy that many British imperial and Australian foresters and politicians held during the 1910s-1940s. A controversial English-born forester, Charles Edward Lane Poole, lobbied for the School's creation and headed it for many years. The Commonwealth Government supported …
‘There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods’
Forestry as Foreign Policy
Nineteenth-century Europeans visiting Southeast and South Asia eulogised teak trees ( Tectona grandis ) for their value and beauty. Diplomatic diaries, travel memoirs, literary descriptions and geography books for children described the teak as a universal sovereign of the sylvan world, the regal “lord” of the forests. With dwindling supplies of oak in Britain, British elites saw teak as a vital component of the country's global naval supremacy i…
The El Dorado of Forestry
This article argues that because of the perceived and real biological characteristics of the different species of the genus Eucalyptus , imperialists and settlers, and later governments and the elites of developing nations, planted eucalypts widely and created new socio-ecological systems that encouraged and reinforced divergent patterns of economic, social, and ecological development. Planting eucalypts changed local ecologies and encouraged a m…
Science and Empire
Offering one of the first analyses of how networks of science interacted within the British Empire during the past two centuries, this volume shows how the rise of formalized state networks of science
The El Dorado of Forestry
S ummary : This article argues that because of the perceived and real biological characteristics of the different species of the genus Eucalyptus , imperialists and settlers, and later governments and the elites of developing nations, planted eucalypts widely and created new socio-ecological systems that encouraged and reinforced divergent patterns of economic, social, and ecological development. Planting eucalypts changed local ecologies and enc…
Edward Harold Fulcher Swain's Vision of Forest Modernity
Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883–1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences…
Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa
Troubled Natures
Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan Peter Wynn Kirby Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011 xii, 199 pp. + notes, refs, index; figures ISBN 978-0-8248-3428-9 hb http://www.uhpress.hawa
The Rise and Demise of South Africa's First School of Forestry
This article examines the unexplored history of South Africa's first school of forestry. It argues that leading South African politicians and foresters created a school of forestry in the country because they wanted a school where South Africa's future forestry officers could gain practical and theoretical experience of forestry in local conditions rather than going to Britain, Europe or India, where environmental conditions differed. The school …
Ecology, forestry and the debate over exotic trees in South Africa
Mad Dogs and Meerkats
Brown's well-presented and readable history of rabies in southern Africa charts the prevalence of rabies, and responses to this epizootic disease, from the early nineteenth century until today. Bro
Prickly Pear
Prickly Pear: The Social History of a Plant in the Eastern Cape." Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(4), pp. 1002–1003
Margaret Levyns and the Decline of Ecological Liberalism in the Southwest Cape, 1890–1975
This article analyses the life and ideas of Margaret Rutherford Levyns (née Michell), a South African botanist who worked from 1918 to 1946 as a lecturer in botany at the University of Cape Town and continued to write about the Cape flora (known today as the Cape Floristic Region) until her death in 1975. Until the early 1960s, Levyns maintained a neutral scientific and moral understanding of invasive species, defined here as ‘ecological liberali…
Generalizations in Global History
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
If we go along with the mood of the moment, our books become tombstones in graveyards no one visits anymore”
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Decolonization, Environmentalism and Nationalism in Australia and South Africa
Decolonization influenced the rise of environmental activism and thought in Australia and South Africa in ways that have been overlooked by national histories of environmentalism and imperial histories of decolonization. Australia and South Africa’s political and cultural movement away from Britain and the Commonwealth during the 1960s is one important factor explaining why people in both countries created more, and more important, public indigen…
Environments of Empire
Temporality, Space, and Networks in Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories
This special issue of Pacific Historical Review, “Crossroads of Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories,” is guest edited by Gregory A. Barton and Brett M. Bennett. The special issue explores how environmental historians can use the concept of the Indo-Pacific to understand both the deep and contemporary histories of regions that are frequently viewed through Indian Ocean world or Pacific Ocean world perspectives. A preface and this introduction pro…
Decolonizing Informal Empire
This article traces the decolonization of Britain’s informal empire over the teak trade in Thailand in the mid-twentieth century. It argues that British influence over the teak industry, which dated to the second half of the nineteenth century, began to wane in the 1920s due to the gradual nationalization of teak leases. Still, British firms and the Foreign Office remained dominant in the export industry in the 1920s and 1930s because of Britain’…
On Life History and Network Analysis
This article explores how living and working in South Africa has shaped my career as a global environmental historian. It focuses on the concept of network analysis to highlight how theoretical and empirical research is informed by life experiences and by our engagement with the profession of history. The article concludes by thinking about how the study of our own lives can lead us to have more introspection as scholars and teachers
Growing the Game of Golf in Colonial Kuala Lumpur
Golf courses played an important, yet understudied role, in urban colonial town planning in Southeast Asia during the first half of the twentieth century. This article explores the establishment and growth of the Selangor Golf Club, the pre-eminent golf club in Kuala Lumpur during the colonial period of British rule. Club members lobbied and worked for the Selangor and Federated Malay States governments to expand the physical size of the course a…
Golf Diplomacy, Elite Sociability, and the Plural Society in British Colonial Malaya and Malaysia
Golf as a form of elite sociability shaped the diplomacy, high politics, and economic affairs of the Federation of Malaya and Malaysia. Playing golf at exclusive private clubs generated social capital that promoted individual advancement, bridged people from different backgrounds, and bonded them into a cohesive elite. Asian golfers first joined golf clubs in the Federated Malay States in the early twentieth century as part of an informal policy …
Decolonisation and Environmentalism
This article argues that the decolonisation of European empires influenced the origins and spread of environmentalism throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. It demonstrates how many of the social movements and institutions associated with decolonistion – such as civil rights activism, the criticism of imperialism, and the growth of international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organisations – inspired and shaped environmentalism globa…
Geography (17 works) · History (17 works) · History (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Biology (6 works) · Colonialism (6 works)