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Full-Text Articles in Physical and Environmental Geography
Heat And Colonial Weather Science In The Straits Settlements C. 1820-1900, Fiona Williamson
Heat And Colonial Weather Science In The Straits Settlements C. 1820-1900, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Historical explorations of tropical heat in a colonial context have largely focussed on two interconnected spheres: colonial perceptions of place and body or, the implications of heat on different bodies in medical thought and practice. This paper seeks to move the discussion towards a history of colonial scientific thought about heat as component of weather and of escalating nature-induced hazards, studied in the observatory or meteorological department. A central theme is to think about heat in its relationship to nascent meso-scale atmospheric knowledge, meteorological theory and, as a by-product of urbanisation and land-use change. In so doing, it conceptualises the …
Malaya's Greatest Menace? Slow-Onset Disaster And The Muddy Politics Of British Malaya, C. 1900–50, Fiona Williamson
Malaya's Greatest Menace? Slow-Onset Disaster And The Muddy Politics Of British Malaya, C. 1900–50, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In 1948, a chilling statement from British Malaya’s Director of Agriculture, F. Burnett, made headline news. According to Burnett, unchecked soil erosion across hillside Malaya would soon render the country’s precious agricultural land infertile. Erosion had worsened considerably after the 1880s due to widespread, indiscriminate agricultural and industrial clearing. By the 1920s, it had become a sizeable socioeconomic and environmental issue, thought also to contribute to the scale and intensity of flooding and the likelihood of dangerous landslips. The British Government raised a series of empire-wide inquiries across the first half of the twentieth century, tied to an emerging global …