The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze considers the European
representation and understanding of landscape and nature in early
nineteenth-century India. It draws on travel narratives, literary texts,
and scientific literature to show the diversity of European (especially
British) responses to the Indian environment and the ways in which these
contributed to the wider colonizing process. Through its close
examination of the correlation between tropicality and "otherness," and
of science as a means of colonial appropriation, the book offers a new
interpretation of the history of colonial India and a critical
contribution to the understanding of environmental history and the
tropical world. It will be of interest to historians of the environment,
science, and colonialism; South Asianists; and cultural and
environmental anthropologists and geographers.