The prolific interdisciplinary scholar who worked on the periphery and challenged Eurocentrism also drew attention to the El Niño phenomenon and global warming concerns in Victorian times
is remembered as a great interdisciplinary scholar with deep interests in the environment, an opponent of Eurocentrism in academia, and a mentor to students from around the globe.
Some of this was inherited no doubt from his parents, the eminent geographers AT “Dick” and Jean Grove. Richard read geography at Oxford, conservation science at University College London, and completed a PhD in history at the University of Cambridge . It was during his doctoral studies that he became a champion of environmental history, and the volume, co-edited with David Anderson, remains a foundational work.
Far from being a modern development, concern over environmental degradation was witnessed first-hand by colonial experts and managers as they saw animals and plants, soils and forests disappearing as a result of the ravages of plantation agriculture and forestry. This was particularly apparent on the “island Edens” of St Helena, Mauritius, Madeira, Barbados, Montserrat and St Vincent, where effects were quickly registered, soils washed away, and droughts and floods followed.
, and wrote the most influential and thorough early environmental history of the region. This was how I first encountered him, and I was influenced to write about the first Dutch settlers’ explorations and transformations of the Cape environment, drawing on the Dutch East India Company resources neglected by most historians writing in English. In fact,had its roots in Africa, in a period of work Grove did in the forests of Malawi where he developed an interest in tropical forest conservation.
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