Shifting the Cultivator: The Politics of Teak Regeneration in Colonial Burma

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
One of the most innovative aspects of forest policy in colonial Burma was the employment of shifting cultivators in order to create teak plantations. As developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this system of plantation forestry represented an far-sighted attempt to establish teak production on a long-term basis. Indeed, its adaptation of what many colonial officials viewed as a destructive and primitive form of agriculture to more ‘useful’ end, guaranteed its popularity in a broader imperial context. Even today, the use of shifting cultivators for commercial tree planting remains an acknowledged agroforestry technique, and is promoted as a cure for various social and ecological problems.