The colonial origins of deforestation and large-scale environmental transformation

This project aims to offer the first in-depth account of how the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ran and maintained a seaborne empire in the early modern Indonesian archipelago. It examines the intense financial and technoscientific investments of colonial officers, natural historians, physicians and craftspeople into the maritime logistics of keeping ships afloat and sailors alive. Based on extensive research in Indonesia, India and the Netherlands, this project offers a novel perspective on how the VOC appropriated a variety of Southeast Asian technologies of maintenance and repair, and how it extracted the requisite natural resources, to manage its violent commercial and imperial ventures. In doing so, this project connects the rise of science and technology to the history of colonial expansion and large-scale environmental transformation.