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Slashed and burned: war, environment, and resource insecurity in West Borneo during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

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Title Slashed and burned: war, environment, and resource insecurity in West Borneo during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
 
Creator Wadley, R.L.
 
Subject shifting cultivation
natural resources
forest resources
ethnic groups
war
colonization
history
 
Description European colonial efforts to pacify ‘rebellious’ Iban in western Borneo during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced chronic resource insecurity and may have contributed to the recorded destructiveness of Iban swidden cultivation. Negative European opinions towards swiddening may have thus been reinforced by a context that the Europeans themselves created. Drawing on anthropological theories linking swidden cultivation and Iban warfare, this article presents a historical case for the relationship between pacification, resource insecurity, and swidden destructiveness. It also re-evaluates Derek Freeman’s original diagnosis of Iban as ‘prodigal’ farmers, suggesting that there may have been more to Iban pioneering destruction than the wide availability of ‘virgin’ forest.
 
Date 2007
2012-06-04T09:12:34Z
2012-06-04T09:12:34Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Wadley, R.L. 2007. Slashed and burned: war, environment, and resource insecurity in West Borneo during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (1) :109-128. ISSN: 1359-0987.
1359-0987
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/19619
https://www.cifor.org/knowledge/publication/2210
 
Language en
 
Source Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute