Description
Whilst an attention to war from the perspective of the Earth can direct us to the 'new', the 'accelerated', and the 'technologically advanced', this paper takes a historical view on war's ecological, climatic, and epidemiological effects, situating ecological martial violence within the establishment/maintenance of the colonial world system and coloniality. The paper is empirically grounded in extensive archival work on the 19th century activities of the British Army's Royal Corps of Engineers, and Army Service Corps (later amalgamated into the Royal Logistics Corps). It considers how the ecological martial violence of British military engineering and logistics was central to entwined projects of empire, conquest, colonial capitalism and the establishment of the colonial world system. Take, for instance, the Royal Engineers role in the founding of British Columbia in Canada, which involved the establishment of both literal and figurative infrastructures for extraction (minerals, timber, fossil fuels, agriculture, fisheries) through road building, surveying, and mapping. Or take the Army Service Corps' role in the South African/Boer War, in which aspects of the military doctrine of 'savage warfare' produced a denuded landscape unable to support human life. This war of logistics and resources was bound within global infrastructural circulations of colonial extraction, which saw - for instance - thousands of cattle farmed in South America shipped alive to South Africa to feed British forces. I consider how these histories inform our understanding of contemporary ecological martial violence, drawing on examples from the British Army's more recent engineering and logistical activities in Afghanistan.
