Annker’s dissertation offers a fascinating exploration of the interconnections between the history of ecology and British imperial policies in the first half of the 20th Century. It focuses on a group of scientists who hoped to aid imperial administrators by conceptualizing the Empire’s natural and human resources in broad ecological terms. Such ideas led to a marked expansion of ecological research, both geographically and conceptually. During these decades, Anker shows, ecological studies were undertaken in environments that stretched from Spitsbergen and Greenland in the north to the very southern tip of Africa at Cape Town. At the same time, ecological thinking also expanded from botanical studies to studies of forests, fish, birds, and animals, and finally to studies of human social relationships, planned economies, and international politics.
Anker’s thesis focuses in particular on the conflict between two radically different and competing ecological theories that emerged in these decades. Promoting one theory were Oxford ecologist Arthur George Tansley and his followers; opposing them were the followers of South African botanist and political leader Jan Christian Smuts. While Tansley’s ecosystem theory emphasized a mechanistic approach toward controlling material and human resources, Smuts promoted an idealistic ecology that would address South Africa’s environmental, social, and racial problems. Both theories, Anker proves, were deeply influenced by the social as well as the natural sciences of the day, for Tansley was fascinated by Freudian psychology, while Smuts’ version of holism blended ecology with romantic philosophy and political theory. Anker frames these debates within a broader context of scientific and political developments, for his study begins with the publication of Eugenius Warming’s important conceptual work on ecology in 1895 and ends with ecologists helping to shape the charter of the United Nations in 1945.
A century after its introduction, Anker argues, ecological science continues to be an important means of organizing and synthesizing knowledge, framing environmental questions, and addressing social issues. By offering a subtly argued and carefully nuanced examination of the ways that an earlier generation of ecologists tried to integrate human beings into their scientific frameworks, Anker’s study of “The Ecology of Nations” offers a valuable and highly original contribution to the history of the human sciences.