129 Hybridity of colonial and postcolonial forestry in environmental history: An introduction SHOKO MIZUNO Komazawa University, Tokyo, Japan Among the numerous topics that environmental history has covered, the history of colonial forestry has attracted interest as central to the rise of scientific conservation. 1 In the British Empire, a state forestry system was developed earliest in India, starting in the mid-nineteenth century. e Government of India established early forest laws to reserve forests. e aim was to control forest resources and maintain sustainable yields according to the principles of modern scientific forestry, which had emerged first in Europe. As the area of reserved forests expanded, local practices were restricted, including shifting cultivation, grazing, and collecting fodder and fuel. Although many studies have discussed the nature of colonial forestry within the framework of a dichotomy between European and indigenous, or modern and traditional, aspects, research can be focused more on the colonial encounters between European foresters and local societies. e aim of this special issue is to explore how new knowledge and practices were generated by the encounters in British India and how they were incorporated into empire forestry networks. We also investigate the legacies of colonial forestry in multiple postcolonial forestry networks. As represented by Ramachandra Guha’s work on forestry in colonial India, many subcontinental scholars emphasise that authoritarian colonial states forcibly introduced a forest management system that ignored local ecological and social conditions, thereby disturbing a supposed precolonial harmony between nature and indigenous societies, as well as the biodiversity in the forests. 2 In contrast, more recent studies challenge this view because standardised and stereotyped frameworks are commonly used to analyse the nature of colonial forestry. K. Sivaramakrishnan 1 William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chapter 7, doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199260317.001.0001; K. Sivaramakrishnan, ‘Science, Environment and Empire History: Comparative Perspectives from Forests in Colonial India’, Environment and History 14 (2008): 41–65, doi.org/10.3197/096734008X271850. 2 Ramachandra Guha, e Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989); Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, is Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).