Dr. Zhenwu Qiu

This article examines the Andaman Islands not merely as a remote penal colony but as a key node in the Bay of Bengal’s evolving meteorological and communication networks. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British meteorologists, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, colonial officials and rival wireless companies—each with different motives—sought to incorporate the islands into a cyclone-warning system aimed at safeguarding maritime traffic. Tracing proposals for submarine cables and the later adoption of wireless telegraphy, the article situates these efforts within a three-dimensional oceanic environmental history linking seabed, sea surface and atmosphere. It argues that commercial anxiety, environmental uncertainty, and imperial rivalry turned the Andamans into one of the first experimental sites for wireless technology in the British Empire, even as cyclones, financial limits and geopolitical shifts repeatedly discouraged these ambitions. Extending the narrative into the postcolonial period, the article shows how Indian meteorologists rebuilt storm-warning infrastructures after Independence, drawing on earlier imperial visions. Conceptually, it suggests that relations between the Andamans and the Indian mainland are best understood as an oscillating condition of partial connection and partial separation shaped by infrastructure, environmental risk, commercial interests and changing regimes of governance.

This article revisits the Port Canning project in the mid-to-late nineteenth-century Bengal delta – a scheme to establish a new port on the Matla River as an alternative to Calcutta. Rather than a story of colonial arrogance or speculative mania, this article demonstrates that the project is better understood as a co-evolutionary history between colonial intervention and the more-than-human landscape of the Sundarbans. Driven by anxieties over the perceived ecological deterioration of the Hooghly River, the project was simultaneously constrained by local tenant cultivators, marauding wildlife, shifting sandbanks and river channels, and cyclones. Henry Piddington’s warnings about storm waves at the proposed port site proved accurate, yet his arguments were actively contested rather than simply ignored. Diverging perceptions of a volatile landscape, compounded by growing fiscal disagreements, drove the colonial government and private enterprise from initial collaboration towards eventual rupture. The project was formally abandoned in 1871 – a process in which the 1867 cyclone played an important but not decisive role. Although proposals for Port Canning persisted thereafter, it was ultimately the ecological deterioration of the Matla River itself – long assumed to be superior to the Hooghly – that foreclosed the colonial vision of developing the site. Instead of emphasising how Piddington’s warnings went unheeded, this article argues that greater attention should be paid to how local communities’ environmental knowledge was systematically overlooked by colonial authorities. Ultimately, neither ‘deterioration’ nor ‘uncertainty’ were inherent properties of the Bengal delta, but instead products of colonial political, commercial, and technical ways of seeing.

海洋知识生产是近代英帝国海权扩张的重要支撑，殖民地居民的本土知识亦随着帝国的扩张而流转，融入现代科学的知识谱系。近代早期加勒比海居民的本地飓风知识，以及19世纪英美科学精英对加勒比海飓风的研究，共同启发了亨利·皮丁顿对孟加拉湾热带气旋的系统性考察。在孟加拉亚洲学会、跨国商会与英印殖民当局的协助下，皮丁顿对孟加拉湾及中国海域的热带气旋进行了一系列研究，彰显了知识生产背后的殖民权力。鸦片战争爆发后，皮丁顿开始详察东亚台风，其与西方学者的研究成果亦流入中国，成为欧洲人塑造殖民统治合法性的工具。热带气旋知识的生产及流转，揭示了帝国知识生产背后的全球性与殖民逻辑，展现了作为实验室的热带与现代世界的关系，也见证了近代中国融入一个急剧全球化世界的过程。

20世纪30年代，在英帝国农业研究委员会的资助下，印度气象局设立了"农业气象科"，标志着英属印度农业气象学的崛起。印度本土科学家L. A. 拉姆达斯既借鉴了以往由英国科学家主导的宏观气象学范式，也探索出了一条眼光向下的"微观气候学"路径，为改良印度农业生产做出了重要贡献。拉姆达斯及其带领的"与农作物有关的天气"小组借用了帝国的资源，塑造了气象科学发展的新方向，也推动了农业气象学从服务帝国到走向本土化的转变。农业气象学的案例反映了英印殖民统治末期印度民族主义思潮下知识生产主体、路径和服务对象的转换，为印度民族国家的建立和发展铺平了道路。拉姆达斯的成就也说明，先进科学技术的发展既要关照底层、造福大众，也要建立在充分吸收借鉴世界先进知识成果的基础之上。

19世纪中期，为加强在热带地区的殖民扩张，推动英属印度的"仁慈统治"，英国殖民部、英国皇家植物园以及英印殖民当局通过艰苦努力，将原生于南美洲的金鸡纳移植到南亚次大陆，在尼尔吉里斯、锡金与锡兰等地开辟金鸡纳种植园。殖民者对自然科学与管理知识的运用促进了金鸡纳种植业在六七十年代的繁荣发展；山地生态环境中的劳动力因素与极端气候的变化造成了金鸡纳种植业的逐步衰落；国际市场的变动进一步加重了私营种植园主的压力。金鸡纳移植过程中的成败得失，体现了英印殖民者努力克服社会—自然限制并加以适应的过程，它促进了金鸡纳药物以及植物科学和医学知识的积累，展现了英帝国继东印度公司之后探索新的统治方式的努力，也揭示出山地社会—生态系统中人与自然的互动。金鸡纳的种植未能实现英属印度"仁慈统治"的理想，并给当地社会生产模式与自然生态环境带来了负面后果。在世界近现代帝国构建与全球交流中，非西方世界也扮演了极为重要的角色。

英国殖民者对牙买加的热带想象推动了牙买加的生态改造。从18世纪末到20世纪初，殖民官员、海军船长与植物学家等将全球各地植物引入牙买加，建立多座大型植物园，为殖民者提供舒适的物理与精神空间。改造生态环境的行为本身受当地生态环境的制约。牙买加植物园建设映射出英帝国的植物流通及其背后的知识、官员、劳工等全球交流网络，伦敦皇家植物园与英属印度在其中扮演了重要角色。牙买加"热带花园"的形成离不开全球性互动，牙买加植物园亦借由旅行者、商人、展览和书刊报纸等媒介对外部世界产生辐射作用。牙买加植物园建设兼具全球性和多样性，体现了殖民活动对自然世界的规训。将非人类要素纳入历史学考察范畴，有助于丰富我们对殖民主义的理解。

获取殖民地进而控制环境乃是英帝国主义的重要经济支撑。帝国主义使英国控制了数百万公顷的农田，占有了不计其数的各类自然资源。在寻求高效利用自然资源的过程中，英帝国促使植物、动物及商品在全世界范围内流通，造成了空前的生态破坏与剧烈的环境变化，由此也促成了许多现代的观念和学科，而我们今天正是透过它们来理解自然。鉴于自然资源的使用与作用在英帝国中举足轻重，对帝国环境史学进行概述，检视其中的能动性、规模与交换等议题便是研究的题中应有之义。