Britannia Rules the Wastes: Britain and the Arid World, 1900-1960

This project explores the ways in which the histories of Britain, its empire and the world's desert environments became entwined in the twentieth-century. The British Empire is often seen as a quintessentially maritime power, with widespread recognition of the place of maritime geographies in British political identity. Historians have also tended to emphasise the scaling-down of Britain's global commitments in the twentieth-century, rather than a deepening interest in 'marginal' places and peoples. Across the Great Arid Zone of the Old World, however, and in many of the deserts of the New, Britain launched myriad attempts to promote settlement, control nomads, develop communications, transform landscapes, establish military bases, extract mineral resources, wage war and conduct nuclear tests. This project examines how Britain's imperial and transnational connections left their mark on the great belt of deserts that girdled the empire and the globe, from the shores of the Atlantic to the Manchurian steppe. Since the fall of the Mongols, few empires have dominated as much of the world's arid zone as did the British in the twentieth century. Yet the effect of this on how that empire functioned, and on British society and culture itself, has never been explored.

In recent years, scholars have embarked on the development of 'a new historiography of large areas'. The revival of imperial, transnational and global history has drawn attention to the persistent dynamics of large-scale regional configurations, and nowhere has the potential of this methodology been better demonstrated than in our new histories of the sea. And yet, while the 'maritime turn' has recovered a number of Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds, many other environments - such as mountains, deserts and steppes - are only beginning to be explored in this way. This project fuses together the modern histories of imperialism, nomadic societies and the world's desert environments to reposition these 'marginal' zones as sites of history in themselves. It argues for the continued relevance of the Eurasian Arid Zone to the modern history of the states around it, and reveals how specific environmental configurations could disrupt the political and economic frameworks of empire.

This project is designed to engage with the emerging agenda of recovering world regions and to lead it in new directions. Its findings will be disseminated through two new research articles prepared during the award period and submitted to The Journal of Global History and Twentieth-Century British History: these form the foundation of a future monograph on Britain and the Arid World. The research will be discussed with the public at public lectures at the Natural History Museum and the Royal Geographical Society, and an exhibition at the latter; with academics from a variety of disciplines at an accompanying research workshop; and with scholars, government and non-governmental organisations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Central Asia through an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners engaging with the shared histories and futures of the world's desert environments.

This project offers a fresh understanding of the geography, chronology and ideologies shaping British imperialism by examining Britain's relationship with the arid world in all its dimensions: political, economic, environmental and cultural. It builds on my existing work on British imperialism in the interwar Syrian Desert, but enables me to undertake a substantially more ambitious interrogation of the relationship between the 'British World' and the Arid World in the twentieth-century. In the process, it aims to advance a new research agenda, demonstrating by example how some of the insights of the 'maritime turn' can be applied to other environments, and urging a new appreciation of deserts and 'wastes' as enduring political, social and cultural arenas.

The task of developing a greater historical understanding of state-building, political control and economic development in the Arid Zone - particularly the myriad projects launched by the British Empire - has considerable contemporary relevance, given the pressures that migration, development, eco-tourism and terrorism continue to place on desert places and peoples. As such, the fellowship project will engage with a variety of users outside academia, notably non-governmental organisations, government (in the UK and in countries located in the arid zone), museums and the wider public. The key activities designed to deliver this impact are: the CAHR Fellowship, 'Nature Live' lecture and Evolve article at the Natural History Museum (NHM); and the end-of-award workshop, 'Be Inspired' talk and 'On View' exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).

A central objective of this project is to provide an important but hitherto absent link between how states have sought to manage desert places and peoples in the past and in the present. Two major impact activities are connected to this objective.

1) The first relates to an important case study in Britain's relationship with the Arid World: the monitoring and destruction of plagues of desert locusts. This grave threat was first tackled at an international level by the British Empire's 'Anti-Locust Research Centre', but it continues to be faced by multiple states today, and in a more fragmented and complex international context. Through a 90 day placement at the NHM, where the Library and Archives houses a unique and largely forgotten collection on British locust control efforts, my research will provide staff with new insights into the collection which will enable future interpretations and raise the profile of these holdings. This collaboration will provide a promising platform for future exploration of the politics and science of locust control past, present and future, having already elicited expressions of interest from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (the body responsible for global locust control today).

2) The second practitioner-facing activity, the end-of-award workshop at the RGS, will consider how multiple empires and states have managed desert places and peoples in the twentieth-century and today. It will invite the participation of a range of current practitioners in governance and economic development, based upon contacts made with the RGS, the NHM, the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development, and the Commission on Nomadic Peoples (IUAES). I will work with my two research assistants in Cairo and New Delhi in year one to identify additional overseas users and beneficiaries as the research progresses. The workshop aims to provide a forum for the many unheard local and national perspectives on the problems of desert control today, bringing them into dialogue with emerging imperial and global historical perspectives. It also presents a singular opportunity to identify key personnel and themes for a future collaborative research network, the subject of a separate and subsequent application.

Alongside these activities the project is also designed to raise awareness and solicit public reflection on the significance of Britain's multifaceted relationship with the Arid World. At the NHM I will deliver a public 'Nature Live' lecture alongside a Museum entomologist, contrasting Britain's initial anti-locust campaigns and how this global problem is confronted today, with a follow-up article on the NHM's anti-locust archives for the Museum's public-facing magazine, Evolve. With the RGS I will deliver a 'Be Inspired' talk to a public audience of 50-100 on how the Society's Collections can be used to discover Britain's relationship with the Arid World. This talk complements the end-of-award workshop while addressing a different audience, and will accompany an 'On View' exhibition in the Reading Room showcasing relevant Collection items.