GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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For the few not the many
BOB NEWLAND recommends a book that challenges many erroneously held views on conservationism
INVASIVE: Awash National Park, Ethiopia
[Nina R/CC]
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
The Invention of Green Colonialism
by Guillaume Blanc
Polity £15.99
MANY Morning Star readers will be familiar with the oft repeated justification that colonialists simply took over and developed land that was unoccupied. To make this a reality required the wholesale expulsion of indigenous peoples from their land in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Africa.
Like many other progressives I have always considered the National Parks and their conservation agenda to be a good thing. This book challenges that idea.
Blanc’s study concentrates primarily on Africa especially Ethiopia. He argues that National Parks are based on the colonial era idea of “Eden” — an Africa consisting of vast forests and green spaces occupied by flora and fauna.
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