| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.3

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 10.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania's Usambara Mountains. By Christopher A. Conte. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. 215 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $55.00, paper $24.95.

Highland Sanctuary is an analysis of ecological change and of debates over conservation in Tanzania's Usambara mountains, part of a well-studied region with a rich literature in environmental history. Conte traces the divergent trajectories of ecological transformation in the Usambara mountains, revealing the processes by which the western Usambaras experienced significant environmental degradation and the eastern Usambaras, though threatened, retained some forest cover. He focuses on German and British colonial administrators, scientists, settlers, post-independent Tanzanian state officials, and their interactions with African peasants in this mountain landscape during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He argues that different historical actors have told different kinds of stories about the changing mountain ecology, and that these stories continue to inform perspectives on the land. While colonial narratives about Usambara's environments dichotomized farming and pastoralism and simplified the diversity of ecological change, African farmers and pastoralists have underscored the interrelations between forest, farm, and pasture, accumulated ecological knowledge about specific micro-environments, and developed dynamic practices to manage their lands. Conte integrates these different stories and an analysis of localized environmental degradation and change not only to illuminate the Usambaras' ecological and social history; he also makes a case for how environmental history could contribute to the crafting of better conservation policy.

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