| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.2

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 8.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka 1800-1900. By James L. A. Webb, Jr. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002. xviii + 243 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $55.00.

Sri Lanka, the ecologically and culturally diverse island nation in the Indian Ocean that Marco Polo called "Serendib," and that was known as Ceylon until 1972, has had a long and fascinating history. Today six of its ancient cultural treasures and cities and the Sinharaja Rainforest are recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. Its 65,000 square kilometers are commonly characterized by climate as the lowland wet zone in the southwest, and the dry zone to the north and east. Between these, the central highland massif, origin of all of the island's major rivers, rises abruptly to a peak of over 2,500 meters. Until early in the nineteenth century, these mountains were cloaked in forest and natural grasslands rich in endemic species. In the lower elevation intermediate zone agricultural villages prospered. Less than one hundred years later, the landscape had been transformed. Tea plantations of the British Empire covered vast acreages above one thousand meters, and chena shifting cultivation by villagers had deforested much of the land below. James Webb focuses on this critical transition in the island's history in this carefully researched book. . . .

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