Description:

The Burning Wind: Pest Insects as a Malevolent Force of Nature in Britain and the Empire in the Eighteenth Century

Sheila Wille - Mellon Fellow in the Environmental Humanities

Join us to discuss this precirculated chapter from Sheila Wille's book project called Government of Insects in Britain and the Empire, 1691-1816. In this chapter, we chart the rising problem of pest insects in the agricultural empire and reactions to them. These events combined with potent traditions in natural theology and a new improvement politics to create a new "ethos of interventionism" in the eighteenth century, whereby British naturalists and agriculturalists justified and encouraged a more intensive control of insect nature than ever before. Economic entomology as we know it was forged in this political, scientific, and environmental crucible of empire.

Dr. Wille will provide a synopsis of the whole book to begin, followed by questions and critiques about the book or precirculated chapter.

We welcome scholars and students from fields crossing the sciences and humanities to discuss this chapter, which draws on a range of evidences from entomological science to early modern agricultural journals and poetry.

Refreshments will be served!

Click here to download the chapter.