A case study in the environmental history of gentlemanly capitalism : the battle between gentlemen teak merchants and state foresters in Burma and Siam, 1827-1901

The longevity and importance of any scholarly theory is determined by its ability to offer a definition that is specific enough to identify a single, discrete concept but broad enough to have explanatory value for disparate events. A. G. Hopkins's conception of gentlemanly capitalism does just that by offering a window into the economic, social, political, and cultural history of the British Empire. Yet even with this rich theoretical contribution to the historiography of British imperialism, there is one area of research that has yet to be discussed by scholars using the theory of gentlemanly capitalism: the environmental history of the British Empire. This is surprising considering the importance of gentleman capitalists as global exporters of timber and minerals that fed the expansion of the world economy. Gentleman capitalists also fought for and against the creation of conservation laws for the protection of flora and fauna. The environmental history of the British Empire cannot be understood without an explanation of how gentleman capitalists captured and determined much of the world's commodity trade. Our contribution to this celebration of Hopkins's work is a case study of how gentleman capitalists gained control of the teak trade in Britain's formal and informal empires in Southeast Asia during the mid to late nineteenth century. We examine the battle between the gentlemanly managers of the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation Ltd, the leading exporter of teak in Southeast Asia throughout the late nineteenth century, and state foresters working for the Indian Forest Service in Burma and the Royal Forest Department in Siam. While state foresters indeed fought against the desires of powerful gentleman merchants and created a system of state forestry, in the end, gentleman capitalists retained control of the teak forests of Burma and Siam. The battle between the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation (BBTC) and state foresters in this period proves that gentleman capitalists still determined the shape of state forestry policy even after the creation of the Indian Forest Service and the Royal Forest Department. The creation of a meritocratic state in India did not lead to a decline in the influence of the gentleman capitalist; instead, it reinforced their power by institutionalizing and thus protecting elite financial, political, and environmental relations between London, India, and Southeast Asia.