This book explores this neglected history through the work of Pierre Gourou, one of the centuryтАЩs foremost purveyors of what anti-colonial writer Aim├й C├йsaire dubbed tropicalit├й. It explores how GourouтАЩs interpretations of тАШthe natureтАЩ of the tropical world, and its innate difference from the temperate world, were built on the shifting sands of twentieth-century history тАУ empire and freedom, modernity and disenchantment, war and revolution, culture and civilisation, and race and development. The book addresses key questions about the location and power of knowledge by focusing on GourouтАЩs cultivation of the tropics as a romanticised, networked and affective domain. The book probes what C├йsaire described as GourouтАЩs тАШimpure and worldly geographyтАЩ as a way of opening up interdisciplinary questions of geography, ontology, epistemology, experience and materiality.
This book will be of great interest to scholars and students within historical geography, history, postcolonial studies, cultural studies and international relations.
Gavin Bowd is Reader in French, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews, UK.
Daniel Clayton is Senior Lecturer in Geography, School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, UK.