The Greening of Antarctica: Assembling an International Environment

265 Pages·2019·15.375 MB·English

by  Alessandro Antonello

i
The Greening of Antarctica
ii
iii
The Greening
of Antarctica
Assembling an International
Environment
z

ALESSANDRO ANTONELLO
1
iv
1
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ISBN 978– 0– 19– 090717– 4
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Parts of chapter 1 previously appeared in Alessandro Antonello, “Nature Conservation and
Antarctic Diplomacy, 1959–1964,” The Polar Journal 4, no. 2 (2014): 335–53, copyright Taylor
and Francis. Parts of chapter 4 previously appeared in Alessandro Antonello, “Protecting the
Southern Ocean Ecosystem: The Environmental Protection Agenda of Antarctic Diplomacy
and Science,” in International Organizations and Environmental Protection: Conservation and
Globalization in the Twentieth Century, ed. Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer (New York
and Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), 268–92, copyright Alessandro Antonello.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Order, Power, Authority and the Antarctic
Environment 1
1. Principles for “Unprincipled Men”: Filling the Household of
Antarctic Nature 19
2. Arguing with Seals: The Changing Terrain of Authority 49
3. Mining the Deep South: Exploitation, Environmental Impact,
and Contested Futures 77
4. Seeing the Southern Ocean Ecosystem: Enlarging the Antarctic
Community 109
5. The Plenitude of Nature and Sovereignty: Boundaries of
Insiders and Outsiders 139
Epilogue: The Fate of the Green Antarctic 169
Notes 175
Bibliography 221
Index 241
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vii
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the many people and institutions who have made
this book possible. Two wonderful friends and mentors have particularly
influenced my development as a historian and this book. Tom Griffiths
has been unfailingly generous with his time and wisdom. He has always
been a sensitive reader and supportive of my aspirations for this work as
well as more broadly as a historian. He is the model of a mentor and his-
torian, and his dedication to the scholarly art that is history is an inspira-
tion. Mark Carey took a punt on a distant Australian for a postdoc on his
project on the history of humans and their relationship with ice. He was
welcoming as both friend and colleague in Eugene, Oregon, and I was sad
to leave after my two years were up. He has also been a model to me as
a mentor and historian in his care for my personal well-b eing and career
and in his deep engagement with my work.
Most of the work on this book occurred when I was a PhD student in
the School of History, Research School of Social Sciences, at the Australian
National University. It is a pleasure to recognize the generous financial
support of ANU with a vice chancellor’s scholarship, which included not
only a stipend but also a healthy research budget that allowed extended
trips to many archives. In our usual habitats of the Coombs Tea Room and
the University House gardens and bar, the school staff and my fellow PhD
students were wonderful companions on my journey, and I am thankful
to them for reading drafts, listening to and discussing ideas in formation,
or generally supporting me in becoming a historian. Thanks to them and
others at ANU, including Joan Beaumont, Brett Bennett, Alexis Bergantz,
Frank Bongiorno, Nicholas Brown, Murray Chisholm, Doug Craig, Robyn
Curtis, Hamish Dalley, Karen Downing, Kim Doyle, Arnold Ellem, Diane
Erceg, David Fettling, Niki Francis, Barry Higman, Meggie Hutchinson,
John Knott, Cameron McLachlan, Tristan Moss, Cameron Muir, Shannyn
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viii Acknowledgments
Palmer, Anne Rees, Libby Robin, Blake Singley, Karen Smith, Carolyn
Strange, and Angela Woollacott.
This book underwent much revision and refinement while I was a
postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oregon. Here I gratefully
note the support of the National Science Foundation under grant number
1253779. In addition to Mark Carey, I found myself in a wonderful com-
munity of scholars in the Robert D. Clark Honors College and the wider
university. For their engagement with my work, my thanks to Hayley
Brazier, M Jackson, Katie Meehan, Olivia Molden, Marsha Weisiger, Tim
Williams, members of the Glacier Lab, and the engaged honors students
of my Antarctic history seminar. After Eugene, I was very happy to arrive
at the University of Melbourne as a McKenzie postdoctoral fellow, where
the very final touches to this book happened, and I am thankful to my
new colleagues in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies for
welcoming me.
I am thankful to others at various conferences and archives around the
world for sharing their knowledge of Antarctica and environmental and
international history more generally. A small band of Antarctic historians
and other humanities scholars has been a wonderful community to be in,
and my thanks especially to Adrian Howkins, Peder Roberts, Lize-M arie
van der Watt, Elizabeth Leane, Marcus Haward, and Cornelia Lüdecke.
I am grateful to the SCAR History Expert Group and Social Sciences
Action Group for a travel grant in 2013. For opportunities to publish elem-
ents of my Antarctic research during the work on this book, I am grateful
to Klaus Dodds, Alan Hemmings, Peder Roberts, Lize-M arie van der Watt,
Adrian Howkins, Wolfram Kaiser, Jan-H enrik Meyer, Marcus Haward,
and Tom Griffiths. At Oxford University Press, my thanks to Susan Ferber
and Alexandra Dauler as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their
crucial input.
My time in archives and libraries has been enhanced by many dedicated
and knowledgeable librarians and archivists, and I am grateful to them
all. In Australia, to the staff of the National Archives of Australia, espe-
cially Christina Beresford and Barrie Paterson of Hobart and Kerry Jeffery
of Canberra, as well as to the staff of the National Library of Australia,
the Basser Library of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian
Antarctic Division Library, and the Australian National University Library.
In New Zealand, to the staff of the National Archives and of the Alexander
Turnbull Library and to Neil Robertson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Trade. In the United Kingdom, to Ellen Bazeley- White and Joanna Rae
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Acknowledgments ix
of the British Antarctic Survey; Shirley Sawtell and Naomi Boneham of the
Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; Renuke Badhe
and Rosemary Nash of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
Secretariat, Cambridge; and the staff of the Royal Society Library and
Archives and the National Archives of the United Kingdom. In the United
States, to the staff of the National Archives and Records Administration
at College Park, the Library of Congress, the Archives of the National
Academies of Science, the Hoover Institution Archives, and Stanford
University, as well as to Claire Christian of the Antarctic and Southern
Ocean Coalition, Washington, DC.
Many dear friends have also seen this book and me develop over the
years and have at various points housed, fed, and endured me. My par-
ticular thanks to Madeline Cooper, Danae Paxinos, Lauren Hannan, and
Luisa De Liseo. Finally, and most importantly, my deepest thanks are to
my family, Fernanda and Peter, Marco and Georgia. While I completed my
studies and work in Canberra and Eugene (among other places), they were
always there in Melbourne, a wonderful and welcoming home. This work
would be impossible without them.