Conservation regimes are often grounded in a modernist approach that disregards local or indigenous knowledge and practices. Indeed, the role of environmental policy, resource acquisition, and ecological change in colonial contexts has received tremendous attention in recent years, but the role of these process beyond traditional definitions of colonialism is less well-understood. The panel “Ecologies of coercion: comparative perspectives on ecological conservation beyond colonial narratives” brings together case studies that include German-Ottoman relations in the 1910’s, Maoist China in the 1950’s-60’s and Iran in the present day to question received narratives about the role of ecological practice as a tool of state power beyond standard colonial contexts. Together, these papers offer insights into how ecological conservation has been conceptualized and implemented in diverse historical and geographical spaces that defy typical categorization as either colonial or post-colonial. Throughout the twentieth-century, ecological and conservation policy has functioned as a bedrock of state-making projects in both colonial, post-colonial, and uncolonized political contexts.

The first paper explores the ecological consequences German capital firms operating in late Ottoman Anatolia during the early twentieth century. Through test-farms established to produce new knowledge of Ottoman environmental conditions, German investors and scientists helped shape a discourse of ecological conservation among Ottoman elites, one that contributed to a politics of environmental management that rooted in German theories of climate, geography, and social-Darwinist notions of bioregionalism. The second paper challenges received narratives about ecological discourse in mid-century authoritarian regimes. This paper upends common assumptions that Mao-era China was devoid of environmental concern and isolated from the international development of environmental consciousness, this paper explores how Chinese scientific discussions of nature conservation in the mid-1950s became the cornerstone of China's successive creation of natural reserves, state-initiated hunting regulations, and public natural protection education in the 1960s.The third paper, focusing on Iran, explores how conservation regimes in non-colonized countries have affected local communities' access to land and resources, finding that conservation in non-colonized countries requires a more nuanced approach that values and integrates indigenous knowledge and practices in the management of natural resources.

Bringing together a diverse group of scholars, this panel explores the varied historical, political, and geographical contexts in which ecological conservation has been conceptualized and implemented. The presentations shed light on the various ways in which ecological conservation has been shaped by local contexts, historical legacies, and global discourses. The panel will be of interest to scholars of environmental history, global history, empire, and postcolonial studies.