This special issue of Pacific Historical Review , “Crossroads of Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories,” is guest edited by Gregory A. Barton and Brett M. Bennett. The special issue explores how environmental historians can use the concept of the Indo-Pacific to understand both the deep and contemporary histories of regions that are frequently viewed through Indian Ocean world or Pacific Ocean world perspectives. A preface and this introduction provide a theoretical overview, establishing some of the key temporal, spatial, and causal parameters of the Indo-Pacific. The following articles by Timothy P. Barnard, by Ruth Morgan, and by Gregory Barton and Brett Bennett highlight how local and foreign powers have sought to control the Indo-Pacific’s natural resources to shape new economies, ecologies, and polities within the region during the past two centuries. Broadly, the special issue encourages other historians to engage with the Indo-Pacific concept due to its theoretical depth as well as its relevance to contemporary geopolitical affairs.

The presence of a large lizard, the Komodo dragon, in eastern Indonesia first came to the attention of Dutch authorities in 1912. Over the next thirty years these reptiles became one of the most desired celebrity species in the world for explorers to seek, zoos to display, and the public to imagine. From these experiences with captive Komodo lizards, a greater understanding of the behavior and morphology of the animal developed. This literature was shared in polycentric networks of science prior to the Second World War among zookeepers, explorers, and government officials, reflecting early efforts in the development of transnational knowledge of the biology of a unique species. This article is part of the “Crossroads of Indo–Pacific Environmental Histories” special issue of Pacific Historical Review .

This article traces the decolonization of Britain’s informal empire over the teak trade in Thailand in the mid-twentieth century. It argues that British influence over the teak industry, which dated to the second half of the nineteenth century, began to wane in the 1920s due to the gradual nationalization of teak leases. Still, British firms and the Foreign Office remained dominant in the export industry in the 1920s and 1930s because of Britain’s lobbying and geopolitical authority. The Japanese invasion of Thailand in 1941 during the Second World War caused British firms to lose access to their leases and equipment. Bilateral negotiations between the Thai government and British firms after the war ended led to logs and leases being returned to British firms, but the Thai government did not renew long term leases in the 1950s despite protests from British business and government. The Thai elite looked to Americans for defense support, and they supported nationalization to expand Thai and Thai-Chinese economic authority. Britain’s military and economic authority in Thailand had eroded rapidly and, within a decade, British firms had lost control over Southeast Asia’s teak trade. This article is part of the “Crossroads of Indo–Pacific Environmental Histories” special issue of Pacific Historical Review .

This article examines a unique migratory movement of Filipinos to America: Filipino nationals recruited by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard between 1952 and 1970. Such recruits were seen as a solution to a mounting labor problem stemming from the Navy’s traditional use of minorities to fulfill duties as servants for naval officers. With African Americans' demands for equal opportunity reaching a crescendo during the Civil Rights era, the U.S. Navy looked to its former colony to replenish its supply of dark-skinned servants. Despite expectations of docility, however, such Filipino sailors were able to forge a culture of resistance manifested through non-confrontational acts of defiance, protest through official channels, and labor stoppage. Such actions ultimately resulted in the reversal of naval policy that relegated Filipinos to servile labor.

As its record in California, southern India, and elsewhere suggests, of the many biotic exchanges of the long nineteenth century, the case of the Australian blue gum tree ( Eucalyptus globulus ) is one that especially transcends bilateral, spatial, or imperial framing. The blue gum instead invites more material and temporal perspectives to its spread: since its reputation accrued over time in diverse colonial settings, its adoption was contingent on the extent to which local tree cover was feared to have been depleted, and its growth was hoped to secure the futures of colonial states. Focusing on nineteenth-century understandings of the biological characteristics of the blue gum in southeastern Australia, South Asia and California, and the circulation of this knowledge between these sites, this article draws on the insights of neo-materialism to argue that this tree’s value and importance lay in its perceived ability to rapidly provide fuel wood for the empowerment of colonial states. This article is part of the “Crossroads of Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories” special issue of Pacific Historical Review.