Seeds of Empire

The traditional image of New Zealand is one of verdant landscapes with sheep grazing on lush green pastures. Yet this landscape is almost entirely an artificial creation. As Britain became increasingly reliant on its overseas territories for supplies of food and raw material so all over the Empire indigenous plants were replaced with English grasses to provide the worked up products of pasture - meat butter cheese wool and hides. In New Zealand this process was carried to an extreme with forest cleared and swamps drained. How why and with what consequences did the transformation of New Zealand into these empires of grass occur? 'Seeds of Empire' provides both an exciting appraisal of New Zealand's environmental history and a long overdue exploration of the significance of grass in the processes of sowing empire.