My research recentres soil in histories of the imperial project by providing an agroecological history of colonial soil science between 1875 and 1940. Focused on the imperial plantation economies of the British and French empires across the Indian Ocean World, it tells the hitherto neglected and intertwined stories of soil and imperial capitalist production. Rather than positioning soil as a static and contextual background, this project engages with global and trans-imperial approaches to recount how new ideas, technologies, disciplines, and institutions transformed imperial engagements with soil, and how soil actively shaped these processes as colonial agronomists worked to understand its potential, challenges, fertility, and decline.

At a time when we face a global crisis in soil fertility, particularly in the Global South, and at a time when billions of people are faced with mounting food shortages, this project aims to contribute a new understanding to the critical importance of soil to the imperial project, and to capitalism more widely.