Читать книгу The Invention of Green Colonialism - Guillaume Blanc - Страница 7

Writing history is a collective adventure and this book owes much to many people. My research in Ethiopia could not have taken place without the financial support of the ANR (CE27) PANSER. My thanks also to all the staff at the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority and at the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) in Addis Ababa. Without the warm welcome and the ongoing help of Fanuel Kebede, Getnet Ygzaw, Kumara Wakijira, Marie Bridonneau and Kidanemaryam Woldegyorgis, I would not have been able to carry out my research.

François-Xavier Fauvelle is a key figure in the conception of this book. I am extremely grateful to him for encouraging me to write it. I would also like to thank Pauline Miel, my editor at Flammarion, France, for her constant support and her unfailing enthusiasm, thoroughness and kindness. Last but not least, without the editorial team of Polity, this book would have remained accessible only for French readers. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with John Thompson and Elise Heslinga, and for the enthusiastic rigour of my translator, Helen Morrison.

Thanks also to my colleagues from the history department in Rennes 2, and in particular to Karim Ghorbal, who was always ready to listen and to advise, in spite of the increasingly demanding conditions of day-to-day university work.

I also owe a great deal to the many people who shared my journey and to the colleagues and friends who encouraged me to draw attention to this little-known, but dramatic, aspect of African history. Thanks to David Annequin, Fiora Badiou, Amélie Chekroun, Romain Favreau, Thomas Guindeuil, Bertrand Hirsch, Julien Horon, Mehdi Labzaé, Victor Magnani, Grégory Quenet, Alexis Roy, Thibaud Trochu and Bérénice Velez. Thank you, above all, for these same reasons and for so many others, to my first reader, Clara Delboé.

Finally, this book should be signed by all the inhabitants of the Simien Mountains in Ethiopia. It is of course only a very small gesture. I simply hope that it will play its part in ensuring that the world hears the story of these women and these men sacrificed in the name of a world heritage in which they have no place, and of a worldwide ecological catastrophe in which they play no part.