This paper situates dominant fire suppression practices within historical colonial regimes of environmental governance. Across much of the colonial and neocolonial world, the use of fire in landscapes by smallholders has been widely suppressed, a practice that remains pervasive today. In regions such as the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, centuries of fire suppression have led to severe ecological and cultural consequences. Ecologically, fire suppression disrupts landscapes, altering plant ecologies and contributing to more extreme wildfires. Culturally, the suppression of fire destabilizes smallholder livelihoods, as fire is an essential element of many land management systems. This paper traces the origins of fire suppression to Europe during the industrial revolution, where it emerged alongside a suite of land use restrictions. These restrictions were driven by tensions between the priorities of capitalist states and the livelihoods of rural land users. Land use policies made smallholder livelihoods increasingly untenable, justified by perceptions of smallholders as economically unproductive. European authorities extended these policies to colonial contexts, where they applied to populations that relied on fire for landscape management. The paper argues that understanding fire suppression and its consequences within its colonial history has important implications for sustainable fire governance, environmental justice, and climate resilience.
