Timber colonialism and forest reserve imaginaries: Colonial constructions, legal legacies and governance conflicts in Sierra Leone's Kambui Hills

In this paper we offer a critical examination of the colonial forest reserve and its key territorial role in broader ambitions and dynamics of timber colonialism. Products of the colonial project, forest reserves were established (and still exist) as physical spaces across much of Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America. Perhaps more saliently, however, they also persist within geographical and legal imaginaries — specifically as spaces that can and should be governed. In this paper, we focus on the case of Kambui Hills Forestry Reserve (established in 1920 by the British Colonial Government in what is now Sierra Leone) in order to theorise the processes and rationales that propelled the creation of this particular kind of colonial space, and the ways in which its ongoing legacy continues to shape the evolution of resource governance regimes. The paper is therefore genealogical in approach, drawing on historical archives and ethnographic data to show how particular ghosts of timber colonialism continue to manifest in service of various government and conservation agendas. • Theorises the role of colonial forestry reserves as a key space in the context of timber colonisation. • Provides a rich analysis of the case study of the Kambui Hills Forest Reserve. • Demonstrates how the ideas and laws relating to forest reserves have continually been reinterpreted over time.