The history of colonial forestry in Indo-China contradicts the role historian Richard H. Grove gives to colonization in the development of environmental thought in at least three ways. First, colonization did not pay attention to indigenous knowledge – on the contrary, it stigmatized local modes of exploitation to better divert resources to its own advantage. Second, conservationist policies did not succeed in slowing down forest devastation and for this reason can be reduced to an imperialist discourse. Finally, colonial foresters and administrators ignored preservationist concerns. This article shows a strong disconnect between colonial environmentalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as described by Grove and the practices of development of the forest resources by industrial colonization at the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century. It is therefore not possible to consider colonization in general as a root of environmental thought.