This study has shown that ideas of ‘internal colonisation’ drove the Knights to persist with the reclamation of Exmoor, in the face of repeated failures. As other recent studies of reclamation have shown, such attitudes also provided value-judgements about what constituted successful ‘improvement’ practices and practitioners, and who possessed the requisite knowledge. As elsewhere, ‘native’ livestock and people on Exmoor were defined as antithetical to such ideals, and regarded as a race apart. However, the study’s additional focus on farming practices and palaeoecological impacts reveals its blind spots. When the Knights undid their earlier ‘colonial’ schemes in the 1860s, observers either said little, or depicted the improved financial returns as the final ‘success’ of improvement. Finally, the study suggests that the history of ‘internal colonisation’ on Exmoor has important lessons for the future. The need for urgent action to mitigate climate change and secure rapid environmental recovery risks casting external agencies and policymakers as Victorian ‘improvers’, ready to exclude or ignore local knowledge and practices of landscape management today.