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Alfred Crosby’s Ecological Imperials took away any doubts I may have had about environmental history as a field of study. Crosby makes a convincing argument about the environmental factors that impacted European colonization that expands on the well-known idea that European’s brought disease with them and also discusses a new element, that the European’s were able to expand because of how the environments allowed their crops to be successful.
It is pretty well known that European’s brought disease with them when they came to America, which was a major factor in the decimation of the Native American population, but Crosby provides a further explanation for this. Crosby cites how when European cultures began to settle in one place and stray from the hunting lifestyle, they exposed themselves to diseases which wiped out sections of their populations. However, in Darwinian fashion, the European’s who survived developed immunities to the diseases brought on by their lifestyle, and therefore when they brought their lifestyle to the New World, they remained immune while indigenous members of the population were not. Crosby’s conclusion from these facts is that, “The only truly effective way to deal with the major communicable pathogens of the world is directly, thus building – if one survives – immunity against them” (287).
I think Manish makes an interesting point when he says “In retrospect it would have been to the benefit of many of the indigenous populations to attempt to isolate themselves and retain their native identities for their immune systems lacked exposure to the vast majority of pathogens that the Europeans had endured for hundreds of years.” While that might be true, it’s hard to say if the European’s had known the consequences of their shifting lifestyle would bring on so much death and disease that they would have settled anyway. While it was advantageous to European’s in the end, going through centuries of death while they could have maintained a hunting lifestyle separate from animals is a major price to pay, and if they had known what they were getting into I would argue they would have continued on with their more “natural” way of life.
I also found Crosby’s argument about how European’s were able to change the physical landscape of the New World to adapt to their lifestyle very convincing. Ian brings up how successful sugar production in Australia was due to how conducive the climate was, and that the bringing of the foreign entities allowed the members of the Old World to excel while living off the land. I really liked the term Crosby uses of “European erosion” (97), as it goes beyond how successful European products were and instead discusses how the weeds and foreign plants helped push out the indigenous cultures, like with the Guanches of the Canaries.