Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
A major theme of Alfred Crosby’s work Ecological Imperialism is the merging of human societies from the “Old World” and natives living in the neo-Europes. Crosby discusses the intersection of separate human cultures as well as the introduction of new animal and plant species into unsuspecting habitats. The role that disease played in the European conquest of the New World is well documented by Crosby, but he also provides an explanation for the proliferation of Old World animals in North America. Old World animals experienced more success and expansion in the neo-Europes than did the animals of the neo-Europes in the Old World. According to Crosby, this is because the Old World animals were able to fill a vacated niche in the New World ecosystems. Crosby argues the large animals, such as mammoths, that evolved in the absence of humans were not prepared to hide and defend themselves from hunters and thus were easily eliminated by the human civilizations that crossed the ice bridge and entered North America. This in turn created an opening that was filled by grazing animals of the Old World such as cows, horses, and sheep (278). The terrific success of Old World animals in North America had always baffled me and gone largely un-discussed in previous works I read on the expansion of Europeans into North America. Crosby’s argument, however, provides an explanation that I find quite compelling.
Another interesting aspect of Crosby’s book is the difference between the Europeans and the natives in their willingness to join together to fend off a foreign threat. In the lands that eventually became New Zealand and Australia, the natives were at first unwilling to unite their tribes to defend the land against the Europeans. Crosby mentions that some tribes even aided the Europeans in their efforts to exterminate other tribes on the islands. Eventually they joined together, but not until it was too late to defeat the Europeans. While disease and immunity obviously factors largely into the eventual success of European expansion, I believe Crosby underemphasizes the importance of having a common goal. The Europeans, in sailing to and establishing themselves in new lands, shared the common goal of spreading European society. Natives, on the other hand, often times did not realize the importance of their encounter with the Europeans or the Europeans’ intentions until it was too late. Had the natives understood that the Europeans endangered their society and their best chance of resistance was to unite with other tribes, perhaps European expansion would have played out differently.
As far as the field of environmental history, I completely agree with Sean’s assessment that Ecological Imperialism “took away any doubts I may have had about environmental history as a field of study.” Crosby wrote on a topic, European expansion, that I have heard about and studied many times. His approach, however, was completely unique from anything else I have read about colonization. Disease and environmental factors were always mentioned as aspects of European expansion, but never were they the main focus. Crosby’s work told a compelling story of European expansion sculpted and shaped by environmental and ecological factors.