This episode focuses on the arguments in the book Ecological Imperialism, written by Alfred W. Crosby. Alfred Crosby joined me briefly to talk about this book. I have added to his comments by reading key passages from his book.
Topics of discussion include the success of Europeans in the New World, the significance of Pangaea and the Neolithic Revolution, the definition and explanation of terms like Neo-Europe and portmanteau biota, the failure of the Norse explorers in North America, European Imperialism in the Canary Islands, the role of weeds, animals, and disease in European successes overseas, and a biogeographical explanation for European conquest.
Ecological Imperialism (via Amazon)
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3 responses to “Episode #99: Ecological Imperialism”
Thank you Frank for bringing the work of Alfred Crosby to your podcast. This work gave me much insight into the ecological forces at play during the expansion of European civilization. Europeans have been such a potent force around the world and Alfred brings to light some very interesting ecological reasons for their widespread dominance. I was especially surprised at the role disease played in the expansion of European peoples and how American populations were decimated even before the arrival of European settlers to many areas.
There is another work that I find equally intriguing and would like to recommend which explores the influence the Americas have played around the world. This is the book titled “Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World” by Jack Weatherford. This work explores the influence Native Americans have made on modern politics, economy, and agricultural crops. I was surprised to learn how much our modern world has been influenced by the Americas for example with Europe’s first exposure to the idea of a federation with the Iroquois nation or in agriculture with the vast new food sources the Americas provided. Between these two sources I think one can gain allot of insight into the synthesis that is our modern world.
I question how successful european agriculture actually is in the new world. I’m not discounting anything in Crosby’s argument, but I think the “success” of european agriculture will be rather short live, or maybe it will need to be propped up by increasing inputs. It seems so much like a fire that has swept through and released a huge amount of Calories quickly, and will soon burn out.
Indigenous agro-forestry, and pastoral systems seem to be much more successful in the long term, or at least successful for longer periods of time. Everything shifts, however, and successional resetting is constant. If european agriculture is indeed like a fire sweeping through resetting the landscape, its an opportunity to reconstruct agroecological systems with even more diversity (european) than there was before.
It is critical to understand that Crosby is painting a picture of a socio-cultural force with a very powerful, almost inadvertent biological component. Thus, his characterization of “Europeanized” landscapes, a landscape description which mostly amounts to ecological destruction. So, the successional pulse associated with the Europeanization of global landscapes is what permaculture, in part, seeks to resist. For this reason, it is important that the permaculture community understand Crosby’s arguments.