Science, Environment and Empire – Week 10 Flashcards
Themes:
- Impact of colonial resource exploitation through voyaging and settlement on peoples of the new world and on continental land masses:
- Disease
- Migration
- Genocide of aboriginals - Responses: European encounters with the temperate world and the tropical world produced scientific responses
- Conversation and botanic gardens
Crosby talks of 4 categories of organisms involved in the takeover. These include:
- Human Beings
- Animals closely associated with human beings both desirable animals like horses and cattle and undesirable varmints like rats and mice
- Pathogens or micro-organisms that cause disease
- Weeds
Small pox and native Americans:
o I am one with the white man’ they are my people as the Kiowa are yours….I bring death…my breath causes children to wither like young plants in spring snow. I bring destruction. No matter how beautiful a woman is once she looks at me she becomes as ugly as death and to men I bring not death alone, but the destruction of their children and the blighting of their lives…no people who have looked at me will ever be the same.
o Kiowa narrative
Encounters with aboriginals and scientific voyaging:
o As Darwin noted on his return from the Beagle Voyage in 1859,’ wherever the European has trod death seems to pursue the aboriginal.’
o Naturalists on these voyages
o Depicted plants, animals and people
o Talked on endemism and extinction
o Valuations of the Landscape in terms of scientific ideas of dessication and drying up
Maori statement:
o As one Maori at the nadir of the history of his race noted; as the clover killed off the fern and the European dog the Maori dog as the Maori rat was destroyed by the Pakeha European rat -so our people will be gradually supplanted and exterminated by the Europeans
The Dodo in Mauritius:
o The vision the Dutch sailors encountered in Mauritius was of enormous ebony trees and fruit and fish. The seaman hunted enormous rays with spears, creatures so large that two of them were sufficient for thirty men. One sailor spoke of bass, eel, mullet, bream and many hundreds of species they had never seen before. Most of the crew were new to the tropics and strangers in paradise.
Tasmanian aboriginals and genocide:
o Helen Macdonald’s article tells the tale of colonial body snatching for anatomy purposes through the medical appropriation of the last Tasmanian aboriginal man, William Lanney in 1869 for London’s Royal College of Surgeons
European settlement and description of Perth:
o The landscape was lovely, there were frequent views of the river, hill and dale, fine stately timber, long reaches of water and trees with dense foliage overhanging the banks, extended flats, stretches of undulating park like scenery and in the distance the blue range of the Darling.
The image of the tropics:
o Life and death so rapidly succeed, that medicines frequently have not time to operate before the great event has taken place. People live as if in a camp, talk of death familiarly, and as if it was an event more probable to take place tomorrow than the next day.
The Indian Hill station:
o An elaborate way of keeping the Indian climate at bay was devised which included, times for social gatherings, clothing, bungalows, vernadahs, palanquins and hill stations. Going native in hot countries led to torpor, lack of initiative, degeneracy. Racial bodies and the culture of different races was said to result from environmental and climatic determinism.
Early environmental ideas:
o It is possible to argue that early environmental inquiry seems to have been driven by neo-Malthusian concerns about the possible demise of civilization as a result of the“limits to growth.”
o A parallel concern is the discussion of the historical collapse of previous societies linked to apparent resource exhaustion and the failure of institutions to adapt to looming crises in time to prevent disaster.
o The classic discussion is the debate about Easter Island and the fate of its population doomed by deforestation and overfishing.
Plants, exploration and empire:
o The search for more exotic decorative plants was intensified in the new era of exploration. Eventually, with the voyages of Bouganville and Cook, the Arcadian quest encompassed the south Pacific. The perception of the explorers and the artists they carried with them was of a naturalistic landscape with lush forests, steep cliff walls and waterfalls, instead of lakes and temples.
Science and early environmentalists:
o The environmentalist initiatives of Pierre Poivre and Saint Pierre on Mauritius were exceptional. They legislated and theorized about deforestation, climate control, pollution control, fisheries conservation, and tree planting.
o Their initiatives were apparently imitated in the Caribbean, where the Kings Hill Forest Act was passed in 1791 on St. Vincent, again setting up a “rain reserve” in an upland part of the island. Similar measures were passed on the Atlantic island of St. Helena in 1794. (Richard Grove, Green Imperialism)
Conclusions:
o Colonial encounters produced environmental destruction and resources transfers on an enormous scale
o They also allowed for nascent environmental consciousness and scientific ideas about extinction and endemism on a global scale
