European colonisation Flashcards
(25 cards)
How did European colonisation of the Americas mark the start of the Anthropocene?
- 1492: Columbus landed in the Caribbean
- ~90% of Indigenous Americans died (1492: ~54 mil → 1650: ~6 mil)
- Causes: enslavement, war, famine, European diseases
- Result: collapse of farming & fire-based land management
- Massive ecological and atmospheric impacts mark early Anthropocene shift
What was the role of infectious disease in the colonisation of the Americas?
- Introduced by Europeans: smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, salmonella
- Novel to Indigenous populations → no natural immunity
- Led to devastating epidemics
Temperate diseases:
- Fast-acting, long-lasting immunity
- Thrive in dense populations (“crowd diseases”)
- Originated post-agriculture, often from livestock (e.g., flu)
Tropical diseases:
- Often from primates (e.g., HIV)
What historical contingencies influenced disease spread and domestication patterns?
- 13/14 major livestock species from Eurasia; only 1 from S. America
- Greater zoonotic disease exposure in Eurasia
- American primates: twice genetic distance from humans vs. African primates
- Longer human–primate contact in Africa (~5 million yrs vs. 14,000 yrs in Americas)
What were the disease impacts of European contact with the Americas?
- Unequal exchange: Eurasian/African diseases devastated Indigenous Americans
- ~90% mortality from smallpox, measles, influenza
- Led to land abandonment → forest regrowth
- Orbis Hypothesis: reforestation drew down CO₂ → measurable atmospheric decline
- Argue this is the start of the Anthropocene
What have scholars said about colonisation being at the start of the Anthropocene?
- Ecocidal logics that govern the modern world are not ‘human nature’, but result of many decidions that have origins in colonisation
- Start of Anthropocene coincides with colonialism = current climate crisis rooted in extractivism that continues to shape the world today
What is the colonial history of rubber production?
- Indigenous peoples in Central & South America used latex for tools & ritual objects
- Introduced to Europeans post-1492
- Vulcanisation (1839) made rubber commercially valuable
- Demand surged late 1800s (machine parts, tyres) –> fueling the Industrial Revolution
- Wild rubber sourced from Amazon & Congo - linked to genocide and enslavement of indigenous peoples
- European colonists moved rubber to SE Asia for plantation production
How did colonial rubber plantations shape global production?
- SE Asian plantations (e.g., Malaysia, Indonesia) used land taken from Indigenous farmers
- Labour: Indian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese workers under harsh, unequal conditions
- By 1920: plantations replaced wild rubber
- Colonial model: land appropriation + labour exploitation = raw material for global markets
- Legacy: Rubber still key export; now also produced by smallholders & synthetic sources
What happened with British appropriation of breadfruit in Tahiti?
- Breadfruit native to Polynesia, staple in Tahiti
- British aimed to transplant it to the Caribbean as cheap food for enslaved people
- Mission led by HMS Bounty (1787) — famously ended in mutiny
- Shows colonial appropriation of Indigenous crops for plantation economies
What was the Columbian Exchange and how did it support empire?
- Exchange of species (plants, animals, diseases) across continents post-1492
- “Scouts of empire” included botanists, archaeologists, missionaries, traders (Wade Davis)
- Indigenous knowledge introduced colonists to useful natural products
- These were later commercialised for profit
How did colonial natural resource extraction shape global systems?
- Crops/products extracted from wild or grown on plantations using exploitative labour
- Aimed at supplying European/global markets
- Embedded labour exploitation and environmental extraction in global economy
- Legacy persists in today’s food and commodity systems
Describe some indigenous american land management techniques
- Used frequent, small fires to create habitat mosaics
- Supported yams, native grains, and hunting
- Maintained open, productive landscapes
What were the impacts of colonial disruption of indigenous land practices?
- British colonists displaced Aboriginal people
- Suppressed traditional burning practices
- Result: scrub and tree encroachment → increased fire risk
- Reviving traditional knowledge could reduce this risk today
How do the Kayapó manage forests and biodiversity in the Amazon?
(Posey 1997)
- Use Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to manage ecosystems
- Create forest “islands” (apêtê) in savanna—blend agriculture & forest
- Focus on non-domesticated resources (NDRs)
- Manage ecotones (transitional zones) for long-term biodiversity
- Agricultural fields evolve into productive agroforests
Why is recognising Indigenous knowledge critical to conservation?
(Posey 1997)
- TEK supports in situ conservation of biodiversity
- Indigenous peoples modify & enhance “natural” ecosystems
- Rights to land, culture, and knowledge essential for fair use
- Bioprospecting often exploits Indigenous knowledge without benefit-sharing
- Posey: protect TEK through legal recognition & community control
How did European colonisation contribute to global enslavement?
- Columbus’s 2nd voyage: enslaved Indigenous Americans brought to Spain
- Enslavement became part of extractive colonial practices
- People were owned, traded, and exploited as labour
- Colonisers expanded exploitation to include both land and humans
How did colonisation reshape views of people and nature?
- Colonisation reduced Man to Labour and Nature to Land
- Both became resources for extraction and profit
- Land and labour treated as private property
- Driven by expansion of the market economy
How did slavery begin in the sugar industry?
- 1452: First commercial use of enslaved labour in Madeira (Portuguese sugar plantations)
- Late 1400s: Sugar plantations spread to South America & the Caribbean
- Industry built on labour of enslaved Indigenous Americans & West Africans
What was the Atlantic slave triangle and what goods were involved?
- Trade system linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas
- Enslaved people transported to plantations
- Goods produced: sugar, cotton, coffee, rice, tobacco, wheat
- System embedded slavery in global commodity chains
What are the origins and cultural context of the Industrial Revolution, and how did mechanization and consumption affect economic growth?
- Origins linked to scientific discoveries, inventors, and cheap coal energy
- Seen as a cultural development from the scientific Enlightenment
- Mechanization increased manufacturing efficiency and production
- Domestic consumption of goods increased
- Increased consumption stimulated economic growth
How are colonisation, industrialisation, and capitalism interconnected?
- Colonisation once viewed as parallel but separate from industrialisation and capitalism
- Now understood as inherently connected
- Connected through commodification of people and natural resources
- Profits from international trade tied colonisation to capitalist industrial expansion
How did slavery contribute to the profitability of transatlantic trade and the rise of the Atlantic economy in the 1800s?
- Slavery made transatlantic trade profitable by producing key commodities
- These slave-produced goods were central to the Atlantic economy’s growth
- Low production costs from slave labor offset high transport costs
- This balance made products affordable for domestic consumption in Europe
How did Atlantic trade and slavery contribute to wealth accumulation and capitalism in Europe?
- Atlantic trade enriched European elites through slave-based commodity production
- This accumulation of wealth helped launch Western capitalism
- In 1833, British slave owners received £20 million compensation from the government during abolition
- The compensation created a public debt paid off by British taxpayers only in 2015
How did mechanisation develop in England during the Industrial Revolution, and what were its economic and social impacts?
- Technological innovations driven by rapid market growth in the Atlantic economy (e.g., first water-powered cotton factory in 1771, Matlock)
- Britain’s high wages and cheap coal energy made investment in machinery profitable to increase efficiency
- Mechanisation caused large-scale unemployment in traditional trades
- Wealth from the slave trade provided capital for infrastructure (railways, mines, factories, financial institutions) essential to industrialisation
Why does european colonisation coincide with the beginning of the Anthropocene?
- Colonisation represents a change in interactions between humans (Europeans) and the natural world = exploitation & commodification
- Over-explotation not ‘human nature’ but arise from decisions rooted in colonialism
- Trade and wealth arising from colonisation are implicated in the origins of industrialisation and capitalism
