Week 2 Work Flashcards
(18 cards)
What is a rough definition of an empire
An extensive territory under the control of a supreme ruler (typically an emperor) or an oligarchy, often consisting of an aggregate of many separate states or territories. Or many different territories under the rule of a single sovereign state.
What is the Columbian exchange
1492 Christopher Columbus reaches the Caribbean
Locally diseases epidemic to Europe spread to the americas, devastating populations
Military conquest kills untold number to
Agricultural collapse, famine societal collapse
Population of the Americas
1492 54-61 million
1650 6 million
Why would the columbian exchange qualify as the onset of the Anthropocene
Globalisation of foodstuffs and biota, a swift, ongoing, radical reorganisation of life on earth without geological precedent, a new Pangea
When did the continents become connected
Post - 1492 humans on the two hemispheres were connected, trade became global and some scientists refer to this as the beginning of the modern world system.
What is the world-systems theory
Rise of a world economy as coherent system, but with division of labour between core/periphery
History of capitalism = geographical expansion of world-economy through, e.g. Spanish, Dutch, British world-systems.
Example of how indigenous people were treated
In modern day Bolivia indigenous people forced into silver mines, e.g. Potosí, in modern-day Bolivia. Could have be driven by capital accumulation for example where a search for new frontiers was done in order to gain more resources.
What does world ecology theory argue
That capitalism is not a social system that acts on nature but is something that works through nature, or through the web of life. In some senses a way of organising nature.
What things are inextricably linked
Capitalism, European imperialism and global environmental transformation. We wouldn’t have one without the others.
How has capitalism worked in the past
Through violent relations with “webs of life” and with other people.
What is an example of an earth moving commodification
Columbus being very interested in the variety of fruits and other commodities found in abroad lands and wanting to sell it in his home land.
An example of idea making
Dividing nature and society
New ideas about property include land grants, allowing exploitation of land, flora and fauna - in Caribbean, the latter included indigenous people
Slave codes- Barbados, S. Carolina
More examples of idea making in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Quantification and measurement , clocks, portolan charts, perspective painting, new musical styles, double entry book keeping, the scientific revolution, Francis Bacon “knowledge is power” a tool of empire, emergence of idea of “progress”, improvement.
An example of power creating
European power secured through exercise of military, economic and cultural subjugation.
Power creating in the 17th and 18th centuries
Culture hegemony, language, religion. new economic relations, forced work in silver mines, sugar plantations. Chattel slavery. New mercantile elite, joint stock companies, speculate to accumulate.
Resisting the Anthropocene
The new world ecology encountered resistance-from indigenous peoples, from the enslaved, and from early “environmentalists.” This resistance refutes “naturalist” arguments (e.g. our standard and post-nature narratives) that the Anthropocene is just “people being people”.
Explain what happened on islands like Mauritius and Jamaica in term of colonialism.
They became places of rapid expansion of commodity frontiers through ideas of island being places to connect to God through nature, also place of self-discovery and self determination.
Who wanted to protect these forests during this early period of environmentalism
Pierre. Poivre, 1763, believed that the forest should be protected. Strict management measures enacted to protect forests and stop climate change-pos influenced by Dutch, Japanese and Chinese systems.
Explain Marroon ecologies
“An afro-diasporic spatial freedom practise… integral to these practises is there interdependence of Afro-diasporic communities and the landscapes they inhabit”. (Purifoy 2023,1600). The geologies of marronage are not only symbolic sites of resistance but material sites that instigate a counter-hegemonic spatial-ecological logic” (Moulton 2023, 6)
