Ecological Imperialism Summary

Few events in the history of this planet have as significantly, or as quickly, shattered the equilibrium of the natural order as thoroughly as the expansion across the globe of Europeans during the last millennium. Although Europeans can be found today throughout the world, outside of Europe itself, they tend to be unevenly dispersed, congregating in latitudinal zones of similar climate. In Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 Alfred W. Crosby attempts to explain why Europeans settled most heavily in these temperate zone regions, an area he dubs Neo-Europe, by emphasizing the biological and ecological elements of European imperialism. This work is a continuation on his earlier book The Columbian Exchange, expanding to new areas of focus and including the regions of Australia and New Zealand. While he provides a strong overview of the drastic changes that resulted in the ecosystems of these isolated areas accompanying European expansion, there are several flaws with his methodology and overarching argument. Ecological Imperialism is a story of European domination with little to no agency given to any organism living in the ‘New World’ outside of a reactionary role to the threat posed by the invaders. In addition, he generalizes far too often and as a result
Europeans migrated to regions with available land, with a similar climate, that they could raise their own livestock and grow familiar crops in an environment that was not unacceptably deadly; e.g. North America, Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand. This is a logical argument, just not an original one. Crosby does an excellent job highlighting the role of biological and ecological forces, in other words, the non-human factors of Europe’s imperial campaigns in the New World. However, he accomplished this fifteen years earlier in the Columbian Exchange. These flaws diminish what is otherwise an interesting work in early-American environmental