Summary Of R Cole Harris The Simplification Of Europe Overseas

R. Cole Harris’ “The Simplification of Europe Overseas”, featured in the December 1977 volume of Annals of the Association of American Geographers, offers a comparative assessment of those peoples who settled in early Canada, South Africa, and New England. Specifically, Harris explores the implications of land access as a driver for social change. To that end, the author contrasts Louis Hartz previous assertion that the simplification of European settlers occurred at the point of departure by arguing that the Hartzian model is incorrect, and that the settlers’ encounter with their new environment proved most critical. Harris’ first section, “The General Argument,” provides a foundational understanding of European land ownership and management systems, the development and proliferation of “cravings for independence” (471) following Payne’s The Rights of Man, and the challenges associated with encountering both indigenous populations and forests in colonial territories (472). In this first section, Harris also
Furthermore, in “Of Fire and Fields,” Myers and Doolittle proffer historical accounts, which despite the myth of Native American agricultural practices, provides evidence contrary to the longstanding myth of slash-and-burn tactics (13). Instead, the authors provide historical accounts as evidence of cultivation and other more sophisticated techniques in agriculture (13). To that end, in “Large Fields, Few in Fallow,” they assert that European observers of Native American agriculture were likely impressed with their cultivation efforts, in that the indigenous peoples’ fields likely resembled those of the European plains