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Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Studies in Environment and History)

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The Europeans' displacement and replacement of native peoples in the temperate zones were more a result of "superior" biology than military conquest, according to Crosby in this book.

Europe held an unassailable biotic mix that some native peoples and ecosystems could not withstand. This biota fucntioned as a team wherever Europeans took it. European germs swept aside native peoples. Europe's cattle, pigs and horses filled native biotic niches. European weeds and agriculture squeezed out native plants. This biological expansion of Europe created "Neo-Europes" which still function today in North America, Australia, New Zealand and southern South America.

European imperialism often failed or was considerably delayed in areas where Europe's biota could not prevail. In China much the same biota was already present. Africa, the Amazon and southeast Asia were too hot, too fecund and too disease-ridden for Europe's animals, plants and humans. These areas were among the last to be dominated as a result, and then only briefly, when Europe's technology gave temporary edge to its armies.

This is an excellent book on how and why the Europeans were able to conquer North America, Australia, temperate South America (particularly Argentina), and New Zealand--the so-called Neo-Europes, in Crossby's terminology. Crossby's thesis is simple: the native biota of those places (including humans, of course) did not coevolve with the invaders, and were consequently naive (i.e, unequipped) to deal with them. Or, put another way, the invaders were preadapted to deal with the new conditions, and aggresively advanced, in a teamlike fashion, to encroach the native biota. Crossby also explains why Europeans were not able to conquer other places (such as Greenland, the Labrador region, and the New and Old Worlds tropics), adducing mainly climatic reasons and the lack of technological expertise.

To be sure, Crossby's arguments are not new. However, he does a great job at synthesizing an incredible wealth of historical data. His style, oftentimes humorous, also makes of his book an enjoyable read. I would recommend this book to anyone teaching a comprehensive course on the conquest of the places Crossby deals with. It is a much neglected fact that biology played a crucial role in expanding European culture.

'Ecological imperialism: The biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900', by A. W. Crosby, is a cogently argued and well written book. The main thesis of the book is that the expansion by Europeans to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and a few other enclaves (what Crosby calls the Neo-Europes) wouldn't have succeded if the biota the Europeans brought with them had not suceeded. This biota included not only humans, of course, but pathogens, weeds and grasses, and horses, cattle, goats, and pigs, among the most important. Crosby addresses the reasons why this biota was so succesful in the new territories, and concludes that, in general, the climatic regimes there were sufficiently similar to those of its European origins and the indigenous biota was so 'naive' that 'victory' was almost assured to the invaders. To be sure, this is not an original conclusion, but the wealth of data Crosby uses, along with his synthetic power and sense of humor, makes of this book an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. People interested in searching for the biological causes of the successes (and failures!) of Europeans in the world should read this engaging book.

Alfred Crosby is widely credited for popularising the ecological dimension of the history of imperial expansion. For this reason, and perhaps this reason alone, his book is worth a read.

The book, first published in 1986, revolutionised the way we think about European imperial expansion into the New World. How a few hundred disoriented Europeans armed with spears and misfiring guns managed to overwhelm entire Inca and Aztec civilisations in the early sixteenth century, for example. Crosby convincingly casts aside traditional political or military explanations by attributing the astonishing Portuguese and Spanish victories to bacteriology: how diseases such as smallpox and measles that the Europeans unwittingly carried with them wiped out thousands of New World inhabitants, severely crippling their defences.

The larger point that Crosby drives across is a profound one. Historical events - in this case, European expansion and imperialism - can be explained predominantly by ecological factors. In the clash of `biotas' between the Old and the New World, the Old World won. Convincingly. Hence the presence not just of Europeans in the Americas, but also of pigs and dandelions. According to this thesis, ecology shaped European expansion; creating `Neo-Europes' in the New World that facilitated European migration, precipitating the `Caucasian wave' from the 1820s to the 1930s. Unlike in most other histories, in Crosby's ecological history, humans form the backdrop and inexorable ecological forces take centre-stage.

Refreshing as this perspective is, the way that Crosby has rendered it is problematic in on a number of accounts. By excluding humans from the picture; or at best relegating human developments to the sidelines, Crosby emerges with a dangerously reductive picture of historical development. Deterministic ecological explanations cannot alone account for European expansion - after all, we must not forget that the first European transoceanic voyages were motivated by curiosity rather than necessity. More problematic is the book's implicit assumption that ecological influence was unidirectional. In concentrating on explicating the Old World's ecological victory over the New, Crosby neglects to examine the influence that New World ecology had on the Old.

Nonetheless, Crosby's work remains a landmark study that deserves a read. Moreover, it packs a punch as a piece of writing - its lucid narratives and provocative assertions laid out with the bold and elegant strokes of a master-artist. Yet Crosby's work is also increasingly a dated study that has been qualified over and over by new works in the field, or in the related field of environmental history. Those interested in the subject should by no means stop at Crosby's book.

Always lively and perspicacious, this clever book seeks to solve a seemingly trivial puzzle: while historians have mustered a host of plausible explanations (weapons, diseases, horses, etc.) for why Europeans spread so thickly into North America, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina (the lands Crosby labels "Neo-Europes"), what could possibly explain why the dandelion did so as well? The question doesn't appear so innocuous when it is pointed out that not just the dandelion, but the European housefly, and feral pigs, and a horde of other weeds, pests, crops, diseases and livestock from Europe followed suit. Quite often these organisms, even the domesticated ones, raced ahead of European explorers themselves, rapidly proliferating into vast herds and stands that the settlers themselves could not fathom. Why was this so? Why didn't, say, Australian weeds, their seeds inadvertently shipped back to England, eventually carpet the meadows and fields of Europe? To answer this odd question, Professor Crosby begins his story with Pangaea--the great supercontinent that began to split apart about 200 million years ago into the continents we now have scattered about the globe. These "seams of Pangaea" then forced a radical divergence in the terrestrial flora and fauna of the planet, and set the stage for the equally radical convergence initiated when European mariners crossed these now mid-oceanic seams. Crosby details case after case in each category: weeds, pests, livestock, diseases and crops. He forcefully illustrates how sudden and overwhelming the ecosystem takeover was until the suspense is too much to bear. What is the answer? He drops clues every now and then, and the most explicit one is in the form of a quote that begins one of the final chapters: if weeds are to be defined as those organisms that thrive on the disturbances caused by humans, then humans themselves must be considered the primary weed of all. Here, then is the answer: all the opportunistic fellow-travelers of the European diaspora are exquisitely coadapted to the scale and pace of the continuous ecological disequilibrium characteristic of the Old World civilizations--and they, in turn, furthered and helped generate that very disequilibrium. Together--humans, horses, cattle, pigs, rats, clover, peaches, measles and, yes, dandelions--comprised a potent self-replicating system, dimly discerned by its contemporaries, that could not be stopped once it spilled across the seams of Pangaea.

This is one of the most revealing books I have ever read. Crosby has made me gasp in awe more times in one paragraph than I have reading most entire books. He explains not only how Eureopean plants, animals, and people are in so many places, but how they got into such a position, what advantages they started out with, which ones they developed, and why they failed in other places.

His thesis is convincing because he gives several examples to prove his point, to show how his theory worked in each of these cases. I wish there were more books that were written so clearly and irrefutably. Written with the power of a true historian yet with the thrill of an action movie, it's a rare combination of skill.

If you liked the subject of Guns, Germs, and Steel, you'll find this book to be even more exciting and easier to read.

Alfred Crosby is one of the few historians who have changed the way people think. Back in the 1960s he got the crazy idea that the *biological* expansion of Europe into the rest of the world was the real story of the last few centuries. His book, The Columbian Exchange -- Europe sent over people and germs and got back the biological wealth of the Americas -- was rejected by a dozen publishers. This book is a restating and resharpening and amplification of this thesis, which by now is so well accepted in its basics that I was amused to see some of the Amazon reviewers say there was not that much new here. In a way, I guess they're right, but this book is nonetheless full of wonderful historical connections -- why smallpox caused the slave trade, why corn changed the history of Eastern Europe -- that you would never think of otherwise. I would also want to single out Crosby's writing, which is dryly humorous and even moving on occasion. Altogether amazing stuff, this book.

Professor Crosby is both a historian and a student of ecology; I am neither, yet I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It concerns the unintended displacement of the native plants and animals of the New World by European species, which hitchhiked aboard the boats of Columbus (and other explorers). Sound dry? It's anything but. Crosby has no less a story to tell than the biological reshaping of an entire continent. If you think that humans have only lately been responsible for environmental disruption on a global scale, this book will show you otherwise. Our species is an integral part of our environment, and has been shaping and reshaping it for centuries - a colossal process that has determined which food crops we grow, what species of trees shelter us, what diseases we suffer, even what birds we hear sing at dawn...In short, nature itself is largely manmade.

And if an epic, true story isn't enough to lure you to read this book, consider Mr. Crosby's prose - clear, straightforward, even moving. This book changed the way I see the natural world, and was a pleasure to read in the bargain. You can't ask for much more than that.

'Ecological imperialism: The biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900', by A. W. Crosby is a very informative read. This book is an absolute must for anybody studying the ecological and historical impact of European expansionism up until the 20th century. Introducing the term "Neo-Europes," Crosby posits that for the Europeans to have openly sought expansion into new territories, they would have factored into account the location and geographic climate, and known that the new territory would have been favorable to supporting the pre-existing agriculture of the Europeans.

By tying together a vast reservoir of sources, and taking a humorous tone, Crosby presents fresh insight that deviates from the norm of school-taught drivel. For example, the description of the Viking explorers as tentative sailors (as opposed to the fearless and conquering image that is brought to mind), or the image of Karlsefni scaring off an attack by the native Amerindians with livestock are just a few examples of the in-depth research that was undertaken by Crosby to present such a new look at the settlement of the Americas.

The Vikings, as described by Crosby, were some of the earliest settlers, however they also failed because of their lack of infectious diseases. Crosby states that as an isolated civilization, they were unable to conquer the New World via the cop-out of infecting the indigenous populations with pre-existing diseases (i.e. smallpox).

Crosby takes a millennia long process and boils it down into an easy to understand read that is humorous and informative, without being overbearingly scholarly. For any student of history, environmental history, etc., this is absolutely vital to understand the impact that conquering forces, invading agriculture, and infectious germs had upon history and conquered peoples.

Like any other book by Crosby, this one is pretty much a must for anyone studying environmental history. The book goes into detail about how the New and Old worlds differ and how those changes were caused. He breaks the books into several sections and his noteworthy topics include discussions on disease, weeds and winds. At times, Crosby's writing is a bit boring because he tends to repeat a lot of things, but this is just his way of drilling important points home. Even if it may not be the most exciting book, it is very informative and deserves to be read.