Alfred W. Crosby (1931–2018)
Author of Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900
About the Author
Alfred Worcester Crosby Jr. was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 15, 1931. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard University in 1952. He served as a sergeant in the Army in the Panama Canal Zone. After his service, he received a doctorate in history from Boston University. show more He taught at Washington State University for 11 years and at the University of Texas in Austin for 22 years. He retired in 1999 as professor emeritus of geography, history, and American studies. He was considered the father of environmental history. He incorporated studies of biology, ecology, geography, and other sciences in his efforts to chronicle and understand human events. He wrote numerous books including The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492; Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900; Germs, Seeds and Animals: Studies in Ecological History; The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600; and Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy. He died from complications of Parkinson's disease on March 14, 2018 at the age of 87. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Alfred W. Crosby
Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy (2006) 96 copies, 4 reviews
Germs Seeds & Animals: Studies in Ecological History (Sources and Studies in World History) (1994) 41 copies
El intercambio transoceánico: consecuencias biológicas y culturales a partir de 1492 (1991) 7 copies, 2 reviews
America, Russia, hemp, and Napoleon: American trade with Russia and the Baltic, 1783-1812, (1965) 4 copies
The Columbia Exchange 1 copy
Associated Works
Major Problems in the History of the American West: Documents and Essays (1989) — Contributor — 65 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Crosby, Alfred W.
- Legal name
- Crosby, Alfred Worcester, Jr.
- Birthdate
- 1931-01-15
- Date of death
- 2018-03-14
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Harvard University (BA|1952|MAT|1956)
Boston University (Ph.D|1961 - History) - Occupations
- professor emeritus (History, Geography and American Studies)
historian
soldier - Organizations
- University of Texas at Austin
Albion College
Ohio State University
Washington State University
San Fernando Valley State College
United States Army (1952-1955) - Awards and honors
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1995)
American Philosophical Society (2000)
Academician of the Academy of Finland (1995)
Texas Institute of Letters (1996) - Relationships
- Karttunen, Frances (spouse)
- Short biography
- Alfred Worcester Crosby (15 January 1931-14 March 2018)
Alfred W. Crosby was born in Boston in 1931 where he still lives with his wife Barbara and daughter Carolyn Jane. He graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and served in the United States Army, stationed in Panama (1952-1955). After his army service he earned a Master in the Art of Teaching (M.A.T.) from the Harvard School of Education and a Doctor of Philosophy in history from Boston University in 1961. His dissertation was published as his first book, "America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon: a study of trade between the United States and Russia, 1783-1814" from the time of the American Revolution through the War of 1812. During his academic career he taught at Albion College, the Ohio State University, Washington State University, and finally the University of Texas at Austin. He retired from the University of Texas in 1999 as Professor Emeritus of Geography, History, and American Studies.
His involvement in the Civil Rights movement, teaching Black Studies, helping to build a medical center for the United Farm Workers’ Union, and taking a leadership role in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations set him off in intellectually unorthodox directions. He became particularly interested in the histories of people who were victimized, economically exploited, or enslaved in the advance of European imperialism and capitalism, and thereby in the influence in that advance of nonpolitical, nonreligious, and largely ignored factors—especially infectious disease.
All this did not make of him a Marxist radical, because—as he put it—he was not that much of an optimist. It did, however, inspire interest in demography and epidemiology, which led him to write several books—"The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492" (1972); "America’s Forgotten Pandemic (originally Epidemic and Peace 1918)" (1976); and "Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900" (1986). His fascination with several subdivisions of intellectual and technological history produced "The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600" (1997); "Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History" (2002); and "Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity’s Unappeasable Appetite for Energy" (2006).
His work as a historian, he said, turned him from facing the past to facing the future. - Cause of death
- complications of Parkinson's disease
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Places of residence
- Austin, Texas, USA
- Place of death
- Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Massachusetts, USA
Members
Reviews
I wonder why Alfred Crosby isn’t better known. His range of interest is extensive (just the ones I’ve read cover the 1918 influenza epidemic, the history of artillery, and the current study of the environmental consequences of the European expansion into the western hemisphere), and they are all fascinating. Ecological Imperialism might be subtitled “Guns, Germs and Steel and Dandelions”; the non-human inhabitants of the New World seemed as poorly prepared to resist European arrival show more as the human ones.
I suspect the book was probably collected from expanding as series of scholarly articles; however, unlike many such I’ve read this doesn’t affect the readability or organization of the work. Each section has its own interest. Crosby’s discussion of the Norse settlement of Greenland answers the question of why the Greenlanders weren’t able to expand to the main North American continent convincingly:
*None of the expeditions to Vinland started from Norway, or even Iceland; they all began in Greenland. Greenland was already about as marginal as European civilization could be and didn’t have remotely the resources of 1492 Spain.
*There was nothing in Vinland that could be profitably exported to Europe or even Greenland itself. There were rich timber resources, of course, and timber was in great demand in Greenland and Iceland, but neither the Greenlanders nor the Icelanders had anything to buy it with; i.e., it wouldn’t have been profitable to load up a longship with logs and then haul them to Iceland to trade for – what? Wool? Cod?
*The technological difference between the Norse and the Skraelings was small. The Norse had steel weapons, but, as Crosby points out, a stone axe will smash a skull just as well as a steel one. The things that made the difference for the 1492 Spaniards – cavalry and firearms – weren’t available.
*The Norse didn’t have the disease weapon. Greenland and even Iceland were isolated from the European disease pool and were themselves exceptionally susceptible to the various epidemics that periodically mashed the continent. None of the Vinland explorers brought smallpox or measles or the plague to the New World, as far as anybody can tell.
A subsequent chapter deals with the practically unknown (to me, at least) European colonization of the eastern Atlantic islands – Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries. The Canaries had a native population that the Spanish eliminated in sort of a trial run for the Aztecs – cavalry and disease. The Canaries fell gradually, and it seems like the initial contacts actually improved the lot of the natives – European food plants, especially figs, may have contributed to a seeming episode of population growth. Unfortunately, European diseases and soldiers quickly reversed that.
In South American and New Zealand, Crosby comments on the superiority of European plants – especially grasses – and European animals – especially horses, cattle, and pigs – over their native counterparts. The pampas experienced an “explosion” of cattle and horses, and European grass quickly pushed native species into remote areas; the New Zealand experience was similar (although Crosby notes that some native New Zealand plants that sheep find unpalatable have flourished).
Well worth a read; less personal than Jared Diamond but more scholarly and detailed. show less
I suspect the book was probably collected from expanding as series of scholarly articles; however, unlike many such I’ve read this doesn’t affect the readability or organization of the work. Each section has its own interest. Crosby’s discussion of the Norse settlement of Greenland answers the question of why the Greenlanders weren’t able to expand to the main North American continent convincingly:
*None of the expeditions to Vinland started from Norway, or even Iceland; they all began in Greenland. Greenland was already about as marginal as European civilization could be and didn’t have remotely the resources of 1492 Spain.
*There was nothing in Vinland that could be profitably exported to Europe or even Greenland itself. There were rich timber resources, of course, and timber was in great demand in Greenland and Iceland, but neither the Greenlanders nor the Icelanders had anything to buy it with; i.e., it wouldn’t have been profitable to load up a longship with logs and then haul them to Iceland to trade for – what? Wool? Cod?
*The technological difference between the Norse and the Skraelings was small. The Norse had steel weapons, but, as Crosby points out, a stone axe will smash a skull just as well as a steel one. The things that made the difference for the 1492 Spaniards – cavalry and firearms – weren’t available.
*The Norse didn’t have the disease weapon. Greenland and even Iceland were isolated from the European disease pool and were themselves exceptionally susceptible to the various epidemics that periodically mashed the continent. None of the Vinland explorers brought smallpox or measles or the plague to the New World, as far as anybody can tell.
A subsequent chapter deals with the practically unknown (to me, at least) European colonization of the eastern Atlantic islands – Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries. The Canaries had a native population that the Spanish eliminated in sort of a trial run for the Aztecs – cavalry and disease. The Canaries fell gradually, and it seems like the initial contacts actually improved the lot of the natives – European food plants, especially figs, may have contributed to a seeming episode of population growth. Unfortunately, European diseases and soldiers quickly reversed that.
In South American and New Zealand, Crosby comments on the superiority of European plants – especially grasses – and European animals – especially horses, cattle, and pigs – over their native counterparts. The pampas experienced an “explosion” of cattle and horses, and European grass quickly pushed native species into remote areas; the New Zealand experience was similar (although Crosby notes that some native New Zealand plants that sheep find unpalatable have flourished).
Well worth a read; less personal than Jared Diamond but more scholarly and detailed. show less
This is a medium-technical work (no details about how viruses work, but lots of charts, tables and footnotes) yet still manages to be an engaging read. Author Alfred Crosby notes that there were actually three waves of “flu” that year: a relatively mild outbreak in the spring followed by two massive disease waves in the fall and winter. It’s not clear whether the particular strain of flu was nastier than usual; the world had the bad luck to have a whole lot of young men in cramped show more quarters in military camps and naval vessels (not to mention the bad luck of being at war, of course).
As far as epidemics go, we’re not talking the Black Death here; it seems like about 25% of the population of the US caught the flu, and about 8% of those infected died (and there were probably many cases that were mild enough not to be diagnosed, so the real death rate was even smaller). Nevertheless, it was bad enough. The flu’s propensity for turning a victim’s immune system against him or her made for an unusual fatality distribution; while most diseases take the young and the old, fully 45% of flu fatalities were aged 25-45. The US Army’s influenza deaths during the war were 80% of its combat deaths.
Crosby speculates the flu may have had a great affect on the outcome of the war and the outcome of the peace. Luddendorf later claimed that the Kaiserschlact of 1918 would have been successful if so many of his troops hadn’t been sick; at the Versailles conference, Woodrow Wilson and his chief of staff, Edward House, both had the flu during the talks. (I think I can forgive Wilson a little knowing that; Crosby even suggests that Wilson may have suffered a “ministroke” while ill, as witnesses said his post-flu personality seemed to be different from the pre-flu one).
The causative organism wasn’t pinned down until the 1930s. For a long time it was thought that the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae was responsible, since it was found in a great many of the victims – but it couldn’t be made to satisfy Koch’s Postulates. The viral agent was finally tracked down by one of those common medical coincidences – a veterinary team in England looking for the cause of canine distemper discovered that ferrets could get the flu. Ferrets, of course, are not the world’s best experimental animal, but they are certainly better than (say) giraffes, and the veterinary team could demonstrate Kock’s Postulates with ferret nasal mucus through 100-or so generations of animals. This didn’t answer the question of why the 1918 strain was so nasty, but at least it eventually made vaccines possible.
Crosby closes with an interesting question – why is the 1918 flu “forgotten”, and makes some interesting suggestions. For one thing, simply because the flu took so many young people, nobody really famous died of it – although, tragically, a number of children of famous people did. And, since there was a war on, the deaths of so many young people were “diluted”; then after the war everybody was ready to forget about the whole thing. Not quite everybody; my great uncle once told me about going to several funerals a week at his church in 1918.
Well worth a read. I notice there are a number of flu books out; I’ll have to compare and contrast. I just happened to pick this one up first. show less
As far as epidemics go, we’re not talking the Black Death here; it seems like about 25% of the population of the US caught the flu, and about 8% of those infected died (and there were probably many cases that were mild enough not to be diagnosed, so the real death rate was even smaller). Nevertheless, it was bad enough. The flu’s propensity for turning a victim’s immune system against him or her made for an unusual fatality distribution; while most diseases take the young and the old, fully 45% of flu fatalities were aged 25-45. The US Army’s influenza deaths during the war were 80% of its combat deaths.
Crosby speculates the flu may have had a great affect on the outcome of the war and the outcome of the peace. Luddendorf later claimed that the Kaiserschlact of 1918 would have been successful if so many of his troops hadn’t been sick; at the Versailles conference, Woodrow Wilson and his chief of staff, Edward House, both had the flu during the talks. (I think I can forgive Wilson a little knowing that; Crosby even suggests that Wilson may have suffered a “ministroke” while ill, as witnesses said his post-flu personality seemed to be different from the pre-flu one).
The causative organism wasn’t pinned down until the 1930s. For a long time it was thought that the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae was responsible, since it was found in a great many of the victims – but it couldn’t be made to satisfy Koch’s Postulates. The viral agent was finally tracked down by one of those common medical coincidences – a veterinary team in England looking for the cause of canine distemper discovered that ferrets could get the flu. Ferrets, of course, are not the world’s best experimental animal, but they are certainly better than (say) giraffes, and the veterinary team could demonstrate Kock’s Postulates with ferret nasal mucus through 100-or so generations of animals. This didn’t answer the question of why the 1918 strain was so nasty, but at least it eventually made vaccines possible.
Crosby closes with an interesting question – why is the 1918 flu “forgotten”, and makes some interesting suggestions. For one thing, simply because the flu took so many young people, nobody really famous died of it – although, tragically, a number of children of famous people did. And, since there was a war on, the deaths of so many young people were “diluted”; then after the war everybody was ready to forget about the whole thing. Not quite everybody; my great uncle once told me about going to several funerals a week at his church in 1918.
Well worth a read. I notice there are a number of flu books out; I’ll have to compare and contrast. I just happened to pick this one up first. show less
In Ecological Imperialism Alfred W. Crosby attempts to prove that Europeans have spread around the globe not because of any supposed superiority in arms, organization, or intelligence, but because they brought along biological and ecological allies that allowed them to thrive. While most historians have duly noted that the European colonizers of the New World brought with them communicable diseases that made their conquests easier, that snippet of “ecological imperialism” is usually show more portrayed as just a minor aspect in whole array of more important reasons. Crosby not only accentuates the importance of disease, he pairs it with other biological and ecological factors that enabled Europeans to expand across the globe. He also explains why these imperialists more easily subjugated places with similar climes, places he calls “Neo-Europes.”
Crosby utilizes research from a variety of disciplines, beginning his work with geology, biology, and botany: explaining how the breakup of Pangaea led to divergent biota in the separated landmasses that became continents. Weaving in anthropology, Crosby describes the introduction of mankind into Australasia and the Americas before ever turning to standard sources of history. Although he uses only a smattering of primary material, relying mainly on secondary sources, his synthesis and analysis of the resources at his disposal is masterful, betraying the fact that he spent much time formulating his argument. (He published The Columbian Exchange, which touched upon some similar themes, fourteen years before this book.) Crosby employs secondary sources adeptly and ably because this work is primarily theoretical: he is contending that ecological factors aided in the European advance across the globe, a vast contention that does not lend itself to study through primary sources alone. Crosby does illustrate his contentions with primary accounts, but the bulk of his argument rests on the work of others.
In his first chapter, Crosby ponders why Europeans are “all over the place” and introduces his thesis that there may be an ecological component to explain European prevalence around the globe. He then quickly covers many thousands of years of continental drift, evolution, migrations of peoples, and the birth of civilization out of the Neolithic revolutions to explain the biotic and cultural differences across the globe. Because this chapter deals mainly with preliterate peoples and vast eons of time, his evidence is derived mainly from theoretical studies. Crosby posits that agricultural and civilization advanced rapidly in Eurasia (e.g. Sumer, etc.) because wheat was a superior provider of food over maize, which took centuries to develop into a prime producer, and the north-south orientation of America prevented crops from moving and thriving elsewhere viably. The domestication of many more animals in the Old World than the New is perhaps due to the relatively sparse population in the New World (and Australasia). These theories he gleans from numerous sources (such as “McNeill’s Law,” which states that disease enables “civilized” peoples to conquer less-advanced peoples, p. 32), even analyzing ancient myths from around the world. While the hypotheses of why things came about might be difficult to prove to any degree, it is hard to argue with the fact that the indigenes of Australasia and the Americas were susceptible to European ills and less-advanced in agriculture and husbandry.
In the third chapter, Crosby gives two examples of European failures at colonization, the Norse settlements in the New World and the Crusader States in the Levant, which serve to illustrate his theories because they did not follow the “rules” for successful European colonization he lays out. These guidelines (which are elucidated in chapter four) are: (1) to colonize in a land and climate similar to Europe, which will enable the Europeans, as well as their animals, plants, and pathogens, to survive and thrive and come in large numbers; and (2) that the land colonized be sufficiently distant from Europe that indigenes would be susceptible to European diseases and the invaders and their livestock would not be preyed upon by diseases they had no defense against (pp. 102-103). The colonies of the Norse in Greenland and Vinland were in locales wholly unlike most of Europe in terms of climate. Greenland’s harsh climate did not lend it to European style agriculture and husbandry, even the type practiced by the Norsemen. Vinland was better suited to the Norse way of life, but logistics prevented it from being colonized in great numbers. Without a significant population of Vikings to incubate European diseases, they could not pass these on to the Skraeling (Native American) inhabitants in the New World. Technology did not allow them to use the European “ecological weapons” of Crosby’s thesis. The European crusaders foray into the Levant also failed to follow the “guidelines” set up by Crosby. The crusaders did not come in large numbers, the climate was different from Europe’s, and the local population was largely resistant to European diseases (which were, in fact, Eurasian diseases). In the Holy Land, the sparse numbers of the invaders made them susceptible to the same diseases that their large populations in Europe allowed them to deal with. Without a sufficiently large population to “fill in the gaps” of those lost to disease, the Latins were unable to thrive on their Asian footholds.
In the fourth chapter, Crosby discusses the successful Iberian colonization of the archipelagos of the Eastern North Atlantic, with his primary focus on the subjugation of the Canaries and their aboriginal inhabitants the Guanches. Here Crosby’s theoretical rules are “followed” by the European imperialists. The Canaries have climates similar to parts of Spain, perfect places for plants and animals familiar to the Spanish to flourish. It was also near enough to Spain that a large population of Spaniards could be placed there. It was, however, sufficiently isolated from Europe so that the Guanches were vulnerable to the pestilences imported by the invaders. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were very few Guanches left and their resistance to the Spanish had withered along with their numbers. Crosby details the spread of exotic disease amongst the indigenes and successfully illustrates the effects it had. The Spaniards were able to Europeanize the Canaries, making them into a Neo-Europe. The example of the Canary Islands and the demise of the Guanches perfectly displays the thesis expounded by Crosby, namely that it was not Spanish superiority in arms, technology, or the placating effects of Christianity that enabled them to conquer the isles, but the ecological allies they brought with them: pathogens, livestock, and crops. The introduction of diseases that the Guanches had no natural immunities to devastated their population and the introduction of European crops to the Guanche culture may have resulted in an excessive overpopulation that aided the demographic collapse brought on by disease.
With the positive and negative examples of his guidelines in place, the lessons of how Europeans can do colonization right learned, Crosby discusses the European subjugation of the New World over the next five chapters, focusing on how the ecological allies of the Europeans enabled them to first dominate and the Europeanize the Neo-Europes (temperate North and South America). The fifth chapter on winds is out of place, though interesting. Crosby explains how the technological advances that enabled Europeans to harness the wind and then ascertain the rough regularity in wind patterns across the globe aided in their voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Crosby might be correct in his retelling of the events, but it does not buttress his main thesis that ecological factors aided in the subjugation of new lands, not their discovery. In the sixth chapter, however, he returns to his thesis, claiming that Europeans may have conquered lands that did not fit into his “guidelines,” but that they did not make them into Neo-Europes. His examples include the European colonies in the torrid zones of the world, were the climate was not conducive to European agriculture and (because the lands did not support or attract a large white population) disease worked against them. He also cites the example of the European entrepôts in China, which were definitely not Europeanized Neo-Europes. China had a large cultured population, its own domesticated animals and plants, and resistance to European (Eurasian) disease. Crosby does note some minor exceptions, like tropical Costa Rica and Queensland, which he rather quickly explains away by pointing to their relatively small populations and noting that there are exceptions to every rule.
The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters are the crux of Crosby’s argument. He discusses the invasion of weeds, animals, and ills that followed the Europeans into the New World (and Australasia) and shows how they aided in the founding of the Neo-Europes in the temperate lands outside of Eurasia through subjugation and transformation. In his chapter on weeds and other plants, Crosby discusses the ability of European plant invaders to spread and thrive in the New World. When the invading Europeans dug the plow into the earth and burned or logged the forests of the New World, the disturbed soil was able to recover quickly because of the prevalence of Old World weeds advertently or inadvertently brought over from Europe. The new “weeds,” which Crosby defines broadly enough to encompass organisms such as the peach tree, enabled the animals of the colonizers to thrive, thus providing food and other resources that allowed the colonists to survive. This he discusses in chapter eight, noting the importance of the pig, cow, horse, and even the rat to European subjugation and transformation of the Neo-Europes. These two chapters highlight the truly novel aspects of Crosby’s thesis. Where other historians have noted the effects of disease on the native populations of America, they have not remarked much about the introduction of European agriculture into the New World and how it affected the ability of Europeans to thrive. Crosby places emphasis on the utility of the pig, which propagated in such numbers as to become a nearly free feral source of protein for many frontiersmen and colonists. He also notes the importance of cattle and the horse to the Europeans, both animals that were far superior to any domesticated by the Amerindians for food, clothing, and travel. The ninth chapter is a résumé of the impact of epidemic disease on the indigenous populations of the Americas and how it eased white settlement in many areas. He relates an old Kiowa myth of a hero meeting a personified version of smallpox who is “one with the white men” and who is blunt about his purpose: “I bring death…. I bring destruction” (p. 207). To counter this he gives the old example of John Winthrop, who believed that smallpox was a divine agent that “cleared our title to what we possess” (p. 208).
In the tenth chapter, Crosby presents a more detailed case study of his thesis by focusing on the island of New Zealand. The islands began to be colonized late in the eighteenth century so more records are available to test his suppositions. Like the European colonization of the temperate Americas, the primary factor working in favor of the Europeans was disease. Diseases, primarily tuberculosis and venereal infections, had devastating effects on the indigenous Maori population, making it easier for white settlers to move inland. Also important was the introduction of European plants and animals which first tied the Maori to the whites, allowing more to be infected with the deadly pathogens, and then enabled the whites to expand, increase their population, and hold the island – turning it into a Neo-Europe.
Many of the arguments Crosby espouses have been proffered by historians, primarily the old saw of disease making it easy for the white men to subjugate the Americas (like Crosby’s adoption of McNeill’s Law). Eric Wolf, if we oversimplify his argument perhaps, held that the modes of production employed by the indigenes of the future Neo-Europes was less efficient than those of the European nations they encountered, and the carriers of the “advanced” mode of production allowed them to subjugate the indigenes (with the welcome help of disease). Crosby might admit that the Europeans were more technologically advanced than the natives, but that was a secondary reason for their subjugation and transformation of the Neo-Europes. Crosby would contend that European diseases along with plants and animals were integral in the conquering and holding of lands that had a climate similar to Europe’s. Crosby, like all such theorists with overarching hypotheses, tends to ignore counterexamples and leave out other possibilities. His dismissal of the tropical Neo-Europe of Costa Rica is unconvincing and more could have been said about South Africa (is it a Neo-Europe or not?). In Crosby’s rush to elevate ecological reasons over technological ones, he too easily dismisses the fact that the Saracens had technology equal to (or greater than) that held by the Crusaders. Without the muskets would the British have had much of an effect with the warlike and healthy Maori, who were not ravaged by that disease par excellence smallpox? Still, Crosby’s idea that the Neo-Europes arose because of their climactic similarity to Europe, the ease in which European staples grew there and animals thrived there, and the rage with which diseases propagated amongst the inhabitants there is provocative and instructive. show less
Crosby utilizes research from a variety of disciplines, beginning his work with geology, biology, and botany: explaining how the breakup of Pangaea led to divergent biota in the separated landmasses that became continents. Weaving in anthropology, Crosby describes the introduction of mankind into Australasia and the Americas before ever turning to standard sources of history. Although he uses only a smattering of primary material, relying mainly on secondary sources, his synthesis and analysis of the resources at his disposal is masterful, betraying the fact that he spent much time formulating his argument. (He published The Columbian Exchange, which touched upon some similar themes, fourteen years before this book.) Crosby employs secondary sources adeptly and ably because this work is primarily theoretical: he is contending that ecological factors aided in the European advance across the globe, a vast contention that does not lend itself to study through primary sources alone. Crosby does illustrate his contentions with primary accounts, but the bulk of his argument rests on the work of others.
In his first chapter, Crosby ponders why Europeans are “all over the place” and introduces his thesis that there may be an ecological component to explain European prevalence around the globe. He then quickly covers many thousands of years of continental drift, evolution, migrations of peoples, and the birth of civilization out of the Neolithic revolutions to explain the biotic and cultural differences across the globe. Because this chapter deals mainly with preliterate peoples and vast eons of time, his evidence is derived mainly from theoretical studies. Crosby posits that agricultural and civilization advanced rapidly in Eurasia (e.g. Sumer, etc.) because wheat was a superior provider of food over maize, which took centuries to develop into a prime producer, and the north-south orientation of America prevented crops from moving and thriving elsewhere viably. The domestication of many more animals in the Old World than the New is perhaps due to the relatively sparse population in the New World (and Australasia). These theories he gleans from numerous sources (such as “McNeill’s Law,” which states that disease enables “civilized” peoples to conquer less-advanced peoples, p. 32), even analyzing ancient myths from around the world. While the hypotheses of why things came about might be difficult to prove to any degree, it is hard to argue with the fact that the indigenes of Australasia and the Americas were susceptible to European ills and less-advanced in agriculture and husbandry.
In the third chapter, Crosby gives two examples of European failures at colonization, the Norse settlements in the New World and the Crusader States in the Levant, which serve to illustrate his theories because they did not follow the “rules” for successful European colonization he lays out. These guidelines (which are elucidated in chapter four) are: (1) to colonize in a land and climate similar to Europe, which will enable the Europeans, as well as their animals, plants, and pathogens, to survive and thrive and come in large numbers; and (2) that the land colonized be sufficiently distant from Europe that indigenes would be susceptible to European diseases and the invaders and their livestock would not be preyed upon by diseases they had no defense against (pp. 102-103). The colonies of the Norse in Greenland and Vinland were in locales wholly unlike most of Europe in terms of climate. Greenland’s harsh climate did not lend it to European style agriculture and husbandry, even the type practiced by the Norsemen. Vinland was better suited to the Norse way of life, but logistics prevented it from being colonized in great numbers. Without a significant population of Vikings to incubate European diseases, they could not pass these on to the Skraeling (Native American) inhabitants in the New World. Technology did not allow them to use the European “ecological weapons” of Crosby’s thesis. The European crusaders foray into the Levant also failed to follow the “guidelines” set up by Crosby. The crusaders did not come in large numbers, the climate was different from Europe’s, and the local population was largely resistant to European diseases (which were, in fact, Eurasian diseases). In the Holy Land, the sparse numbers of the invaders made them susceptible to the same diseases that their large populations in Europe allowed them to deal with. Without a sufficiently large population to “fill in the gaps” of those lost to disease, the Latins were unable to thrive on their Asian footholds.
In the fourth chapter, Crosby discusses the successful Iberian colonization of the archipelagos of the Eastern North Atlantic, with his primary focus on the subjugation of the Canaries and their aboriginal inhabitants the Guanches. Here Crosby’s theoretical rules are “followed” by the European imperialists. The Canaries have climates similar to parts of Spain, perfect places for plants and animals familiar to the Spanish to flourish. It was also near enough to Spain that a large population of Spaniards could be placed there. It was, however, sufficiently isolated from Europe so that the Guanches were vulnerable to the pestilences imported by the invaders. By the end of the fifteenth century, there were very few Guanches left and their resistance to the Spanish had withered along with their numbers. Crosby details the spread of exotic disease amongst the indigenes and successfully illustrates the effects it had. The Spaniards were able to Europeanize the Canaries, making them into a Neo-Europe. The example of the Canary Islands and the demise of the Guanches perfectly displays the thesis expounded by Crosby, namely that it was not Spanish superiority in arms, technology, or the placating effects of Christianity that enabled them to conquer the isles, but the ecological allies they brought with them: pathogens, livestock, and crops. The introduction of diseases that the Guanches had no natural immunities to devastated their population and the introduction of European crops to the Guanche culture may have resulted in an excessive overpopulation that aided the demographic collapse brought on by disease.
With the positive and negative examples of his guidelines in place, the lessons of how Europeans can do colonization right learned, Crosby discusses the European subjugation of the New World over the next five chapters, focusing on how the ecological allies of the Europeans enabled them to first dominate and the Europeanize the Neo-Europes (temperate North and South America). The fifth chapter on winds is out of place, though interesting. Crosby explains how the technological advances that enabled Europeans to harness the wind and then ascertain the rough regularity in wind patterns across the globe aided in their voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Crosby might be correct in his retelling of the events, but it does not buttress his main thesis that ecological factors aided in the subjugation of new lands, not their discovery. In the sixth chapter, however, he returns to his thesis, claiming that Europeans may have conquered lands that did not fit into his “guidelines,” but that they did not make them into Neo-Europes. His examples include the European colonies in the torrid zones of the world, were the climate was not conducive to European agriculture and (because the lands did not support or attract a large white population) disease worked against them. He also cites the example of the European entrepôts in China, which were definitely not Europeanized Neo-Europes. China had a large cultured population, its own domesticated animals and plants, and resistance to European (Eurasian) disease. Crosby does note some minor exceptions, like tropical Costa Rica and Queensland, which he rather quickly explains away by pointing to their relatively small populations and noting that there are exceptions to every rule.
The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters are the crux of Crosby’s argument. He discusses the invasion of weeds, animals, and ills that followed the Europeans into the New World (and Australasia) and shows how they aided in the founding of the Neo-Europes in the temperate lands outside of Eurasia through subjugation and transformation. In his chapter on weeds and other plants, Crosby discusses the ability of European plant invaders to spread and thrive in the New World. When the invading Europeans dug the plow into the earth and burned or logged the forests of the New World, the disturbed soil was able to recover quickly because of the prevalence of Old World weeds advertently or inadvertently brought over from Europe. The new “weeds,” which Crosby defines broadly enough to encompass organisms such as the peach tree, enabled the animals of the colonizers to thrive, thus providing food and other resources that allowed the colonists to survive. This he discusses in chapter eight, noting the importance of the pig, cow, horse, and even the rat to European subjugation and transformation of the Neo-Europes. These two chapters highlight the truly novel aspects of Crosby’s thesis. Where other historians have noted the effects of disease on the native populations of America, they have not remarked much about the introduction of European agriculture into the New World and how it affected the ability of Europeans to thrive. Crosby places emphasis on the utility of the pig, which propagated in such numbers as to become a nearly free feral source of protein for many frontiersmen and colonists. He also notes the importance of cattle and the horse to the Europeans, both animals that were far superior to any domesticated by the Amerindians for food, clothing, and travel. The ninth chapter is a résumé of the impact of epidemic disease on the indigenous populations of the Americas and how it eased white settlement in many areas. He relates an old Kiowa myth of a hero meeting a personified version of smallpox who is “one with the white men” and who is blunt about his purpose: “I bring death…. I bring destruction” (p. 207). To counter this he gives the old example of John Winthrop, who believed that smallpox was a divine agent that “cleared our title to what we possess” (p. 208).
In the tenth chapter, Crosby presents a more detailed case study of his thesis by focusing on the island of New Zealand. The islands began to be colonized late in the eighteenth century so more records are available to test his suppositions. Like the European colonization of the temperate Americas, the primary factor working in favor of the Europeans was disease. Diseases, primarily tuberculosis and venereal infections, had devastating effects on the indigenous Maori population, making it easier for white settlers to move inland. Also important was the introduction of European plants and animals which first tied the Maori to the whites, allowing more to be infected with the deadly pathogens, and then enabled the whites to expand, increase their population, and hold the island – turning it into a Neo-Europe.
Many of the arguments Crosby espouses have been proffered by historians, primarily the old saw of disease making it easy for the white men to subjugate the Americas (like Crosby’s adoption of McNeill’s Law). Eric Wolf, if we oversimplify his argument perhaps, held that the modes of production employed by the indigenes of the future Neo-Europes was less efficient than those of the European nations they encountered, and the carriers of the “advanced” mode of production allowed them to subjugate the indigenes (with the welcome help of disease). Crosby might admit that the Europeans were more technologically advanced than the natives, but that was a secondary reason for their subjugation and transformation of the Neo-Europes. Crosby would contend that European diseases along with plants and animals were integral in the conquering and holding of lands that had a climate similar to Europe’s. Crosby, like all such theorists with overarching hypotheses, tends to ignore counterexamples and leave out other possibilities. His dismissal of the tropical Neo-Europe of Costa Rica is unconvincing and more could have been said about South Africa (is it a Neo-Europe or not?). In Crosby’s rush to elevate ecological reasons over technological ones, he too easily dismisses the fact that the Saracens had technology equal to (or greater than) that held by the Crusaders. Without the muskets would the British have had much of an effect with the warlike and healthy Maori, who were not ravaged by that disease par excellence smallpox? Still, Crosby’s idea that the Neo-Europes arose because of their climactic similarity to Europe, the ease in which European staples grew there and animals thrived there, and the rage with which diseases propagated amongst the inhabitants there is provocative and instructive. show less
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Contributions in American Studies #2) by Alfred W. Crosby
For environmental historians, The Columbian Exchange is one of those books that must be read. Although the book is now 42 years old, and contains some outdated information (for example, Crosby based much of his argument on blood types because DNA analysis wasn’t yet available), the basic idea has stood the test of time. Crosby’s thesis is summed up in the title, which has entered the language as a short-hand descriptor for the idea that “the most important changes brought about by the show more Columbian voyages were biological in nature.” There’s pretty widespread agreement on the significance of biological change after European contact with the Americas, although not all the people who use Crosby’s term agree with him that the interaction of the old world and the new “has left us with not a richer but a more impoverished genetic pool.” (xiv, 219)
Crosby sets the scene by comparing the old world and the new, to show the biological contrasts between Europe and the Americas. He describes European conquest and the diseases that spread with (and sometimes ahead of) conquistadors and settlers. Crosby then describes the (mostly plant) species that were brought from the Americas to the old world, and the (mostly animal) species the Spanish brought to the new (interestingly, he says most of the really significant species were introduced by the Spanish by 1500, long before North American settlement was begun. 108). After devoting a full chapter to the controversy over the origin of syphilis, Crosby concludes with a look at how American food crops enabled population growth in both Europe and Asia (and continue to, to the present day).
Some of the interesting items along the way include Crosby’s brief discussion of the possible influence of the new world on tradition and religious authority in the old. “Christian and Aristotelian” belief systems, he says, “proved too cramped to accomodate the New World...men of the Columbian generation discovered that ‘Ptolomeus, and others knewe not the halfe.’” (9) Crosby says an argument about “multiple creations” was carried on in Europe until 1859, when Darwin finally laid it to rest, “while also knocking loose a large part of the foundation of traditional Judaism and Christianity.” (14) Crosby’s discussion of the extinction event that wiped out American megafauna has probably been eclipsed by more recent scientific findings, just as his discussion of the worldwide distribution of blood-types has been overtaken by DNA analysis, but in their day they were great examples of interdisciplinary thinking.
Many of the historical details Crosby includes are startling. Cotton Mather’s description of the 1616-17 epidemic that wiped out most of the Massachusetts Indians as a Providential clearing of the woods “of those pernicious creatures, to make room for better growth,” confirms my impression of the Puritan leader (41). The idea that “a million Indians lived on Santo Domingo when the Europeans arrived,” and that they were reduced by 1548 to 500, is something you really have to sit with for a while and think about (45). The “population of central Mexican dropped from about 25 million on the eve of conquest to 16.8 million a decade later” (53) That doesn’t seem as bad, until it sinks in that it means one out of every three people was dead, in just ten years. Makes all the recent movies about plagues, zombies, and human apocalypse seem like so many nightmares of a guilty white American conscience.
Before reading Crosby, I didn’t know that when Columbus returned, he brought “seventeen ships, 1,200 men, and seeds and cuttings for the planting of wheat, chickpeas, melons, onions, radishes, salad greens, grape vines, sugar cane, and fruit stones for the founding of orchards” (67). And it never occurred to me that some new world species, like the white potato, found their way to places like New England via Europe (brought “by the Scotch-Irish...in 1718” 66). Other interesting details: “the banana, brought from the Canaries in 1516” (68). “Cattle...first brought to Mexico for breeding purposes in 1521” (87). But by 1614, “the residents of Santiago [Chile] possessed 39,250 head,” (91) as well as 623,825 sheep (94). I also didn’t know, but should have guessed after reading about De Soto’s expedition through Florida, that when Pizarro crossed the Andes into Peru in 1540, he brought over 2,000 pigs with him (79). Somebody should write a history of the conquest that focuses on what it must have been like, moving conquistadors and their pigs through the wild Americas.
Crosby first addressed the idea that disease was an important force in American history in a 1967 journal article called “Conquistadors y Pestilencia.” Crosby says he “stumbled into environmental history through the backdoor of epidemiology.” Of course, there was no such field as environmental history at the time, and Crosby helped create it.
“Conquistadors y Pestilencia” is about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires. “How did Hernán Cortés do it?” Crosby asked. “Well, he didn’t. Old World smallpox did,” he answered.
“When the isolation of the Americas was broken, and Columbus brought the two halves of this planet together, the American Indian met for the first time his most hideous enemy – not the white man or his black servant, but the invisible killers which these men brought in their blood and breath,” wrote Crosby in 1967. Over then next couple of years, Crosby expanded the article into a book and coined the term that has become the accepted name of this phenomenon: the Columbian Exchange.
Crosby tried for several years to interest publishers in his radical book, without success. I had an opportunity to talk with Prof. Crosby and his wife recently via email, and they both recalled the most memorable rejection letter he received consisted of the single word “Nonsense.” Crosby finally attracted a publisher in 1971, when the Greenwood Press, a company begun a few years earlier by an antiquarian bookseller who usually printed out-of-print titles, asked him if he had anything book-length he’d like to see in print. The Columbian Exchange was published in 1972, and slowly began to attract the attention of historians over the next several years.
Early reviews of The Columbian Exchange were generally favorable, although some of the reviewers failed to grasp Crosby’s point. One review in a major academic journal, for example, described disease decimating both old world and new world populations. Crosby’s book didn’t say this, and it wasn’t true. The only disease that may possibly have crossed from the new world to the old, Crosby had claimed, was syphilis. Although a feared killer, syphilis did nowhere near the damage to Europe that smallpox, plague, and other Eurasian diseases did to American populations.
Over time, Crosby’s thesis and his approach to history attracted historians with similar interests in biological and ecological issues, and The Columbian Exchange became one of the founding texts of a new field. Unlike mainstream historians, many of whom rejected the pessimistic conclusion of Crosby’s book, environmental historians were willing to consider the possibility that the Columbian Exchange was not over. Crosby continues to argue the events of the sixteenth century were “simply an early phase in a slide toward worldwide biological homogeneity,” and that this process is “continuing, even accelerating.”
The idea that decreasing biological diversity is bad is essentially a scientific judgment rather than a historical one. So it’s no surprise that some historians disagree. One of the things that defines environmental history as a field is a general belief that these types of scientific arguments are valid and should be taken at least as seriously as cultural, political, or economic judgments. The general idea that biological processes influence history has gained support over the years, and even entered the mainstream. Jared Diamond’s 1997 bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel followed (and borrowed without attribution from) Crosby’s less well-known 1994 book Germs, Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Ecological History. Charles C. Mann’s bestseller 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus acknowledges its debt to The Columbian Exchange, uses the term, and even tells the story of the author’s many interactions with Alfred Crosby. show less
Crosby sets the scene by comparing the old world and the new, to show the biological contrasts between Europe and the Americas. He describes European conquest and the diseases that spread with (and sometimes ahead of) conquistadors and settlers. Crosby then describes the (mostly plant) species that were brought from the Americas to the old world, and the (mostly animal) species the Spanish brought to the new (interestingly, he says most of the really significant species were introduced by the Spanish by 1500, long before North American settlement was begun. 108). After devoting a full chapter to the controversy over the origin of syphilis, Crosby concludes with a look at how American food crops enabled population growth in both Europe and Asia (and continue to, to the present day).
Some of the interesting items along the way include Crosby’s brief discussion of the possible influence of the new world on tradition and religious authority in the old. “Christian and Aristotelian” belief systems, he says, “proved too cramped to accomodate the New World...men of the Columbian generation discovered that ‘Ptolomeus, and others knewe not the halfe.’” (9) Crosby says an argument about “multiple creations” was carried on in Europe until 1859, when Darwin finally laid it to rest, “while also knocking loose a large part of the foundation of traditional Judaism and Christianity.” (14) Crosby’s discussion of the extinction event that wiped out American megafauna has probably been eclipsed by more recent scientific findings, just as his discussion of the worldwide distribution of blood-types has been overtaken by DNA analysis, but in their day they were great examples of interdisciplinary thinking.
Many of the historical details Crosby includes are startling. Cotton Mather’s description of the 1616-17 epidemic that wiped out most of the Massachusetts Indians as a Providential clearing of the woods “of those pernicious creatures, to make room for better growth,” confirms my impression of the Puritan leader (41). The idea that “a million Indians lived on Santo Domingo when the Europeans arrived,” and that they were reduced by 1548 to 500, is something you really have to sit with for a while and think about (45). The “population of central Mexican dropped from about 25 million on the eve of conquest to 16.8 million a decade later” (53) That doesn’t seem as bad, until it sinks in that it means one out of every three people was dead, in just ten years. Makes all the recent movies about plagues, zombies, and human apocalypse seem like so many nightmares of a guilty white American conscience.
Before reading Crosby, I didn’t know that when Columbus returned, he brought “seventeen ships, 1,200 men, and seeds and cuttings for the planting of wheat, chickpeas, melons, onions, radishes, salad greens, grape vines, sugar cane, and fruit stones for the founding of orchards” (67). And it never occurred to me that some new world species, like the white potato, found their way to places like New England via Europe (brought “by the Scotch-Irish...in 1718” 66). Other interesting details: “the banana, brought from the Canaries in 1516” (68). “Cattle...first brought to Mexico for breeding purposes in 1521” (87). But by 1614, “the residents of Santiago [Chile] possessed 39,250 head,” (91) as well as 623,825 sheep (94). I also didn’t know, but should have guessed after reading about De Soto’s expedition through Florida, that when Pizarro crossed the Andes into Peru in 1540, he brought over 2,000 pigs with him (79). Somebody should write a history of the conquest that focuses on what it must have been like, moving conquistadors and their pigs through the wild Americas.
Crosby first addressed the idea that disease was an important force in American history in a 1967 journal article called “Conquistadors y Pestilencia.” Crosby says he “stumbled into environmental history through the backdoor of epidemiology.” Of course, there was no such field as environmental history at the time, and Crosby helped create it.
“Conquistadors y Pestilencia” is about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires. “How did Hernán Cortés do it?” Crosby asked. “Well, he didn’t. Old World smallpox did,” he answered.
“When the isolation of the Americas was broken, and Columbus brought the two halves of this planet together, the American Indian met for the first time his most hideous enemy – not the white man or his black servant, but the invisible killers which these men brought in their blood and breath,” wrote Crosby in 1967. Over then next couple of years, Crosby expanded the article into a book and coined the term that has become the accepted name of this phenomenon: the Columbian Exchange.
Crosby tried for several years to interest publishers in his radical book, without success. I had an opportunity to talk with Prof. Crosby and his wife recently via email, and they both recalled the most memorable rejection letter he received consisted of the single word “Nonsense.” Crosby finally attracted a publisher in 1971, when the Greenwood Press, a company begun a few years earlier by an antiquarian bookseller who usually printed out-of-print titles, asked him if he had anything book-length he’d like to see in print. The Columbian Exchange was published in 1972, and slowly began to attract the attention of historians over the next several years.
Early reviews of The Columbian Exchange were generally favorable, although some of the reviewers failed to grasp Crosby’s point. One review in a major academic journal, for example, described disease decimating both old world and new world populations. Crosby’s book didn’t say this, and it wasn’t true. The only disease that may possibly have crossed from the new world to the old, Crosby had claimed, was syphilis. Although a feared killer, syphilis did nowhere near the damage to Europe that smallpox, plague, and other Eurasian diseases did to American populations.
Over time, Crosby’s thesis and his approach to history attracted historians with similar interests in biological and ecological issues, and The Columbian Exchange became one of the founding texts of a new field. Unlike mainstream historians, many of whom rejected the pessimistic conclusion of Crosby’s book, environmental historians were willing to consider the possibility that the Columbian Exchange was not over. Crosby continues to argue the events of the sixteenth century were “simply an early phase in a slide toward worldwide biological homogeneity,” and that this process is “continuing, even accelerating.”
The idea that decreasing biological diversity is bad is essentially a scientific judgment rather than a historical one. So it’s no surprise that some historians disagree. One of the things that defines environmental history as a field is a general belief that these types of scientific arguments are valid and should be taken at least as seriously as cultural, political, or economic judgments. The general idea that biological processes influence history has gained support over the years, and even entered the mainstream. Jared Diamond’s 1997 bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel followed (and borrowed without attribution from) Crosby’s less well-known 1994 book Germs, Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Ecological History. Charles C. Mann’s bestseller 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus acknowledges its debt to The Columbian Exchange, uses the term, and even tells the story of the author’s many interactions with Alfred Crosby. show less
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