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Environmental Impact of Population Growth and Commodification in the Colonial Era

This chapter explores the interconnectedness of population growth, disease spread, hunting practices, and trade in the context of colonial interactions. It delves into the consequences of diseases on indigenous populations, the impact of trade and commodification on social hierarchies, and the changes in ecological and economic landscapes. Through a critical examination of historical events, it highlights the complex relationships between nature, society, politics, and economics during this period.

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Environmental Impact of Population Growth and Commodification in the Colonial Era

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  1. Changes in the Land,Chapter 5 ISS 310: People and Environment Spring 2002 Prof. Alan Rudy 1/24/02 1. What is the common relation between population and environmental damage? 2. What do you have usufruct rights to and what do you have property rights to?

  2. Commodities of the Hunt: • Trade • Diseases • Property • Ecological Change • Hunting • Commodification • Exchange • Use/Status -- Wampumeag • Accumulation/Abstraction -- Price • Sedentarism

  3. Early Trade and Diseases: • Indians eager by 1525 -- 33 years after ?? • Diseases • Historical-Geographic isolation • Low population densities • No domesticated animals • Neither genetic, nor acquired resistance • 80-90% Mortality Rates • Endemic and Acute • Hunter-gatherer North less than Ag South • Smallpox, TB, Influenza, Pneumonia, Measles, Typhus, Dysentery, Syphilis

  4. Consequences of Diseases: • Powerfully disrupts kinship patterns, inter- and intra-group politics, healing/religion. • Facilitates colonial property take-over • if Indians had “improved” and thereby “owned” ag lands, but died, then those lands could be taken • indication of “God’s will” behind Colonist take-over • Second nature reverts to first nature? • SMALL GROUPS -- explain (90-91)

  5. Hunting: • Colonists were too ineffective a hunters to obtain furs by themselves, needed Indian men. • But Indian men were lazy and had inferior technology! • How could Indians be more efficient and skillful?

  6. SEE Cronon’s ARGUMENT??? • Cronon is BUILDING an argument with the structure of the book, • ECOLOGY • Northern and Southern NE • SOCIAL ECOLOGIES • Indians (N and S) and Colonists (English) • POLITICAL ECOLOGY • Sovereignty and Property • ECONOMIC ECOLOGY • Population, Hunting, Trade • Each point adds a layer and refers back • Why THAT order? N-S-P-E?

  7. Commodification: • For Indians, from exchange of equivalents (use) to accumulation of abstractions (price). • 1) Use Euro-goods for Indian purposes • 2) Trade for Indian purposes • Indian-Colonist trade grew not due to Indian demand but because of Colonists’ need to pay debts (not supply-demand). • Trade + Disease worked against old political and status hierarchies. • Declining population worked against social sanctions against accumulation.

  8. Summary (of sorts): • Trade + Pop = • Eco Deregulation (Indians) • Eco Damage (for Colonists) • Game populations • Fur (Indian need for cloth) • Rich land from beaver dams • Sedentarism • Indians • Domesticated animals • Disease • Colonists • Normal Env’tal Accounts • Pop = Eco Damage

  9. Conclusion: • Nature (ecology) + • Social Relations (gender, culture, etc.) + • Political Organization (status, state, etc.) + • Economic Structure (tech., class, etc.) + • Population (numbers, trends) + • Health (diseases, lifespan, etc.) = • All must be understood in changing relation to one another in order to coherently explore environmental change and respond to crises. • None alone will do (not holism, philosophy, democracy, biotech, consumption, birth control, or medicine) alone.

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