Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Mastering the Earth
The story of how the Germans attempted to control their environment, told by David Blackbourn in his book The Conquest of Nature, is similar to many other environmental histories that took place in other parts of the globe. Johann Gottfried Tulla, the engineer known as the father of the modern Rhine, reminded me of William Mulholland, chief engineer and general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the man who brought water from the Owens Valley, in California, into Los Angeles, in 1913. It seems to me that human history repeats itself. Owens Valley was once an area filled with orchards and fields and people who live there today still talk about the old days before Mulholland’s project turned their valley into a desert. Similarly, according to Blackbourn’s account, around the 1900, after Tulla had remade the Upper Rhine, one would find the great naturalist Robert Lauterborn deploring the losses of fauna and flora of his beloved river in Germany much like his predecessors, who had told stories about a world which had been lost. These accounts show that there was some longing for the Upper Rhine region prior to Tulla’s project as well as for the Owens Valley prior to the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
Apparently both, Tulla and Mulholland, had bought into Jeremy Bentham ’s philosophy of utilitarianism at the time. Bentham coined the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Tulla and Mulholland were most likely thinking of the greatest good for the greatest number of people when they carried out their projects. Utilitarianism was at the forefront of many projects that dealt with natural resources. It is said that Gifford Pinchot, the first man in charge of the newly created Forest Service in the United States, also adhered to this belief. He even added a few words to Bentham’s phrase in his mission statement. He supposedly wrote: “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”
Neither Tulla nor Mulholland anticipated the consequences of their projects. They were both attempts to control nature, which had losses and benefits that are hard to unscramble (to use one of Blackbourn’s word). Nature was an adversary that could be tamed and conquered and humans had the ingenuity to do so. They had at their side an extraordinary ally: science. Blackbourn explains that the emphasis on science in the 19th century was typical of the age. The notion of progress was embraced not only by physical and natural sciences, but also by humanities and social sciences. During the 19th century anthropologists were embracing cultural evolutionism. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) had coined the term “cultural evolutionism”, which envisioned human societies as evolving along a common track from simple to complex. For Spencer, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, evolution pervaded the inorganic as well as the organic realm. In England, Edward Burnett Tylor published Primitive Culture (1871), and, in the United States, Lewis Henry Morgan published Ancient Society (1877), both adopting cultural evolutionism as their theoretical framework. Thus, the taming of the Rhine, the construction of canals, dams, shipyards, harbors, and railways in Germany in the late 19th century and early 20th century took place within a context that favored human beings mastering the Earth and controlling nature. This “outburst of cultural confidence” is what Blackbourn calls “imperialism of imagination” (177). Being intimidated by nature meant going backwards at a time when the notion of progress was interviewed with the belief that human culture was on a path forward (cultural evolution), an ethnocentric framework that most certainly validated all these projects to control nature. The right path to take was to evolve forward, which meant many things, including mastering the Earth.
--
Neda Bezerra
Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory
Historical Resources Management
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID.
Apparently both, Tulla and Mulholland, had bought into Jeremy Bentham ’s philosophy of utilitarianism at the time. Bentham coined the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Tulla and Mulholland were most likely thinking of the greatest good for the greatest number of people when they carried out their projects. Utilitarianism was at the forefront of many projects that dealt with natural resources. It is said that Gifford Pinchot, the first man in charge of the newly created Forest Service in the United States, also adhered to this belief. He even added a few words to Bentham’s phrase in his mission statement. He supposedly wrote: “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”
Neither Tulla nor Mulholland anticipated the consequences of their projects. They were both attempts to control nature, which had losses and benefits that are hard to unscramble (to use one of Blackbourn’s word). Nature was an adversary that could be tamed and conquered and humans had the ingenuity to do so. They had at their side an extraordinary ally: science. Blackbourn explains that the emphasis on science in the 19th century was typical of the age. The notion of progress was embraced not only by physical and natural sciences, but also by humanities and social sciences. During the 19th century anthropologists were embracing cultural evolutionism. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) had coined the term “cultural evolutionism”, which envisioned human societies as evolving along a common track from simple to complex. For Spencer, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, evolution pervaded the inorganic as well as the organic realm. In England, Edward Burnett Tylor published Primitive Culture (1871), and, in the United States, Lewis Henry Morgan published Ancient Society (1877), both adopting cultural evolutionism as their theoretical framework. Thus, the taming of the Rhine, the construction of canals, dams, shipyards, harbors, and railways in Germany in the late 19th century and early 20th century took place within a context that favored human beings mastering the Earth and controlling nature. This “outburst of cultural confidence” is what Blackbourn calls “imperialism of imagination” (177). Being intimidated by nature meant going backwards at a time when the notion of progress was interviewed with the belief that human culture was on a path forward (cultural evolution), an ethnocentric framework that most certainly validated all these projects to control nature. The right path to take was to evolve forward, which meant many things, including mastering the Earth.
--
Neda Bezerra
Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory
Historical Resources Management
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
AVATAR
This past December, a week before Christmas, 20th Century Fox released a science fiction film that would become the biggest box office of all times: Avatar. I have never been a science fiction buff and the only science fiction I had ever enjoyed was the Bionic Woman, a TV series of the late 1970s. Thus, I never planned to see Avatar, but a teenager, son of a good friend of mine, who was visiting town, insisted that I take him to see it. After thirty three years of the release of the Bionic Woman on TV, there I was, watching for the first time a 21st century science fiction film. I was soon struck by the plot, which carried an environmental message. Some have argued that James Cameron’s Avatar is without a doubt the most epic piece of environmental advocacy ever captured on celluloid. Cameron, the director, told the British newspaper the Sun :
"The point is that we are devastating habitat and biodiversity at a terrible rate. We are causing a global climate change that is going to be absolutely devastating to the coral reefs. Science is unable to keep up with our industrial society. We are destroying species faster than we can classify them. We are destroying the food chain faster than we can understand it. The politicians are over in Copenhagen talking about climate change now – but there are other issues as well."
While reading John F. Richards’ book The Unending Frontier (2003), I could not help but think of Avatar. Some of the historical processes of the early modern world presented by Richards are also present in Cameron’s 22nd century lush earth-like moon Pandora, which is being attacked by an American mining corporation. Both Richards and Cameron highlight the settlement of the frontiers, which has a strong impact on the environment and on native peoples. Richards accounts for the entrepreneurial spirit of the Western European societies taken by maritime achievements in shipping, mapmaking, navigation, and global exploration, which leads to the settlement of far off places around the globe and subsequently to the destruction of their ecosystems and native populations. Cameron, in the same fashion, accounts for the establishment of a futuristic biotechnology that allows scientists to grow Pandora’s native people’s-human hybrid bodies called avatars, which are operated via mental link by genetically matching humans, which facilitate research of Pandora's biosphere for harnessing its natural resources, with total disregard to its native peoples, the Na’vis. The powerful RDA Corporation in Cameron’s film wants to mine a valuable mineral called unobtanium in Pandora, much like the VOC (the Dutch East India Company), for example, wanted to tap natural resources in Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Richards highlights the expansion of the frontiers, with its negative impact on the environment due to intensive resource extraction and land use, which was often very detrimental to the ecosystems and the native peoples. For Richards, by writing the history of these lands, how they came to be conquered and exploited, he is shaping identity and subsequent action. For him, we “desperately need a shared global identity that derives from knowledge and wisdom about a common human past” (2003: xiii). For filmmaker James Cameron, his blockbuster Avatar, which depicts a world of stunning natural beauty that is threatened with destruction, is a cautionary tale about our own environment.
The Dutch with their East India Company (VOC), the Spanish with their annual fleets (Carrera de Indias) and the Portuguese with their colonization enterprise (Captaincies) occupied far off lands, exploited resources, enslaved, catechized and killed hundreds of indigenous populations. The similarities in Richards’ chapters abound. Extracting natural resources, cultivating land intensively for profit, and converting the native populations were some of the reasons for much of the undertakings of the Dutch, the Spanish, and the Portuguese in the early modern world. While the Dutch gained converts to its Reformed Church, the Portuguese and Spanish sought converts to the Church of Rome. The devastating effect on the indigenous groups was unprecedented, with an estimate loss of 5 to 6 million native people in the Americas alone. The environmental impact that the Europeans caused on the lands that they conquered was such that much of the natural resources and the native populations, often killed by pandemics, were completely transformed or wiped out by the time they left. The Portuguese changed one-million-square kilometers of Atlantic forest in Brazil; the Spanish completely altered the landscapes of Mexico, Hispaniola and the West Indies islands; and the Dutch managed to deplete nearly all the larger fauna of the entire Cape region and wipe out the vast deer herds of the Western Taiwan plain.
Expansion of territory is highlighted in several of Richards’ chapters. He analyzes the frontier settlement undertaken by the Russians, for instance, who for centuries acquired territories, actively changing the habitats in ways that the pastoral nomads had not done before. The tsar and patriarch of Moscow, much like the Crown in Portugal and Spain, and the Dutch Republic, also aimed at converting their conquered population. The conquered Muslims, by the Russians, were forced to accept Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Different from what the Western Europeans had done in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, the Russian settlers did not clear, at least at first, most of the forests they acquired. They left some of it standing as a defensive mechanism against attackers. Later, however, with the rise of settler population, these forests were inevitably reduced. Similar to what had happened to the native peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, once the frontier was conquered by Russian settlers, no longer could the local peasants escape serfdom.
Richards also points out that early modern China, much like Russia, expanded its internal frontiers of settlement and intensified its land use in spite of adverse climate conditions in certain regions. Chinese expansion also had an adverse impact on the environment, with widespread deforestation through central and southern China, which resulted in severe consequences. Much like most of the other stories approached by Richards, the indigenous peoples of China also lost ground to the frontier settlers, the Han migrants. Also, similar to most of the other settlement stories, China’s forests were not able to keep up with the demands for industrial and domestic fuel.
One unique story of the early modern era presented by Richards is of the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1867), a time of internal peace, political stability, and economic growth. Richards argues that “the social discipline imposed by the Tokugawa regime at all levels made it possible to conserve forest and other resources and to regenerate resources” (2003: 149). He points out that literacy was unquestionably a great asset to the dissemination of the technical and moral information to the population. This asset, however, was missing in most of the enterprises carried out abroad by the Europeans during that same period. The Portuguese Crown, for instance, was not interested in disseminating literacy in Brazil. Historian Thomas Skidmore has argued that,
The Portuguese Crown prohibited printing presses from operating in Brazil, with the result that no books, newspapers, or magazines were ever published in colonial Brazil. Brazilians had to get their university education in Coimbra, Portugal, and their only hope to publish was in Europe. The absence of the printing press in colonial Brazil was unique in colonial Latin America. So in this respect, colonial Brazil suffered from a singular defect: the absence of two institutions, the printing press and the university, essential for economic development. The latter condition persisted long after independence; the first Brazilian university was not founded until 1932 .
Still in regard to the Tokugawa period, sociologist Robert N. Bellah asserts that “there were rationalizing tendencies in Japanese religion that contributed to Japan’s economic and political rationalization starting during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868)” . For Bellah “Japan contained a ‘functional analogue’ to the Protestant ethic. Both Buddhism and Confucianism contained ‘this-worldly’ or ‘inner-worldly’ ethics emphasizing activism and achievement in the secular world”, which for Bellah was the same type of religious orientation that Max Weber (1904) presents in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to explain the rise of modern capitalism. Perhaps the religious ethics contributed to the conservation measures taken by the Tokugawa regime to protect and nurture state forests.
Six hundred and fifty years separate the beginning of the early modern era -- when Western European nations started an expansion enterprise that irreversibly and severely impacted the environment and the lives of native peoples in far off lands -- from the fictitious world of Pandora created by director James Cameron. The plight of the Na’vis and their land of Pandora, despite distant in time and space, is not much different from that of the indigenous population around the globe that were assaulted by Europeans under the banner of Christianity and development. One difference, however, remains between these two stories, besides one being fictitious and the other real: The Na’vis are saved by Jake Sully, an American former marine, who falls in love with a native woman and her culture and rejects the RDA’s agenda to conquer Pandora. Unfortunately, during the European expansion of the early modern era, not even the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas, considered the defender and apostle to the Indians, was able to save the indigenous population of South America. His ideas had little effect on changing Spanish attitudes towards the natives and their lands. The lust of the conquistadores’ for gold and other resources was stronger than the recognition of religious or moral justice. Unfortunately, there was no hero in Richards’ stories to save the environment and the native populations.
--
Neda Bezerra
Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory
Historical Resources Management
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID.
"The point is that we are devastating habitat and biodiversity at a terrible rate. We are causing a global climate change that is going to be absolutely devastating to the coral reefs. Science is unable to keep up with our industrial society. We are destroying species faster than we can classify them. We are destroying the food chain faster than we can understand it. The politicians are over in Copenhagen talking about climate change now – but there are other issues as well."
While reading John F. Richards’ book The Unending Frontier (2003), I could not help but think of Avatar. Some of the historical processes of the early modern world presented by Richards are also present in Cameron’s 22nd century lush earth-like moon Pandora, which is being attacked by an American mining corporation. Both Richards and Cameron highlight the settlement of the frontiers, which has a strong impact on the environment and on native peoples. Richards accounts for the entrepreneurial spirit of the Western European societies taken by maritime achievements in shipping, mapmaking, navigation, and global exploration, which leads to the settlement of far off places around the globe and subsequently to the destruction of their ecosystems and native populations. Cameron, in the same fashion, accounts for the establishment of a futuristic biotechnology that allows scientists to grow Pandora’s native people’s-human hybrid bodies called avatars, which are operated via mental link by genetically matching humans, which facilitate research of Pandora's biosphere for harnessing its natural resources, with total disregard to its native peoples, the Na’vis. The powerful RDA Corporation in Cameron’s film wants to mine a valuable mineral called unobtanium in Pandora, much like the VOC (the Dutch East India Company), for example, wanted to tap natural resources in Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Richards highlights the expansion of the frontiers, with its negative impact on the environment due to intensive resource extraction and land use, which was often very detrimental to the ecosystems and the native peoples. For Richards, by writing the history of these lands, how they came to be conquered and exploited, he is shaping identity and subsequent action. For him, we “desperately need a shared global identity that derives from knowledge and wisdom about a common human past” (2003: xiii). For filmmaker James Cameron, his blockbuster Avatar, which depicts a world of stunning natural beauty that is threatened with destruction, is a cautionary tale about our own environment.
The Dutch with their East India Company (VOC), the Spanish with their annual fleets (Carrera de Indias) and the Portuguese with their colonization enterprise (Captaincies) occupied far off lands, exploited resources, enslaved, catechized and killed hundreds of indigenous populations. The similarities in Richards’ chapters abound. Extracting natural resources, cultivating land intensively for profit, and converting the native populations were some of the reasons for much of the undertakings of the Dutch, the Spanish, and the Portuguese in the early modern world. While the Dutch gained converts to its Reformed Church, the Portuguese and Spanish sought converts to the Church of Rome. The devastating effect on the indigenous groups was unprecedented, with an estimate loss of 5 to 6 million native people in the Americas alone. The environmental impact that the Europeans caused on the lands that they conquered was such that much of the natural resources and the native populations, often killed by pandemics, were completely transformed or wiped out by the time they left. The Portuguese changed one-million-square kilometers of Atlantic forest in Brazil; the Spanish completely altered the landscapes of Mexico, Hispaniola and the West Indies islands; and the Dutch managed to deplete nearly all the larger fauna of the entire Cape region and wipe out the vast deer herds of the Western Taiwan plain.
Expansion of territory is highlighted in several of Richards’ chapters. He analyzes the frontier settlement undertaken by the Russians, for instance, who for centuries acquired territories, actively changing the habitats in ways that the pastoral nomads had not done before. The tsar and patriarch of Moscow, much like the Crown in Portugal and Spain, and the Dutch Republic, also aimed at converting their conquered population. The conquered Muslims, by the Russians, were forced to accept Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Different from what the Western Europeans had done in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, the Russian settlers did not clear, at least at first, most of the forests they acquired. They left some of it standing as a defensive mechanism against attackers. Later, however, with the rise of settler population, these forests were inevitably reduced. Similar to what had happened to the native peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, once the frontier was conquered by Russian settlers, no longer could the local peasants escape serfdom.
Richards also points out that early modern China, much like Russia, expanded its internal frontiers of settlement and intensified its land use in spite of adverse climate conditions in certain regions. Chinese expansion also had an adverse impact on the environment, with widespread deforestation through central and southern China, which resulted in severe consequences. Much like most of the other stories approached by Richards, the indigenous peoples of China also lost ground to the frontier settlers, the Han migrants. Also, similar to most of the other settlement stories, China’s forests were not able to keep up with the demands for industrial and domestic fuel.
One unique story of the early modern era presented by Richards is of the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1867), a time of internal peace, political stability, and economic growth. Richards argues that “the social discipline imposed by the Tokugawa regime at all levels made it possible to conserve forest and other resources and to regenerate resources” (2003: 149). He points out that literacy was unquestionably a great asset to the dissemination of the technical and moral information to the population. This asset, however, was missing in most of the enterprises carried out abroad by the Europeans during that same period. The Portuguese Crown, for instance, was not interested in disseminating literacy in Brazil. Historian Thomas Skidmore has argued that,
The Portuguese Crown prohibited printing presses from operating in Brazil, with the result that no books, newspapers, or magazines were ever published in colonial Brazil. Brazilians had to get their university education in Coimbra, Portugal, and their only hope to publish was in Europe. The absence of the printing press in colonial Brazil was unique in colonial Latin America. So in this respect, colonial Brazil suffered from a singular defect: the absence of two institutions, the printing press and the university, essential for economic development. The latter condition persisted long after independence; the first Brazilian university was not founded until 1932 .
Still in regard to the Tokugawa period, sociologist Robert N. Bellah asserts that “there were rationalizing tendencies in Japanese religion that contributed to Japan’s economic and political rationalization starting during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868)” . For Bellah “Japan contained a ‘functional analogue’ to the Protestant ethic. Both Buddhism and Confucianism contained ‘this-worldly’ or ‘inner-worldly’ ethics emphasizing activism and achievement in the secular world”, which for Bellah was the same type of religious orientation that Max Weber (1904) presents in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to explain the rise of modern capitalism. Perhaps the religious ethics contributed to the conservation measures taken by the Tokugawa regime to protect and nurture state forests.
Six hundred and fifty years separate the beginning of the early modern era -- when Western European nations started an expansion enterprise that irreversibly and severely impacted the environment and the lives of native peoples in far off lands -- from the fictitious world of Pandora created by director James Cameron. The plight of the Na’vis and their land of Pandora, despite distant in time and space, is not much different from that of the indigenous population around the globe that were assaulted by Europeans under the banner of Christianity and development. One difference, however, remains between these two stories, besides one being fictitious and the other real: The Na’vis are saved by Jake Sully, an American former marine, who falls in love with a native woman and her culture and rejects the RDA’s agenda to conquer Pandora. Unfortunately, during the European expansion of the early modern era, not even the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas, considered the defender and apostle to the Indians, was able to save the indigenous population of South America. His ideas had little effect on changing Spanish attitudes towards the natives and their lands. The lust of the conquistadores’ for gold and other resources was stronger than the recognition of religious or moral justice. Unfortunately, there was no hero in Richards’ stories to save the environment and the native populations.
--
Neda Bezerra
Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory
Historical Resources Management
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID.
The Sable, the Beaver, and the Deer: Actors in the Development of Trade in the Early Modern World.
The early modern world -- the time that follows the Middle Ages, from the late fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century -- has long been recognized as a period when nations, taking advantage of maritime improvements, established new links around the world, sustained contacts with previously isolated populations, intensively exploited natural resources, and established trade routes, consolidating the start of a true global economy. The exceptional circulation of people and ethos that marked this era was driven by an equally never before seen circulation of goods that connected the world through production, commerce, and consumption and also transformed the landscape and the native peoples of previously secluded areas. The success of these large scale enterprises, carried out by early modern states in Europe, Asia, and colonial states in the Americas and Africa, rested mostly on the power of the states, which sought to maximize profits on the far off lands under their control. The historiography of this early global age is, therefore, one that has dealt largely with broad trends of maritime mobility, conquest, frontiers settlements, large scale trade, intensified land use and extraction of previously unused and often unknown natural resources, as well as decimation of native populations by epidemics. The sable, the beaver, and the deer became main actors in the development of this global era.
All the regions presented by John F. Richards in his book The Unending Frontier (2005) share several similar trends in their environmental history. However, the hunt for and trade of fur and skin in Siberia, Eastern North America, and Taiwan during the early modern age share some startling similarities. By the 1500s these three regions remained open to exploration, conquest, and exploitation. They retained a very rich fauna and flora, which, during the next three hundred years, were intensively exploited by private and public undertakings.
In the late sixteenth century the Russian state along with private groups of fur trappers and traders started to explore Siberia. The Russian killing power was much superior to what the native Siberians could endure. Once conquered the natives had to obey the tsar’s authority and deliver a specified number of furs and pelts as payment of annual taxes established by the Russian state. The further the Russians went, the more they conquered and submitted the natives to their ruling power. The lure of more and more furs, especially sable’s, pushed the Russian frontiersmen eastward with their banner of conquest and domination. The native Siberians slowly but surely had to swear oath to the Russian authority. Effective resistance to the Russians was impossible since the native groups lacked centralizing state structures and organization power. Had the indigenous peoples of Siberia been more and better organized, perhaps it would have taken longer for them to be conquered. These native populations were also weakened by diseases that were foreign to them, such as smallpox, measles, and venereal diseases. Besides the epidemics, the natives were hit hard by alcoholism, which contributed to the breaking of their social fabric. Also, Russian brutality took a hard too on them. The Russian expansion over Siberia, besides bringing about the depletion of the sable population and other furbearers, destroyed the Siberian communities, turning the natives that had not been killed by the epidemics, very dependent on the Russian settlers.
Unfortunately, a similar story of conquest is that of Eastern North America. As Richards (2005, 463) explains, “Much of the early impetus for maritime travel to North America came from the profits to be made from hunting, killing, processing, and shipping animal skins back to Europe.” The North American beaver, much like the sable in Siberia, became the most valuable furbearer of the New World and for three hundred years demand for beaver hats in Europe propelled the hunting of this most industrious rodent, known for helping shape the landscape of North America through its constructions of dams.
Despite the fact that the French, the British, and the Dutch in North America were not as brutal to the natives as the Russians were in Siberia and did not demand any tax payment from them, the fur trade enterprise of North America shared several common trends with the settlement of Siberia, brought forward by the hunt for fur in that region. First, similar to the sable’s fate in Siberia, the demands established by the fur trade in North America depleted the beaver population to near extinction in the North, which had a profound impact on the landscape. It also depleted the deer herds in the South. Second, the contagious diseases brought to the New World by the Europeans killed thousands of indigenous people and weakened many more. The introduction of tobacco and alcohol also helped to weaken and demoralize Indian societies, tearing apart their social fabric, in a pattern similar to that found among the native populations of Siberia. Alcohol also caused depression among the Indians, making them even more vulnerable to the European advances. The cultural and social devastation suffered by the North American Indians was nearly identical to that faced by the native Siberians. While the native Siberians developed a need for bread, became addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and relied on firearms introduced by the Russians, the North American Indians developed a need for muskets, balls, powder, kettles, knives, hatches, needles, scissors, pipes, and other goods as well as a taste for tobacco, rum and brandy. The North American fur trade redefined Native American’s relationships with the wildlife, the forest, and their spiritual world. It made them more and more dependent on Europeans and their goods and also less able to resist invasion of their lands. In addition, dissemination of firearms brought much deadliness to the Indian population. Similar to the plight of the native Siberians, the advancing European settlement frontier set the final blow to most Indian groups in North American.
On the other side of the globe, in Asia, set the isolated island of Taiwan, off the China coast, which during the sixteenth century was covered with thick vegetation and was sparsely populated by native Taiwanese descendents of Neolithic Austronesian settlers, who had migrated to the island from China as early as 4,000 B.C.E. After much effort, in 1624 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was able to monopolize the profitable trade in that region and establish Fort Zeelandia in Taiwan in order take control of the native Taiwanese and the island’s resources. Richards (2005, 95) explains that “where strong, confident regimes were in place […] VOC representatives became humble traders content to petition for whatever privileges they could obtain.” This was certainly not the case in Taiwan since the island was so sparsely populated and its native peoples not well organized, much like the Siberians in the Northern hemisphere. Thus, within only twenty years the Dutch were ruling most of Taiwan and running a very intensive business of deerskins, which were exported to Japan in great numbers as well as to other parts of the world. Even though the Taiwanese aborigines felt a heavy impact from the Dutch colonial policies, they were not struck by contagious diseases like the native Siberians and North Americans were, perhaps due to their previous contact to other foreign people. In a pattern similar to that found in Siberia and North America, the new rulers of Taiwan tried very hard to destroy the aborigine’s social fabric by introducing Christianity to them, challenging the spiritual authority of Taiwanese female shamans and chastising idol worshipers, for instance. Besides interfering with their original belief system, the Dutch also changed Taiwanese horticulture and established tax collection. In 1661 the Chinese took over Taiwan and started ruling over the island, putting even more pressure on the native Taiwanese to sell deerskins. By the mid-1700s the aboriginal culture had been severely damaged. The Chinese had overhunted the deer population and inflicted much destruction on their habitat. In less than two hundred years the vast deer herds of the early seventeenth century had been totally wiped out and the indigenous peoples of Taiwan that had not assimilated Chinese culture had to move out of their original environment upwards to the mountains.
The sable, the beaver, and the deer may have seemed unlikely actors in the development of trade in the early modern age, but as new links around the world were established and a global economy emerged, these animals became important components of the world’s economic and geographic expansion. The fur and skin trade, which centered, in large part, on these three animals, became a mechanism by which Europeans and Asians advanced into and settled new frontiers. Much like other natural resources exploited during the early modern age, these animals played a very important role in the expansion of territory and global trade. Unfortunately, they were the epicenter of much destruction of native populations and natural habitats.
--
Neda Bezerra
Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory
Historical Resources Management
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID.
All the regions presented by John F. Richards in his book The Unending Frontier (2005) share several similar trends in their environmental history. However, the hunt for and trade of fur and skin in Siberia, Eastern North America, and Taiwan during the early modern age share some startling similarities. By the 1500s these three regions remained open to exploration, conquest, and exploitation. They retained a very rich fauna and flora, which, during the next three hundred years, were intensively exploited by private and public undertakings.
In the late sixteenth century the Russian state along with private groups of fur trappers and traders started to explore Siberia. The Russian killing power was much superior to what the native Siberians could endure. Once conquered the natives had to obey the tsar’s authority and deliver a specified number of furs and pelts as payment of annual taxes established by the Russian state. The further the Russians went, the more they conquered and submitted the natives to their ruling power. The lure of more and more furs, especially sable’s, pushed the Russian frontiersmen eastward with their banner of conquest and domination. The native Siberians slowly but surely had to swear oath to the Russian authority. Effective resistance to the Russians was impossible since the native groups lacked centralizing state structures and organization power. Had the indigenous peoples of Siberia been more and better organized, perhaps it would have taken longer for them to be conquered. These native populations were also weakened by diseases that were foreign to them, such as smallpox, measles, and venereal diseases. Besides the epidemics, the natives were hit hard by alcoholism, which contributed to the breaking of their social fabric. Also, Russian brutality took a hard too on them. The Russian expansion over Siberia, besides bringing about the depletion of the sable population and other furbearers, destroyed the Siberian communities, turning the natives that had not been killed by the epidemics, very dependent on the Russian settlers.
Unfortunately, a similar story of conquest is that of Eastern North America. As Richards (2005, 463) explains, “Much of the early impetus for maritime travel to North America came from the profits to be made from hunting, killing, processing, and shipping animal skins back to Europe.” The North American beaver, much like the sable in Siberia, became the most valuable furbearer of the New World and for three hundred years demand for beaver hats in Europe propelled the hunting of this most industrious rodent, known for helping shape the landscape of North America through its constructions of dams.
Despite the fact that the French, the British, and the Dutch in North America were not as brutal to the natives as the Russians were in Siberia and did not demand any tax payment from them, the fur trade enterprise of North America shared several common trends with the settlement of Siberia, brought forward by the hunt for fur in that region. First, similar to the sable’s fate in Siberia, the demands established by the fur trade in North America depleted the beaver population to near extinction in the North, which had a profound impact on the landscape. It also depleted the deer herds in the South. Second, the contagious diseases brought to the New World by the Europeans killed thousands of indigenous people and weakened many more. The introduction of tobacco and alcohol also helped to weaken and demoralize Indian societies, tearing apart their social fabric, in a pattern similar to that found among the native populations of Siberia. Alcohol also caused depression among the Indians, making them even more vulnerable to the European advances. The cultural and social devastation suffered by the North American Indians was nearly identical to that faced by the native Siberians. While the native Siberians developed a need for bread, became addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and relied on firearms introduced by the Russians, the North American Indians developed a need for muskets, balls, powder, kettles, knives, hatches, needles, scissors, pipes, and other goods as well as a taste for tobacco, rum and brandy. The North American fur trade redefined Native American’s relationships with the wildlife, the forest, and their spiritual world. It made them more and more dependent on Europeans and their goods and also less able to resist invasion of their lands. In addition, dissemination of firearms brought much deadliness to the Indian population. Similar to the plight of the native Siberians, the advancing European settlement frontier set the final blow to most Indian groups in North American.
On the other side of the globe, in Asia, set the isolated island of Taiwan, off the China coast, which during the sixteenth century was covered with thick vegetation and was sparsely populated by native Taiwanese descendents of Neolithic Austronesian settlers, who had migrated to the island from China as early as 4,000 B.C.E. After much effort, in 1624 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was able to monopolize the profitable trade in that region and establish Fort Zeelandia in Taiwan in order take control of the native Taiwanese and the island’s resources. Richards (2005, 95) explains that “where strong, confident regimes were in place […] VOC representatives became humble traders content to petition for whatever privileges they could obtain.” This was certainly not the case in Taiwan since the island was so sparsely populated and its native peoples not well organized, much like the Siberians in the Northern hemisphere. Thus, within only twenty years the Dutch were ruling most of Taiwan and running a very intensive business of deerskins, which were exported to Japan in great numbers as well as to other parts of the world. Even though the Taiwanese aborigines felt a heavy impact from the Dutch colonial policies, they were not struck by contagious diseases like the native Siberians and North Americans were, perhaps due to their previous contact to other foreign people. In a pattern similar to that found in Siberia and North America, the new rulers of Taiwan tried very hard to destroy the aborigine’s social fabric by introducing Christianity to them, challenging the spiritual authority of Taiwanese female shamans and chastising idol worshipers, for instance. Besides interfering with their original belief system, the Dutch also changed Taiwanese horticulture and established tax collection. In 1661 the Chinese took over Taiwan and started ruling over the island, putting even more pressure on the native Taiwanese to sell deerskins. By the mid-1700s the aboriginal culture had been severely damaged. The Chinese had overhunted the deer population and inflicted much destruction on their habitat. In less than two hundred years the vast deer herds of the early seventeenth century had been totally wiped out and the indigenous peoples of Taiwan that had not assimilated Chinese culture had to move out of their original environment upwards to the mountains.
The sable, the beaver, and the deer may have seemed unlikely actors in the development of trade in the early modern age, but as new links around the world were established and a global economy emerged, these animals became important components of the world’s economic and geographic expansion. The fur and skin trade, which centered, in large part, on these three animals, became a mechanism by which Europeans and Asians advanced into and settled new frontiers. Much like other natural resources exploited during the early modern age, these animals played a very important role in the expansion of territory and global trade. Unfortunately, they were the epicenter of much destruction of native populations and natural habitats.
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Neda Bezerra
Geographically-Integrated History Laboratory
Historical Resources Management
Idaho State University
Pocatello, ID.
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