Postcolonialism and Ecology

Abstract

Colonialism and ecological disruption and exploitation have a long, joint history. With regard to the Americas, historian Alfred Crosby famously highlighted what he termed the “Columbian exchange”: the massive importation of European and other pathogens, flora, and fauna since 1492 and the severe repercussions especially for New World ecosystems. Crosby argues that the exploitation of the colonies by Europeans “depended on their ability to ‘Europeanize’ the flora and fauna of the New World” in order to control and manage the unknown landscape (2003, 64). Even though Crosby concedes that the colonization of the Americas by Spaniards, Portuguese, and others in the wake of 1492 resulted in reciprocal influences between all the ecosystems of the Atlantic world, it was in the Americas that the changes resulted in what he came to call “ecological imperialism.”