Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- DYNAMICS OF CHANGE
- THE EUROPEAN INVASION
- 5 Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon
- 6 The Depletion of India's Forests under British Imperialism: Planters, Foresters, and Peasants in Assam and Kerala
- 7 Toward an Archaeology of Colonialism: Elements in the Ecological Transformation of the Ivory Coast
- CONSERVING NATURE – PAST AND PRESENT
- CONCLUSION
- Appendix: Doing Environmental History
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
5 - Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- DYNAMICS OF CHANGE
- THE EUROPEAN INVASION
- 5 Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon
- 6 The Depletion of India's Forests under British Imperialism: Planters, Foresters, and Peasants in Assam and Kerala
- 7 Toward an Archaeology of Colonialism: Elements in the Ecological Transformation of the Ivory Coast
- CONSERVING NATURE – PAST AND PRESENT
- CONCLUSION
- Appendix: Doing Environmental History
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
Industrial man may in many respects be considered an aggressive and successful weed strangling other species and even the weaker members of its own.
Stafford Lightman, “The Responsibilities of Intervention in Isolated Societies,” Health and Disease in Tribal SocietiesEuropeans in North America, especially those with an interest in gardening and botany, are often stricken with fits of homesickness at the sight of certain plants which, like themselves, have somehow strayed thousands of miles eastward across the Atlantic. Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian exile, had such an experience on the mountain slopes of Oregon:
Do you recognize that clover?
Dandelions, Vor du pauvre?
(Europe, nonetheless, is over.)A century earlier the success of European weeds in America inspired Charles Darwin to goad the American botanist Asa Gray: “Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds.”
The common dandelion, l'or du pauvre, despite its ubiquity and its bright yellow flower, is not at all the most visible of the Old World immigrants in North America. Vladimir Nabokov was a prime example of the most visible kind: the Homo sapiens of European origin. Europeans and their descenidants, who comprise the majority of human beings in North America and in a number of other lands outside of Europe, are the most spectacularly successful overseas migrants of all time.
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- The Ends of the EarthPerspectives on Modern Environmental History, pp. 103 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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