Example of a test question:

• Why was the experience of European colonization so different in Africa (including temperate South Africa) than in North or South America, Australia, or New Zealand (please pick only one as your example).

• disease made it possible for Europeans to displace native people where they had no resistance to those diseases
• Europeans brought their whole ecosystem and transformed the ecosystems of the neoEuropes
• European plants and animals dominated--Why?
• Europeans cultivated plants and changed the environment in ways the native plants weren't used to (the European plants were not inherently better, they were better with European modification of the environment such as plowing and cutting down trees)
• new animals weren't part of the established predator-prey relationship--in many cases the European animals had few predators
• isolated areas have less diverse ecosystems--Europe was a big area where many kinds of plants and animals came together (less diverse ecosystems are more easily disrupted
• the europeans had to learn by experience how to take over an area--displace the native people, create a new ecosytem, how to make money
  
• and others below
  

• 1. the arrival of the people we call indigenous--Amerindians, aborigines (Australia), and Maori (New Zealand)--who opened gaps in the original ecosystem--megafauna went extinct
  
• 2. the arrival of European colonists, who forceably took territory but succeeded because they transformed the ecosystem and bred rapidly
  
• 3. the arrival of huge numbers of immigrants in the 19th century, attracted particularly by the idea of having plenty of food (just before WWI about half the U.S. population was foreign born) combined with rapid urbanization and industrialization (eg. railroad, tractor)
  

• disease is an important part of the story--Crosby sees that as an aspect of ecology
  
• look to show a pattern--where European plants and animals are dominant the people are too
• can this theory explain where they failed as well as where they succeeded?
• New Zealand as as particularly clear case study
  
• weave the point about ecology together with other explanations, such as capitalism
  

• Europeans succeeded in colonization because their plants and animals did
• where they were less ecologically successful their colonies didn't succeed
• ecological change by itself doesn't explain everything but it is a necessary condition
  
• does this still apply to us today?
• Crosby would say this shows us how much we are a part of the ecosystem

• we may find out new facts about the past
• science gives us new ways of explaining something (eg. ecology)
• as our worldview changes we come to different understandings of the past
  

• but are we so separate?
• our cultures are (to varying extents) based on nature
• human beings always modify the environment
• human beings are part of the ecosystem
• different human cultures work in different ecosystems
• there is no "nature" not affected by human beings
  

what over-grazing can do to the land

• Crosby's explanation is that European plants and animals dominated not because they were better but because the environment was disturbed by Europeans (overgrazing, plowing, burning), creating the environment that those plants and animals needed
• It took a while for the Europeans to learn how to succeed--they tried some strategies that didn't work
  
• where they succeeded and where they didn't--they could only modify environments that were somewhat close to their own and where there weren't too many diseases that threatened them
• even with a favorable climate, they did not succeed in areas that were part of the large connected area of Africa and Asia (which were connected to Europe so diseases had already spread)--they only succeeded where ecosystems were isolated
  

• European technology became increasingly important
• European plants and animals were better suited to the environment Europeans created
• Europeans only succeeded when the climate was somewhat similar
• Eurpeans were lucky to find ecosystems with holes in them and were able to use those
• domestication of animals gave Europeans an advantage
• Europeans couldn't have displaced the native people without the effect of diseases
• traveling across the seas--spurred technology, attitude that radical new things were possible