Class 3:
The power of nature
Christos Zografos, PhD
Institute of Environmental Science & Technology (ICTA)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
christos.zografos@uab.cat
Power, politics and environmental change
MA Environmental Humanities 2012-13
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Introduction
•Purpose: nature (geography) can also determine the course of environmental change
•
•Why important to know?
–Another explanation (i.e. beyond social factors) of what is the driving force behind environmental
change brought by humans
•
1

Class outline
•Watch video: ‘Guns, germs, and steel’
–By Prof Jared Diamond
•While watching, think/ make notes:
–What is the question JD tries to answer?
–What is the answer he gives?
•Have a discussion – based on questions (concerning Diamond’s explanation)
2

GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
EPISODE TWO: ‘CONQUEST’
•http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6846344734969027300
3

THE QUESTION
•“What explains unequal distribution of wealth and power among societies around world?” - “Yali’s
question” (min 4.40-7.00)
•
4

THE ANSWER
•“Distribution of wealth and power among societies around the world has been powerfully shaped by
bio-geographic factors” (they explain unequal distribution)
•
5

A note: JD and ecological change
•Why are we interested in this?
•This documentary seems to be a story about colonialism
•But it is also an explanation of ‘why’ (driving forces) behind the types of environments or
ecologies produced by colonialism
–i.e. explanation of reasons why of environmental change in colonies
•i.e. ecologies hostile to its ‘previous’ inhabitants: disease (germs; yellow fever vectors) and
pollution (Potosi)
6

The argument (McNeill, 2001)
•Proximate causes of success in history: guns, germs, and steel
•
•But behind them lay the ultimate causes of success: a favourable environmental endowment
[geography]
•
7

Ultimate causes (McNeill, 2001)
•Environmental endowment (baggage/ rucksack) sharply favoured some societies (continents) over
others
–Highly probable that lucky ones would in time prevail over unlucky
–
•Great advantages: parts of world fortunate to
–have many domesticable plants and animals
–located so as to favour the migration and diffusion of domesticated plants and animals (the E-W
nexus of knowledge/ technology diffusion)
–
•These parts of world:
–developed useful things farming, metallurgy, writing, states, etc. earlier than other societies
–earlier exposure to "crowd diseases," and so earned wider immunities to lethal infections earlier
•
8

But the explanation leaves things out
• Geographical determinism
–Given the importance of ‘initial natural endowments’
–Eurasian dominance was inevitable, or at least very likely
–i.e. initial endowments strongly determine the result of the encounter between Europeans and
America (its peoples and ecologies)
•What about other factors (‘silenced’ by author)?
–The importance of local ecologies?
–The importance of socio-political factors?
9

Local ecologies: yellow fever (YF)
•Introduced to America via mosquitoes brought from Africa with slave trade (16th-17th century)
–Humid & crowded conditions of ‘crossing’: help mosquito survive
–E.g. water barrels to incubate
10
A tobacco plantation (source: Public Broadcasting Service)

Differential immunity
•Mosquitoes and diseases wreck havoc but not indiscriminately: differential immunity (YF)
–If brought up as child in places where yellow fever common (endemic) then have some resistance and
less likely to fall ill or die when adult
–
•But if virus finds many organisms without anti-bodies becomes epidemic!
–Attacks those without immunity (to find hosts)
11

Military implications
•So, if all of a sudden you bring (e.g. in America) many non-immune bodies (e.g. people who have
grown up in places where there is no YF), virus (latent-sleeping) finds space (human body) to
expand -> epidemic
•
–Such non-immune bodies: European soldiers (from Europe)
–Instead: African slaves + locally-born colonists/recruits + ‘seasoned’ troops: no space for
epidemic
•
12

Knowledge by observation – not science
•Colonial officials and aspiring attackers knew from observation (empirical knowledge) that this
happened
–Although did not know exactly ‘why’: the ‘Climate’
•Also knew that rains increased deaths
–More water for mosquitoes to reproduce
•…and that number of deaths would increase exponentially after 6-8 weeks
–Happily coincided with fortification durability!
•So, prepared themselves for a 6-8 week defence before letting YF “take its toll”
–Fortification and provisions + Soldiers
13

•YF: crucial part of Spanish imperial defence
–Without it Spain would have lost much of her American empire in 18th century
–Same but vice versa for success of independence wars in 19th century Americas (e.g. southern parts
of US)
•Until 1770s, mosquitoes underpinned geopolitical order in Americas – after that they undermined
it!
14
Political importance of differential immunity

Local ecological conditions
•Ecological conditions that prevailed in colonies (note difference to Diamond) governed
probabilities of success or failure of colonial project
–Mosquitoes
–Plantation ecologies and swamps: mosquito incubator & habitat sites
•Lowly mosquitoes and mindless viruses can shape human international affairs
–Blow to our species, but true!
•Who has the power? Military-advanced, and epidemiologically immune Europeans (Spaniards) or
mosquitoes in the colonies?
•
15

Other socio-political factors made invisible
•Eurocentrist
–Blaut: examples of North-South diffusion of crops in Western Hemisphere, e.g. cultivation of maize
in Peru -> adoption in North America
•Political factors: important
–Importance of politics: Ottoman closure of lucrative trading routes to Orient -> traders: look for
other trade routes
–Trade and importance of culture: individualism, capitalism, rationalism, etc.
•Technological-military superiority
–European dominance and colonial success not always based on clear technological superiority in
armaments, nor the spread of disease (e.g. Brits in India dependent on local military force +
divide-and-rule policy)
16

Conclusion
•Geography or environment can be powerful explanations of where sources of power lie
•However, too much emphasis on them may hide from view or even silence the role (capacity) of other
human and non-human actors in shaping history and ecology
•Always question yourselves: whose actors’ voices are silenced in an explanation?
–And, how do these influence the course of history and/or environmental change?
17