ESSAY 2

I

I

An Environmental History of the World Humankind's changing role in the community of life

Second edition <... ..

J. Donald Hughes

I~ ~~~J~!~~:up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First edition published 2001 Second edition published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXl 4 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2009 J. Donald Hughes

Typeset in ITC Galliard by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ·

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hughes, J. Donald (John.son Donald), 1932- An environmental history of the world: humankind's· changing role in the community oflife / J. Donald

Hughes. p. cm. -- (Routledge studies in physical geography and environment)

"Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Human ecology--History. 2. Nature--Effect of human beings on--History. 3. Biotic communities-- History. I. Title.

GF13.H83 2009 304.2 '8--dc22

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-48149-6 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-48150-2 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-88575-8 (ebk)

ISBN 10: 0-415-48149-X (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-415-48150-3 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-88575-9 (ebk)

2008053780

6 The transformation of the biosphere·

During the early modern period, 1 European explorers, traders, conquerors, and settlers spread through most of the rest of the world. They modified ecosystems everywhere by introducing artimals and plants, extracting resources, deforesting many areas, establishing plantations, and subjugating or decimating indigenous populations that had formed their own ways of interrelating with local environments.2

This epoch is sometimes called the "Age of Discovery," because then European explorers sailed across the oceans, charted the coasts and islands, and led expeditions inland on the continents. Their names are familiar - Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan - and there were many others. But discovery was not their only activity, and perhaps not even the most important one. From the moment they dropped anchor beside a new1and, they began to change it. Ecosystems that had emerged in almost complete isola- tion for centuries or millennia, and had evolved unique biotas, suddenly began to suffer the invasion of the animals and plants that the Europeans brought with them, whether deliber- ately or accidentally. Other changes followed soon: fire, hunting, cutting of trees, enslaving and killing of indigenous human beings. It was "a time of dramatic and accelerating change."3

On many newly discovered islands, European sailors left domestic animals that could become feral and fend for themselves, such as goats and pigs. And everywhere ships moored next to a seacpast, rats made their way to land, climbing along ropes or swimming ashore. If they were lucky, and often they were, the animals found plentiful food plants, native animals that had no experience of avoiding them, and a lack of predators, so their numbers increased rapidly and they overwhelmed the local ecosystems, making many species extinct, Plants as well as artimals invaded the new lands: the seeds of aggressive Eurasian weeds arrived hidden in grain and artimal hair and dung.

It was a two-way exchange, although not an even one. Not many animals arrived and multiplied in Europe in the early days, although later there would be trouble with muskrats and American squirrels. But it was otherwise with plants. Tobacco, potato, maize, tomato, and sweet potato are among the domestic plants the Europeans willingly took home and soon were raising and eating ( smoking in the case of tobacco). Meanwhile, European agri cultural technology intruded into the rest of the world, particularly the temperate and sub tropical areas, bringing machines and crops that cleared and replaced indigenous animal and plant life. Plantations of crops in demand in Europe, such as coffee and tea, replaced tht· biodiversity of tropical forests with monoculture.

As the early modern age went on Europeans acquired and improved technologies, includ ing some using new sources of energy such as fossil fuels. Important inventions were made outside Europe, but it was Europeans who initially spread them around the globe. And ii

1.1·,ts in the l 1,11pacts on l 11011, polluti :✓ orth Amer 1H'W industri ,,11l_:h as the r L111d in 186L

The explc direction an 11111gitude. ( I ,copies whc ,·dge about' t,,ok the En jt 1bs away fr

The inve1 ,tpplication, ili,tchines be rnise water l'ftgines wer Scottish en, i;,:ation off lap petrolet 111tcrnal co1 hy Germar immense a1 bt:came inc ,u•ound the water, and

The Ind1 of the end JH'Oducts 01

,~•, !hey gainec ._ ~,stablishm< ,wl plantin

· lhr regular! ,of mechan ... lm~reased t •· agricultura

The Eur /tifthe worl ··· "11-ew raw r

< ' 1old not 01 :' )itls. In ec, ;_ h:ed were '., t,uropean

/(: while appc .. , . \ :variety of 1

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lsphere

querors, and settkrs ,terns everywhere I iv ty areas, establishi11M tat had formed thcil'

European explornN tions inland on tile fombus, Ferdinand · · only activity, and >ped anchor beside ost complete isola )egan to suffer l he , whether delibcr of trees, enslaving and accelerati1114

imals that could :re ships moornl vimming ashore, ,d plants, nativti o their numbcrM species extim:t, Eurasian weedn

als arrived a111! with muskrat~ aaize, tomaw, ,ok home arnl uropean agl'i ·· :rate and suh, 1s animal and replaced tlrn

gies, indud• ; were madij obe. And It

\

The transformation of the biosphere 117

\n\S in the UK and western Europe that the Industrial Revolution began, with its major l!flj)i\Cts on human society and the community of life, including faster transport, urbaniza- tion, pollution, and scarring of the landscape. It then spread to other parts of Europe, North America, and Japan, and its effects were felt almost everywhere. Associated with the !it'W industries were new forms of air and water pollution. Incidents of sickness and death, •l!ilh as the release oftoxic waste from the Millier-Pack aniline dye factory in Basel, Switzer- 1,ind in 1864, led to anti-pollution legislation in several European states.4

The explorers had benefited from the compass and sextant, which enabled them to find ,Urcction and latitude. By the 1760s they had a ship's clock qependable enough to measure kmp;it:ude. Guns, gunpowder, and the cannon gave them a' military advantage over many Uftiples who did not yet have them. The printing press allowed the dissemination ofknowl- 111.ll/iC about the discoveries. Not all Europeans were happy about technology. Soon after she wok the English throne, Queen Elizabeth I decided that a new knitting machine might take l• ,tis away from laborers, and denied it a patent. 5

The inventions that did the most to shape the modern age were those that allowed the ,.;pplication of new sources of power, especially fossil fuels, to the production process. These ilHHJhines became the instruments of the Industrial Revolution. Windmills turned pumps to 1r1i!ie water from the fields. Later pumps were powered by coal. Although crude steam ~'Pijincs were devised around 1700, it was a series of improvements made by James Watt, a ¼r,;(Jttish engineer, in the latter third of the eighteenth century that enabled the mechan- Untfon of factories and eventually of transportation and agriculture. The first oil well to HP petroleum from within rock strata was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. The fir.st practical

: •Hl<.1l'l1al combustion engine using gasoline, a derivative of the new fuel, was patented lw German inventor Nikolaus Augustus Otto in 1876. With the manipulation of Hnmense amounts of energy made possible by technology, the human use of resources h!Jc,une increasingly exploitative, with an accelerating impact of change on ecosystems

· i1n>und the globe. Industrial processes generated increasing levels of pollution of the air, ~\';Jter, and land.

The Industrial Revolution transformed agriculture in this period, marking the beginning the end for traditional methods of farming in western Europe and North America. The

·IWOducts of agriculture, food and fiber, were no less important than in earlier times. In fact, Hwy gained additional consequence because greater numbers of workers in the industrial ,;1,1nblishments needed to be fed and clothed. New crop regimes in Europe, using fertilizers

ufl.d planting nitrogen-fixing species such as clover in alternate years, did away with the need f nr regularly leaving the land fallow. Potatoes and turnips gave high~r yields.· The principles pf mechanization were applied to agriculture as seed drills, harvesters, and other devices

.. i\f1,weased the area that a single worker could cultivate, while the efficiency of ever-larger ilJAYkultural businesses forced out small landholders.

fhe European economy came to include and in many ways to dominate most of the rest ' f;I the world, so that the world market economy came into existence. In this period, Europe , ihllW raw materials from the rest of the world and produced manufactured goods that were ,;lid not only at home, but also back to the countries that were the source of the raw mate- ihih. In ecological terms, this meant that Europe and other areas that came to be industrial- ' ,.cJ were using and degrading the material and energy capital of ecosystems abroad. i 111•opean economic thinkers such as Adam Smith were convinced that the free market, wit He appearing chaotic and exploitive, is actually guided to produce the right amount and Ut'itlty of goods by an "invisible hand," that is, it was the order of nature and ought not to

.· hindered by regulation: the so-called laissezfaire doctrine. His book, The Wealth of

118 The transformation of the biosphere

Nations, expounds that while human motives are ultimately out of self0 interest, the net effect in the free market would tend to benefit society as a whole. 6 Karl Marx and other socialist theoreticians pointed out that this capitalist system. disregards the needs of the working class, and advocated an interim system in which governments operating in the interests of workers and peasants would own the means of production. Although Marx and Engels mentioned the basic importance of nature,7 many Marxists emphasized the social relationships within the economy and neglected questions such as ecological relationships and the sustainability of natural resources.

During the eighteenth century, tlie human population of the Earth began an exponential increase that has continued to the present day. This was achieved by diverting an ever-larger percentage of the energy cycles of the biosphere into food production for humans. The mechanization of agriculture, the discovery of new sources of fertilizer such as guano and the manufacture of artificial fertilizers, and the construction of large irrigation systems con• tributed to this irruption of human population. Directly or indirectly, humans accelerated a process of replacing the numbers and variety of other forms of life with the sheer numbers of one species - their own - along with domestic animals and plants.

One important reason for the expansion was the spread of New World food plants such as potatoes and maize. Between 1700 and 1900, Europe's population (including Russia) more than tripled, from 122 million to 421 million, in spite of the emigration of some 40 million to the Americas and elsewhere.8 China's people trebled in number, from 150 to 436 million, and India's almost doubled, to 290 million, ,in the same period. Sub-Saharan Afri- ca's gain was also almost double -from 61 million to llO million -in spite of the toll taken by the slave trade and the fact that the tsetse fly and sleeping sickness prevented the spread of inhabitants and agriculture to large areas. The size of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas is a disputed question, but most historical demographers agree that epidemics killed at least 90 percent of the native population during the sixteenth century.9 By 1700 the New World had recovered to a population of 12 million, including native Americans and those of European and African descent. In 1990 there were 165 million, more than twelve times as many. The trend toward urbanization began in the latter part of this period; in 1800, just over 2 percent of the world's people lived in cities, but by 1900 it was 10 percent. The human portion of the biosphere was increasing, its demands on resources more than proportionally greater, and the other i;nembers of the community oflife taxed to meet those demands.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) lived during this period of growing population, and published his Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798. He observed that the matl1- ematical principle of human reproduction is multiplication, and therefore unrestricted pop- ulation growth will follow an exponential curve. To increase food production, however, depends on the incremental addition of new cultivated lands, which can be expected to follow, at best, a rising line. Even this is problematic, however, because humans usually choose to use the best soils first. The expectation for the future, therefore, is that growing population will inevitably outrun the ability of agricultural production to feed it. There have been localized famines in areas where food production c_ould not keep pace with population growth, as occurred in Ireland in the 1840s, but technology, improved crops, fertilizers, and resultant increased yields postponed a worldwide Malthusian crisis beyond the end of this period.

Environmental thought in the early modern period began with observations by natural ists and scientists that human actions, particularly those of colonialists, were making rapid changes around the world, many of them damaging to nature and threatening to continu-

, 1terest, the net ,iarx and other e needs of thr ,erating in the ugh Marx and zed the social 1 relationships

1 exponential n ever-largn 1umans. The , guano and ystems coll ccelerated .1 er numbcrH

)lants such ag Russia) fsome 40 50 to 43(1 aran Afri toll taken

The transformation of the biosphere 119

111g subsistence. These pioneer thinkers suggested programs of conservation, forest reserves, .111d restoration of deteriorated landscapes. They faced apathy and opposition from others 11 ho believed that humans could not damage nature or, if they could, it was justifiable in t,.·rms of economic improvement. In the mid-nineteenth century, Darwin, Haeckel, and 111 her scientists discovered the importance of the interaction among species and their envi- iollments in evolution, and began to conceptualize a science of ecology. 10 This was an npression of the modern rebirth of natural science. Thephysical sciences, in a partnership with technology, provided the means for greater impacts of l;(umans on the rest of the 11.11ural world. The biological sciences began to supply the knowledge of how living things li111ction and interrelate, and thus to lay the groundwork for the study of ecology.

Microscopes were made from around 1590, but it remained for Anthony van Leeuwen- hoek to discover "little animals" in rainwater in 1675, and then to describe spermatozoa, n-.1st cells, and bacteria. 11 A vast realm of microbes, a major segment of the biosphere, had been revealed. In the course of the seventeenth century several important instruments for quantifying observations of the environment were invented, including the barometer, the thermometer, and the pendulum clock.

The founder of systematic biological taxonomy was Carolus Linnaeus of Sweden, who y,.,vc names to the genus and species of every animal and plarit known to him. Without such Hll orderly method, the study of ecosystems would be impossible. Interestingly, his father, Nils, had created the family name after the linden tree; like most rural Swedes of his day, 11111il then he had no last name.

Evidence that stimulated environmental ideas was gathered not only in Europe, but in 'temote corners of the globe where colonizing powers sent physicians, learned naturalists,

i\Hlll burgeoning scientists, as Richard Grove has noted. 12 Oceanic islands were particularly s°\·h1iportant in calling their attention to the relationships between deforestation, extinctions,

.. · desiccating climate, shortages of essential resources, disease, and famine. Islands were micro- {''OMns where these processes could be seen more clearly: due to their small size, limits were \rt:11ched more quickly and an observer could see changes in the landscape during visits over 'tile course of a few years or decades. The image of a lost Eden suggested itself to a number

f European savants, and they gave advice on how to halt or reverse the course of destruc- Hl. Botanical gardens were established in tropical colonies, and their staffs included keen .10lars who ventured beyond identifying and collecting plants to develop theories of envi- nmental change. Since professional scientists served as advisors or even governors, their tas were sometimes given practical trials. One of the more telling arguments of the early scientists was that it was in the interest of ilonial governments to prevent the degradation of the environment in the territories they · Jit:rolled. "The state," as the economist Richard Cantillon had proposed, is "a tree with

mots in the land." 13 If the colonies were deforested, they could no longer supply timber. lfbrested lands suffer erosion and decreased rainfall, so that both soil and water for food

iuction and other crops will decline. Faced with poverty and famine, colonial peoples become rebellious. Pierre Poivre, a French officer in Mauritius, called the treatment of island by heedless colonists "sacrilegious," and said that deforestation had placed the ,din servitude." 14 Thomas Jefferson was attracted to many of Poivre's ideas. ''eorge Perkins Marsh, United States ambassador to Italy, observed in the Mediterranean

and elsewhere "the character and extent of the changes produced by human action in 1ysical condition of the globe we inhabit," and warned in his book Man and Nature, 1ed in 1864, that "the result of man's ignorant disregard of the laws of nature was

.ioration of the land." 15 Differing from the prevailing economic optimism of the times,

120 The transformation of the biosphere

he saw "man" as the disturber of nature's harmonies. Man and Nature begins with an analysis of the environmental degradation of the Roman Empire and its causes. He certainly knew that the economy of the Roman Empire was organized primarily to benefit the upper strata of society, and that the balance of humankind's economy with nature's harmonies that he thought beneficial could be achieved only by considering the needs of every social stratum. He portrayed the ordinary people of the Roman Empire as forced to "struggle at once against crushing oppression and the destructive forces of inorganic nature," 16 and judged that the fact that they had to strug~e against both those opponents at once had resulted in defeat and the devastation of the natural environment.

Alexander von Humboldt had traveled to the Americas and studied the relationship of the distribution of plants to various environmental conditions. He noted that an increase in elevation is associated with a decrease in temperature. This was an initial step toward the idea that associations of animals and plants are found in zones of elevation in mountainous terrain, a concept formulated by Pyotr Petrovich Semenov-Tian-Shanskii on the basis of explorations in the Tian Shan mountains of central Asia in 1856-7. 17 C. Hart Merriam made similar studies in the San Francisco Peaks of Arizona, and published a description of "life zones" based on temperature in 1890, a step toward the concept of ecosystems. 18 Charles Darwin's contributions in this regard are discussed in a following section of this chapter.

Tenochtitlan: the European biotic invasion

The city remained faithful to Tlaloc, the four-eyed- god of rain. The colors of the for- ested mountains still dominated it, untouched. The ·swamp cypresses of Xochirnilco competed for dominion over the valley with the ahuehuetes- the old men of the water, hung with Spanish moss - the cedars, and the bright-branched ash trees. Masses of verdure grew to the shores of the lake in which the cypresses had taken root beneath the water to anchor a vegetable city of small floating gardens called chinampas. As a consequence of this profuse vegetation, the rains came with a clocklike regularity. 19

So Fernando Benitez describes the environment of Tenochtitlan as he imagines it on the day, August 13, 1521, when it finally fell to Hernan Cortez and his Spanish soldiers. Much of the Aztec capital still lies beneath Mexico City, which was built on its ruins at Cortez's order by the labor of the people the Spaniards called "Indios." Across a street north of the Spanish cathedral are the remains of the Templo Mayor, the pyramid that once elevated the twin temples of Huitzilopochtli, god of war, and Tlaloc, god of rain.20 The National Museum of Anthropology contains sculptures reclaimed from beneath the streets, including the Piedra del Sol, the circular dial bearing the face of Tonatiuh, the Sun, surrounded by glyphs of the twenty days of the Aztec month. The past, they believed, consisted of four epochs, each of which ended in a disaster: wild animals, wind, fire, and flood. They expected the era in which they were living, the Fifth Sun, to end by earthquake, but in fact their world was deeply altered, and in many ways destroyed, by what came aboard Spanish ships.

The Aztec Empire spanned a variegated land, from tropical rainforests near the Gulf coast, past towering volcanoes to the Valley of Mexico, containing lakes with no outlet to either ocean. 21 Tenochtitlan occupied islands in Lake Texcoco. The Aztecs also controlled country westward to the Pacific, much of it covered with forests of pine and oak. The topog- raphy is dominated by complex mountain ranges, dissected by many valleys. With countless microclimates - wet and dry, low and high, hot and cool - Mexico had a vast number of local ecosystems.

WI·

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ofM were Imm 1.toni l11uu but 1 tfocr near l11kci

{ature begins with an its causes. He certainly ly to benefit the upper .th nature's harmonies e needs of every social forced to "struggle a1

)fganic nature," 16 and 1pponents at once had

l the relationship of the :ed that an increase in ial step toward the idea 'ation in mountainous 1anskii on the basis of C. Hart Merriam made :i a description of "life f ecosystems. 18 Charks :tion of this chapter.

The colors of the for ypresses of Xochimikc 1 e old men of the water, :d ash trees. Masses of' 1ad taken root beneat 11 called chinampas. As a ,ocklike regularity. 19

; he imagines it on tlw Spanish soldiers. Mud\ on its ruins at Cortez'ij >ss a street north of rho . l that once elevated th!l ,f rain. 20 The National th the streets, includin!-1, he Sun, surrounded by eved, consisted of four ,d flood. They expech·tf :, but in fact their worl rd Spanish ships. nforests near the Gu lakes with no outlet t , Aztecs also controllc 1e and oak. The topc valleys. With count! ; had a vast numbc1• t

! __ i

The transformation of the biosphere 121

When Europeans arrived in Mexico, they were amazed that the forms of life there were , l1ilcrent from the ones they knew. Few Mexican species were initially familiar to Europeans; ; I 1cv had never seen hummingbirds, for example, and thought toucans fantastic. They used 1.1111iliar names for unfamiliar forms, or borrowed names from the languages of the New World. They called the puma !eon, the jaguar tigre, and the wild canine coyote, from coyotl, 11 •, name in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. The difference,/was not caused simply by climate: ,11,· fact that the Americas had been nearly isolated from the Old World for thousands or 111dlions of years meant that species had evolved separately. Mexico had an unusually large , .11 iety of native animals and plants, considering the size of the country. 22 These species were , "rnponents of unique and fragile ecosystems, many of which were endangered by the , ,w;laught of Eurasian organisms. Mexico is rich in amphibians and reptiles. The rattlesnake, ,1 ,,.1ered symbol for Mesoamerican civilizations, does not occur in the eastern hemisphere. I '11: vegetation was as unusual as the animal life. Mexico had 900 cacti, comprising 55 p\'rccnt of all cactus species in' the world. Among remarkable trees was the ahuehuete ( tule , vprcss ), the national tree of Mexico. It is fairly widespread in moist highland locales. The niost famous specimen, near Oaxaca, measures 40.5 m (135 ft) in height, 41.7 m (139 ft) ,11 circumference, and is over 2,000 years old.23 The OyameHir, in groves at high elevation, ½!'l'VCs as a wintering place for hundreds of millions of monan;h butterflies.24 Growing wild ,n I he pine forest were ancestral forms of garden flowers including dahlia and zinnia.25 The n1Migold was domesticated and used in quantities in Aztec fiestas.

11 eirs of venerable civilizations that preceded them, the Aztecs inhabited a landscape that \\\w already transformed. At the time of the conquest they were an urban and agricultural p1•11ple. They practiced intensive farming, utilizing irrigation and terracing. Fertile valleys

, wa~: covered by mosaics of productive farmland. In the lacustrine environment of the Valley ul M.exico, they created richly productive chinampas, the famous "floating" gardens. These \'\'l'H~ platforms erected in shallow lakes, filled with mud and vegetable matter, fertilized by hi!tnan excreta, and planted with food plants. Aztec agriculture utilized a wealth of native

>tkm1csticated plants, including maize, beans, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, chile, chia (a sage), · 1rnzontle ( Chenopodium), amaranth, and squashes.26 They had no large domestic animals,

k,lill: turkeys and dogs provided meat, as did wild animals such_ as ducks from the lakes and rl.tcr. The use of wood as fuel and construction material had led to the deforestation of j\tiu·by mountainsides, exposing them to erosion that took soil and deposited it as silt in the }~krs. Population was increasing rapidly; indeed, it may have been about to overshoot the · ing capacity of the land. An Aztec population crash might have occurred in time even

Jrn Spaniards had not arrived. Something similar had happened to the great city ofTeoti- i\.t::dn. "The Spanish conquest took place at a time when the Aztecs were using all available

urces, when the population of the Valley was larger than it had ever been, and before 1\dvent of any spontaneous calamities such as those presumed to account for the down- of Teotihuacan six hundred years earlier," says Charles Gibson. 27 That center, whose

,Uij were well known to the Aztecs, had expanded its population and deforested the sur- ding area so that springs dried up, depleting the water supply. Eventually the city was doned. '•ed W. Crosby, Jr., in his influential book, The Columbian Exchange, pointed out the

tmance of the fact that when Europeans came to the Americas, they did not come alone, brought a number of other species in their ships: domestic animals and plants on which had depended in their homelands.28 Also, inadvertently, they brought along stowaways they might have preferred to leave behind: rats, mice, aggressive weeds, and, most dis-

ously of all, the microbes that cause smallpox and other virulent diseases. Crosby called

122 'J'he wa-1.isjonnat'ion of the biosphere

this assenililage.ofiorganisms from Europe (and some from Africa and Asia), a "portman teau bfota;"~I! a·sailors' ttunk, as it were, packed with animals and plants that would flourish in the new envkomnent; crowding out many other species. These organisms, like the Euro peans .themselves·, \YOuld do best on long-isolated continents and islands where climate and other conditions were most like Europe: Australia and New Zealand, Argentina and Uruguay, anq, much of North America, for example. Crosby applied the term "Neo Europes" 3~ to such places. They were '1ands of the demographic takeover," 31 where Euro pean populations shouldered aside the native inhabitants, in part because Eurasian crops and herds could replace native crops, and because native peoples were decimated by epi demics of Old World diseases.

Mexico was only in part a "Neo-Europe." The central plateau, including the relatively cool Valley of Mexico, came close to matching the climate of Spain. The Spaniards remarked on the resemblance, and named the province "Nueva Espana." But Mexico never became a "land of the demographic takeover." The Spaniards did not overwhelm the Indian popula tion in numeric terms. Rather, from Indians who came to share the language and other aspects of Spanish culture, the Mestizos arose to become the dominant ethnic group in post-colonial Mexico. Mexicans today are proud of the heritage of this "cosmic race," and emphasize its Indian component. Mexico City has a statue to Cuauhtemoc, a leader of th(· Aztec resistance to the Spaniards, in a busy intersection. It has none honoring Hernan Cortez. It is impossible to deny, however, the wide-reaching transformation of the Mexican landscape by the European "portmanteau biota."

But the crucial introduction was undoubtedly smallpox. Cortez ordered an Aztec family to care for an African sick with the disease. His hosts caught it and it began to spread. Before it went far, the Aztecs rose against the outnumbered Spaniards, who were forced to flee tlw city. Cortez built his military strength with reinforcements, Indian allies, and ships taken overland in pieces to the lake and assembled. Meanwhile, "the great rash" raged through Tenochtitlan. "The pustules that covered people caused great desolation; very many people died of them, and many starved to death ... no one took care of others any longer," an Aztec witness recorded. 32 Among those who died was Cuitlahuac, an able leader who had succeeded the discredited Moctezuma. If the epidemic had not weakened the defenders so . grievously, the Aztecs might have been able ~'o repel Cortez.

The depredations of disease did not end with the conquest. Smallpox returned and in its wake came measles, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, typhus, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, cholera, scarlet fever, malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, influenza, and pneumonia.'''' All were virgin soil epidemics, that is, the populations through which they spread lacked experience of them and had acquired no immunity. Demographers estimate that of the total native population of Mexico, at least 90 percent died within the century after 1519. It w:u a disaster for the Spaniards as well. They had some hereditary immunity, did not catch the diseases as easily as the Indians, and their mortality rates were lower. But Spaniards in colo, nial New Spain depended on Indians to do all the work: in the fields, to plant and harvest the crops both peoples needed to survive; and in the mines, to bring out the ore and to smelt it so the masters could acquire wealth and buy Spanish goods.

The domestic animals brought by the Spaniards flourished in the new environmenl', There was plenty to eat. First to multiply and spread were pigs. It was bad enough when Spanish pigs rooted in Indian gardens; they loved maize and Indians lacked fences stron1;t enough to keep them o:ut. But pigs escaped and became feral. The oak forests, with plenth ful acorns, were just the environment pigs loved. They devoured every reptile and mammal smaller than themselves, along with ground-nesting birds. Losing their plumpness, they

i Asia), a "portm,111 , that would flouri11h tisms, like the E111w s where climate ,11uf 1.d, Argentina ,1m ·i the term "N<'oi er,"31 where E11rw tse Eurasian rn 'I :iecimated by rpi

\ing the relatil'c aniards remarkt ) never beca111e e Indian pop1d \Uage and 01 Ii ~thnic group

1 Aztec fai11i pread. lkl! :ed to flee I i ships t.ik ged thro11

The transformation of the biosphere 123·

,, ,,·rted to a form like that of the ancestral European wild boar, since predators in the t, k,ican wilds took the smaller and weaker ones.

\/ ext came cattle: by the 1540s there were so many .that the price of beef plummeted. \,,11111io de Mendoza, the first viceroy, tried, and failed, to keep cattle ranching within

Spanish cattlemen formed an association (mesta) that pressed for ever larger , "1, hes; with the low price of meat and hides, only the biggest operations were profitable.

,,111ish custom declared the open range a commons, and allowed gra:ring_in fallow fields. h11 the cattle hardly needed encouragement, since the vegetative cover of the land was in

·., client condition. They went wild, too. Spanish cattle were tough arid armed with formi- lsi ii ,le long horns. They got into Indian maize fields and forced the abandonment of vil-

L,µ,,·s. Observed Mendoza, "If cattle are allowed, the Indians will be destroyed." 35 The \.,J,·ine population exploded when the herds reached the northern grasslands. "The sudden Jrn1 lriplication of cattle is one of the_ most astonishing biological phenomena observable in )lw New World." 36 Travelers described herds covering the land as far as the eye could see. lHravitably the cattle increased to the point where they consumed the range. After 1565,

lcmen noticed that the herds were no longer expanding so fast. They blamed it on a \Hilllber of things: rustlers were attacking the herds, wild dogs took many calves, and the \;11!1:tdic Chichimecas, who had acquired horses and a taste for beef, swooped in from the

11unh with bows and arrows. But Martin Enrfquez, writing in 1574, put ,his finger on Hw 1mderlying reason: "Cattle are no longer increasing rapidly; previously, a cow would '1•op her first calf in two years, for the land was virgin and there were many fertile pastures.

n\V a cow does not calve before three or four years." 37 The nutritious grasses had been JUI, and the range was taken over by l.ess palatable brush. After 1586 cattle starved by the H1trnands. This cycle, the explosion of the numbers of grazing aninlals in a new environ- Wm, the destruction of the range, and a crash from high to low numbers, is called an ungulate irruption." The initial boom and bust was followed by smaller ones until balance ,ij ;1chieved between the number of herbivores and the availability of food. The final state • I he vegetation, however, was severely degraded. Horses followed the pattern described for cattle. At first there were few, but tlle Spaniards

· ·· ik them everywhere they could. They multiplied, some escaping a;_ct establishing wild ds. By the turn of the century, visitors observed that horses roaming free in Durango

fC beyond counting. 38 At first the Spaniards tried to keep horses out oflndian hands. But ij proved impossible, since if ranchers wanted Indians to do the work of herding cattle,

t'ft} would have to be Indian vaqueros. By 1580, natives were holding horse races in Tlax- hL ,\V The unsubdued tribes to the nortll soon had horses - they were there for the taking nd used them skillfully for attack, escape, and hunting. Horses exacerbated tlle impact on

;Hisland ecosystems made by cattle. Another equine species that adapted to Mexico was the burro, the Mediterranean donkey. became a ubiquitous beast of burden, and Indians, along with poorer Spaniards, eagerly iiJ,tcd it. It readily took to the wild and multiplied. Burros loved the rough terrain and ti ah appetite for a variety of plants including shrubs that grew in the arid nortllern moun-

111~, where they were abundant by 1550.40 :8heep were even more destructive of the land than cattle, since they nibble tlle grass

·n to its roots, exposing the soil to erosion by rain. Mendoza imported Merino sheep, h;h 'produce superior wool but, unlike other sheep, they stay in a pasture until it is

ifoplQted. Goats, whose destruction of vegetation in the Mediterranean region was prover- J!!i\11 came along with the sheep. The species together are doubly damaging: while sheep rip JH!! the grass, goats browse on bushes and small trees. Spanish sources seldom mention

124 The transformation of the biosphere

Figure 6.1 Statue of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain, now located at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico-City. For a people whose agricnlture depended largely on variable annual rainfall, such a deity was of prime importance. Photograph taken in 1973.

goats, but when they speak of sheep, goats may be read between the lines. Colonial drawings show goats within herds of sheep. Goats became feral and spread into mountainous terrain, but sheep lacked toughness and the ability to elude predators. Even so, with the aid of shepherds they spread across Mexico, and their numbers burgeoned astronomically. Elinor Melville, in her carefully researched book, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico,41 shows how the Spanish sheep-raising enterprise in the Valle <lei Mezquita! transformed a productive mosaic of Indian intensive irrigation agriculture into the mesquite-covered desert that gave it its present name. "By the end of the 1570s the vegetation of the region was reduced in height and density. In some places it had been removed altogether and only bare soil remained. Former agricultural lands were converted to grasslands, and the hills were deforested and grazed by thousands and thousands. of

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•htiep. "42 In the process, the human population that the valley could support declined. Although Indians acquired herds of sheep, the story is foi: the most part one of Spanish 1htep owners disregarding Indian rights.

The Mezquita! is in the semi-arid highlands. In the tropical lowlands around Veracruz, t1Jeording to Andrew Sluyter, "cattle and sheep were pushing at the range's ecological limit l•)1 the end of the sixteenth century," 43 but erosion was not severe. However, the native /1tlpulation did not recover after disease and exploitation had decin1ated it, because the herds, ~e Spanish landowners, and African slaves had taken over thel~d formerly occupied by Indian farms. .. .

Mexico had numerous native rodent species. None of them was as destructive as the rat44

climbed ashore from Spanish ships and dug burrows in the earth, nested in trees, devoured Indian stores of maize, crowded out or killed native species, and multiplied so rnpldly that it was impossible to eradicate. In addition, it carried bubonic plague and rvphus. · Nothing distinguished Spanish and Indian diets from' one another as clearly as preference

IH cereal grains. The Spaniards brought wheat seed and insisted that Indians learn to plant ;1Hd tend the crop. Within fifteen years after the conquest, New Spain was exporting wheat

· lJl the Caribbean Islands. No meal seemed complete to the Spaniards without wheat bread; 1iwy despised maize as an inferior food of natives, peasants, and animals. The Indians saw tJ!i reason to prefer wheat to maize, and even today maize is theintaple. In times of hunger lwrh peoples made exceptions, of course. Other Spanish introductions included barley and

>@f.hcr grains, peaches, pears, oranges, lemons, chick-peas, melons, onions, radishes, and ~~llves. They transformed the agricultural landscape. Grapes were a special problem: wine

• thl~ a standard feature of the Spanish table and was necessary, along with bread, for celebra - ;lion of the Catholic mass. Grapevines would grow in the highlands, but Mexico never tff\1;1\tne a leading wine region. More important in its impact on ecology and economy was hi!~,arcane. Sugar refining became New Spain's biggest industry. Mills. were brought from iht· West Indies and Canaries, and up to 1585 prices for sugar were so high that growers !l!dcrred sugarcane to wheat.45 Indians did not adapt to work in cane fields and refineries, iii) the Spaniards brought in African slaves.

Mixed with crop seed, hiding in animal feed, spreading with dung, and stuck to clothing, F!l!iiC the seeds of weeds from the Old World. Among them were dandelions, nettles, clover, ,;flij tough grasses. Plowing offered them a foothold and overgrazing opened opportunities

weeds, since most of them prefer disturbed soil. Thus Mexican plant communities gained w members, but unfortunately most of them behaved badly. A major task the Spaniards

fqtlired oflndian agricultural laborers was weeding, which consumed months of work time Ftry year.46

Pi'om the beginnings of European exploration, colonization, and trade :in the fifteenth \ftlllll'Y, the organisms they carried with them had a worldwide impact. Mexico offers an f~•Hliple of the way in which their onslaught altered ecosystems and reduced the abundance ,f' ,w.:ive species or made them extinct. Eurasian species were not the only ones moved from ,i,1rc to place. Organisms both benign and troublesome were carried from Africa and Asia

i1, 1 ,ther lands with similar climates aboard European ships that stopped at ports en route to Hw New World. For example, Spanish ships brought the banana, originally a south Asian t'!,1111, from the Canaries to the West Indies in 1516, and soon afterward to Mexico. Banana 1+mrntions replaced thousands of hectares of rainforest, and the conditions oflabor on the · Jflnttions often amounted to debt slavery. Aedes aegypti, the African mosquito that is the

of yellow fever, proved more than troublesome.

126 The transformation of the biosphere

The result of wholesale introductions of species is homogenization of ecosystems. Like other formerly isolated lands, _Mexico had biodiversity adapted to unique combinations of soils and climates over uncounted years of evolution, but the organisms brought on Spanish ships, and the social and agricultural arrangements the Spaniards imposed, gave rise to unstable situations favoring opportunistic organisms. The human species in this case proved to be, to use the phrase coined by George Perkins Marsh in 1864, "the disturber of nature's harmonies."47

\ The Netherlands: Holland against the sea

A brisk wind was blowing across the level landscape of Holland when the miller in charge of the Schermer windmill told m~ he would free the great sails to revolve.48 The sight and sound were spectacular as the four arms of a circle of sails 25 m (81 ft) in diameter swung up toward the sky one after another and dowp. almost to graze the earth. I was fortunate to be able to see it because a windmill can operate at its best only in winds of 5-10 m per second ( 11-22 mi per hour), and that happens only about one-quarter of the time in Holland.49 But the most fascinating sight to me was to watch the pump when the miller pulled the lever to connect it with the gears. It was a screw pump set at an angle, with a long spiral rotor formed of wooden blades around an axle, rotating inside an open cylinder. As it turned, it continu- ously lifted water that churned upward and poured out the top. Part of my fascination was because I knew that the invention of this machine is often attributed to Archimedes, a Greek mathematician of the third century BC, and it was used widely in Hellenistic Egypt and the Roman Empire. 50 Its modern use in helping to.keep agricultural land dry in the Netherlands began not long before the Schermer windmill was built in 1634, along with others like it - a case of hydraulic engineers looking to the ancient world for inspiration.51

Dutch artists, as well, used ancient imagery to express the need for pumps and other means of controlling water in their low country, much of which was and is below sea level. In a chamber of the Water Board of Rhineland iri Leiden, a huge mythological painting52 by Caesar van Everdingen and Pieter Post, measuring 218 by 212 cm (7.15 by 6.95 ft) and dating from 1655 is still visible, showing Pallas., goddess of technology, and Mercury, god of commerce, holding the sea gate against Neptune's onslaught. At the time, the Nether• lands led the world in seaborne trade, which provided the financial resources for infrastruc· ture such as dikes and the hydraulic windmills that provided protection for the country against drowning.

No one really knows who first said, "God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland. " 53

It has been repeated, however, in numerous books about water management in the Neth• erlands, where virtually every square kilometer of the landscape bears evidence of human effort. Without constant exertion by its inhabitants, most of the Netherlands would be _covered by the North Sea, but it is just as true to say that the situation of the Dutch environ• ment is precarious in many ways resulting from the actions of people affecting it in the past. The Dutch made their country productive for human purposes, but they also exposed it to dangers against which they have had to struggle.

In the centuries before it had many human inhabitants, the major part of what is today the Netherlands was a flat coastal plain protected to some extent by a line of sand hills covered with grass, pines, and other trees, just inland from the seashore. In the south was the delta where the great rivers Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt poured into the North Sea through shift, ing channels as they dropped their silty loads eroded from the continent, forming extensive fluvial deposits.

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1 the miller in charge , · :. 48 The sight and so111 meter swung up towa fortunate to be abk l ) m per second ( 1 I l in Holland. 49 But t

ler pulled the levn mg spiral rotor form s it turned, it con I i 1 of my fascination ) Archimedes, a (,r · !enistic Egypt and lry in the NetherL11 with others like it 51

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The transformation of the biosphere 127

I he lowland area had a high freshwater table - indeed, fens where reeds and sedges grew , , ,, cred much of the land-and peat-forming ecosystems were responsible for the dominant , ,11dscape. Peat is formed by the accumulation of plant material that does not completely ii<', .1y because it is soaked in water and oxygen is excluded. The preservation of organic n,.,1crial from decay can be illustrated by a number of human bodies that had been buried ,;, I >rat; when discovered after centuries, their flesh, skin, and clothing were still relatively '"' .1,t and soft. Peat moss (sphagnum) and other plants continued to grow and accumulate, ,, , 1 hat peat bogs rose above the surrounding fens in wide, exts:nsive pillow-like formations. l ,q,tllary action within the peat could raise the water table 4'm (13 ft) or more above the tw, ;,, Sometimes trees like alder, willow, and beech grew on the peat, eventually falling and

11rning part of it, making a substance called "forest peat."55 Because peat is essentially w 111 oxidized organic material, rich in carbon, it makes a useful fuel when dried, and in the liiin,t·poor Netherlands of the Middle Ages and early modern period it became the basis of

n 11pcn fuel market,56 with the result that huge volumes· of the surface of the land were .,n,, 1ved and used to generate heat. Peat was also burned to make ashes that could be •,;,lied to make salt. The result of peat consumption was a colossal human-caused altera- lun of the landscape.

l'nv descriptions of the environment of the lowlands survive from Roman times, but li11y the Elder was there in the first centllly AD and wrote that the people lived on artificial jq1111ds raised above the flood level. He also describes the use of peat in inexpert terms: l iil'y scoop up mud in their hands and dry it by the wind more than sunshine, and with

! h :ts fuel warm their food and so their own bodies, frozen by the north wind. " 57 By the H h century they were digging ditches to drain the peat bogs, transforming them into land ,1p_1'iculture and dwellings. As peat dried, however, it decreased greatly in volume, lower- the elevation of the land surface, decreasing the efficiency of drainage, and increasing frequency and depth of floods: The land sunk at an average rate ofabout 1 m (3 ft) per mry, so that eventually.much of the central part of the lowlands was at or below average kvel. 58 As peat miners cut deeply into the peat bogs, sections orthe land became fresh- l'l' lakes that tended to become ever larger; thus the so-called "water-wolf' eating away I.ind was peat digging rather than natural sea flooding. 59 • .. 'he Dutch began to build dikes and dams to exclude floodwaters and to keep the farm b thy in the Middle Ages. At first these efforts were strictly local, but it became obvious l'.IJOrdination was necessary to keep one village's dikes from causing flooding in anoth- fo1mlands, so in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries water boards were organized to

nvise and maintain dikes, canals, dams, locks, and 'sluices, and more generally the 1iigcment of water in a certain region. These were among the first institutions requiring Jparticipation that provided a base for the later Dutch republics and, eventually, the mil development of democracy. The first to be established we.re the water boards kdijk Bovendams (1122), Rhineland (1170), and Groote Waard (1230), and many . followed. 6~ The system is still functioning today, after some reorganization and .lkation. It became evident that simple ditch drainage using gravity was no longer working, wners began to surround units ofland with dikes, creating enclosures called polders.61

n.vnter and seepage would of course enter a polder and make drainage necessary, so were installed at low points, allowing water to empty out at low tides, but were

d ,it other times to prevent water from flowing back in. Sluices were marginally effec- huc emptying water from a polder, especially one below sea level, could be accom-

1\\,l satisfactorily only with some kind of pumping, and hand-operated devices were

128 The transformation of the biosphere

insufficient. The land inside the polders continued to shrink, lowering the surface level, and when water was kept out by the dikes there could be no new alluvial deposits.

The answer to the question of polder' drainage appeared in the early fifteenth century when the windmill, previously used to grind grain into flour, was adapted to lift water. The first record of this innovation refers to a drainage mill at Alkmaar put up by Floris van Alcmade ahd Jan Grietensoen in 1408. The energy from its sail arms turned a "scoop- wheel" lined with wooden blades that dipped into the water and lifted it a meter or so before discharging it at a higher level. This camy--to the notice of Count Willem VI of Holland, who realized its value and urged its use throughout his domain.62 Indeed, it spread widely and hundreds were built in the following three centuries as the Netherlands moved into its Golden Age.

The major rivers of the southern Netherlands, with their interconnecting and sometimes shifting channels, presented a complicated challenge. The communities began to line their banks with low embankments and then higherdikes, and after 1300 these extended from the river.mouths far upstream, but it gradually became evident that the more a river is chan- neled between dikes, the higher it rises and the worse floods become if the dikes are breached. Polders were built on the land between the rivers and on the islands in the delta, but they remained vulnerable to flooding from the rivers and from the sea. Careful watching of the rivers and constant labor on dikes and dams were necessities forced on the inhabitants by a continually shifting environment.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the extended lake system turned out to be of great advantage to the Rhineland water board, ,as colnpared to some neighboring water boards. The lakes became part of an enormous water reservoir in which the water board temporarily stored the water from the. polders, which was pumped into the reservoir by the windmills. This was necessary because it was not always possible to get rid of the water. When strong northeastern winds blew, the water board could not open the main sluices near Amsterdam depicted on the painting by Van Everdingen and Post mentioned above, because the wind would blow the seawate~ into the canals and the land would flood. The neighboring Delftland water authorities did not have such large reservoirs and therefore had to invest enormously in more sluices and canals to,speed up the drainage process. In Rhine- land, by contrast, the number of canals and sluices remained the same until 1800. Generally speaking, the old water system primarily depended on natural rhythms and forces (wind, storms, and tides). Over time the system lost much of its dependency on the natural forces and became more technical.63

Constantly threatening, though, were the storm surges that swept in from the North Sea, impelled by gale winds and intensified by high tides. 64 They usually came years apart, and the Dutch had to guard against complacency in the years between, because the surges could swallow polders and villages, drowning crops, animals, and people in salt water. The natural line of high hills and sand dunes along the coast offered a degree of protection, but it was sometimes breached, and did not exist in the Zeeland delta region, where tidal streams had almost free access. Dikes were built along the North Sea coast to supplement the sand dµnes and to protect them against erosion by waves. Nevertheless, a series of surges in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries broke through between north Holland and Friesland, forming and enlarging a brackish arm of the sea in the heart of the lowlands called the Zuider Zee, itself a mixed blessing because although it offered access to the world for the merchant fleet and opportunity for fishermen, it provided a dangerous portal of entry for the North Sea with its occasional surges and floods, and its constantly gnawing tides and waves. In the early modern period, the best that could be done was to line its shores witl1

The transformation of the biosphere 129

to resist erosion. In those centuries, only the persistent lengthening and strengthening dikes and dams, and the multiplication of windmills that pumped drainage water, averted it complete immersion of the lowland district. 65 As Petra van Dam noted, "The innova- li}N in hydraulic technology of the period 1300-1600 must be understood as a response

i fhti rapidly changing conditions in Holland's wetland environment. "66 Defenses were still t1.(i:lequate against unusually strong storm surges. In 1421 one of these hit both the delta

·· 1 the Zuider Zee, inundating scores of villages and killing thousands of people. Many rnn: kilometers of polder land lost in this St. Elizabeth's Day flood were never /ht.itned. ,,,,, The accomplishments of the Dutch in the "Golden Age''. of trade, prosperity, empire, and dlectual and artistic flowering are amazing to contemplate. It was also a time when large

of land were reclaimed from water and hydraulic infrastructure was installed. As Simon hum a wrote, "The period between 1550 and 1650, when the political identity of an inde- Ji(knt Netherlands nation was being established, was also a time of dramatic physical

iicion of its landscape. "67 Firiancial resources came from the profits of the largest mer- I fleet in the world, that dominated trade in the North Sea and Baltic, and the acquisi- of a colonial empire that stretched from the West Indies to the Cape of Good Hope, on (Sri Lanka), the East Indies, and Formosa (Taiwan), and for a time the Dutch had .L~ive access to trade with Japan. A proportion of these resources was invested at home

'culture and land reclamation. It is astounding to remember that these developments 1rred in large part while the Netherlands was fighting its war of independence, the ity Years' War (1568-1648) against the Spanish Empire under King Philip II, the most •rrful monarch in Europe, and his successors. The war had its environmental aspects, 't' rhe Dutch at times deliberately breached dikes, flooding the land in order to impede Spanish armies. The Treaty of Munster, which ended the war, recognized the self-

vtmment of the United Provinces (Dutch Republic). :A major reclamation activity in this period was the draining of a number oflakes, as well

'~m.111 arms of the sea, beginning in north Holland. Drainage began with smaller lakes and · h.ccded to larger ones. This was accomplished by "empolderment," which began by

irding the lake with a dike and a drainage canal outside the dike. Windmills would be set 1111 the dike to pump the water out of the lake into the canal:In ,the case of the deeper :s, one windmill could not raise the water high enough to reach the canal, so it became \•i;sary to put two or more windmills in series. After a time, when the polder was empty ,1 atcr, the former lakebed could be provided with drainage ditches and parceled out for

fH1, and settlements. This system is attributed to two talented hydraulic engineers, Simon n i11 of Flanders (1548-1620) and Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater (1575-1650). The area · ,11 .1 blc land added by lake reclamation was not small: between 1500 and 1800 it amounted

,Iii increase of one-third - 100,000 ha (240,000 acres) in Holland and 250,000 ha ,~!)0,000 acres) in the entire alluvial zone of the Netherlands.68

· /\;; l,1rger and deeper lakes presented a challenge, the search for more efficient pumps to ,iJ11 them faster led to technological improvements. One of these was the Archimedean \ill' pump mentioned at the beginning of this section. Screws had been used in simple,

iii1-;1ble pumps called tfaskersin Frisia since the late sixteenth century, but in 1634 a patent A" granted to Simon Hulsbos of Leiden for a large Archimedean screw used in conjunction li Ii .1 windmill. Several of these were installed, and gradually began to replace the older 'i 1• 'I, wheels, although not everywhere. These screws were angled about 37 degrees with a J,u11dcr of 1.5-1.8 m (4.5- 5.4 ft). Their advantage was that they raised the water 4-5 m .t} I 5 ft), much higher than scoop-wheels, so that a single windmill could replace several

0 fll''liit,;1Jt'an.rf<1nnation afthe biosphere

Figure 6.2 Drainage windmills in the Schermermeer polder, Netherlands. These provided energy for machines such as the Archimedes screw pump to raise water into canals and make land available for agriculture. Photograph taken in 2007.

older ones; at 40-50 rpm a screw could lift about 40 cum (1,404 cu ft) per minute, faster than the scoop-wheel, and less water spilled out. 69

The water control system as it was improved and expanded during the Golden Age resulted from the creative energy and prosperity of that period, and provided a productive base for the nation. Unfortunately, the eighteenth century brought relative economic decline due to war, commercial competition with England, and depression in the agricul- tural sector at home. As a result, land reclamation along with the installation of new pumping mills and the replacement of older ones slowed. There was an increase in floods from the rivers, possibly because dike maintenance was neglected.

The flooding of the rivers was also caused by a remarkable combination of the impact of the Little Ice Age (c.1400-1800) and human interference with the riverbeds. 70 In spring- time, as river ice began to melt and break, huge ice mountains up to 30 m (100 ft) would form. In that time even the large rivers got entirely blocked and all shipping stopped, and as a result no income is noted in the toll accounts for the years when it happened. After 1600 or so, the Dutch took all sorts of measures in order to streamline and direct the flow. One of the solutions was "groynes", small dikes built into the water to slow down the water at the shores and prevent erosion. Exactly at the points where these obstructions occurred, the ice mountains would form themselves, and the water would flood the dikes, undermin- ing them and finally causing them to break. Of course the people observed this, so why did they continue such practices? Meddling with the rivers was an ongoing process of estimating risks. Erosion occurred everywhere and led to costs to adjoining water boards, whereas dike

The transformation of the biosphere 131

i ",,aking occurred only now and then, at certain places, hopefully in a neighbor's dike. I,<'ir)re 1900, no integrated management of the big rivers yet existed.

!'hen in 1731 a disaster struck the dikes along the North Sea coast, which were supported ;,1.J faced with piles and other wooden structures. An organism called the pileworm, which ,,, 11ot a worm but a mollusk with awesome ability to bore into wood and rapidly turn it into ,, ,1 ructure resembling Swiss cheese, was discovered in its millions infesting the dikes. 71 It is ,;i ,1 !mown why the pileworm, also called the teredo, appeared so suddenly, although ,,,, rease in salinity of the seawater in the area has been suggested; the 9rganism prefers 1, 11crs of high salinity. The teredo was already well known to sailors as the shipworm; ,1, ,oden ships were often sheathed in copper sheeting to keep it from riddling their hulls ;rnd eventually sinking them. Perhaps a ship brought a new species or variety to the Dutch ,_;1,1-t. The only way to save the dikes was to provide them with stone facing, and that was ,rn expensive solution because the Netherlands lacks sources, and stone had to be imported

Ji\1111 Norway and Belgium.72 - i\fi:er the French Revolution, French armies invaded the Netherlands and set up a Bata-

.1i,1n Republic with a number of innovations including a bill of rights. In regard to the rnvironment, one of the most important centralizing reforms was the founding of the Rijks- w,11 crstaat, a national water administration that undertook several large water management !".injects and founded a professional school for hydraulic engineers. 73 It met with consider- i!l•lt resistance from the long-established water boards, who were jealous of their regional Mt1rhority and unwilling to cede power to the center, and it took more than half a century Jn work out an uneasy cooperation between the national agency and the water boards. The fUHmvaterstaat proved to be a permanent institution, lasting through the Napoleonic period iind the establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1813. Weathering stormy jWtfods, both literally and metaphorically, it exists today because historic experience has

iown that the environmental survival of the Netherlands makes a national policy necessary •l!' landscape and water management. Water boards still exist, too, with responsibility for ir,11 water control and water quality. As the Industrial Revolution got under way in the late eighteenth century and on into the lictcenth, Dutch engineers saw the potential of steam engines to g.rive--d.rainage pumps. 11c advantage over windmills was that steam engines could operate continuously, not just wn the wind was blowing at the right speed. When driving scoop-wheels, however, steam µl11es proved uneconomical because they used too much expensive coal. In 1837, two

n engines turning Archimedean screw pumps were used in draining the Zuidplas pcilder mth Holland and proved more economical.74 The centrifugal pump was introduced and

!;ti demonstrated superior efficiency. In the second half of the nineteenth century steam iglnes were commonly employed for pumping, and by 1896 they were responsible for most three-fifths of total mechanized land drainage. In the twentieth century, experiments

• made with internal combustion engines to drive several types of pump, but the source rgy that became dominant was electricity. Thyse technological improvements ren-

:i the windmill obsokte, and hundreds of them were demolished until it seemed that ()f the most distinctive elements of the Dutch cultural landscape might disappear. A

ij number of them, however, were preserved as museums and other landmarks, and are 1ly prized by the Dutch and by tourists today. :he danger presented by the sea was not flooding alone, but also the intrusion of salt 1;;r1 which could kill crops and corrupt the fresh water supply. Henrik Stevin warned

1titit it in the seventeenth century, referring to salt as the poison of the sea.75 Seawater i1yed with the tides into river mouths and seeped under the coastal dunes, and the Zuider

132 The transformation of the biosphere

Zee brought it into the middle of the country. The problem grew worse as river mouths were dredged for navigation and drainage, and canals and locks were opened for ships. Saline deep ground water and a Rhine river increasingly polluted with salty industrial wastes added complications. Needs for improved barriers, testi~g stations, and an augmented supply of fresh water to flush out salinized areas became evident.

The twentieth century brought both human-caused and natural destruction, but also the construction of works of unprecedented size in attempts to control the sea and the rivers. The first of these was the separation of the Zuider Zee from the North Sea by a dam 32 km (19.2 mi) long between north Holland and Friesland, built 1927-32. The barrier was 3.5 m ( 10. 5 ft) higher than the level of the highest storm surge then known. The enclosed area became a freshwater lake renamed the IJsselmeer, providing a major resource to counter salinization. Of course the saltwater fish that had inhabited it were replaced by freshwater species, and the fishing. fleet had to switch from catching herring and anchovy to eel and pike-perch.76 Several huge new polders were enclosed and drained inside the new lake, even- tually creating enough arable land to add a new province to the Netherlands.

In addition to the terrible cost in human lives of the Second World War and the German occupation of the Netherlands ( 1940-5) ·_ the Dutch lost 205,000 lives including 100,000 of the 140,000 Jewish citizens - there were also environmental costs. Deliberate breaching of the dikes was done by the Dutch and their allies, and by the Germans. Construction and maintenance lagged or ceased due to unavailability of materials, equipment, and fuel.

After the war, gaps in the dikes weresealed,and reinforced and flooded polder lands were drained, while a series of plans was drafted to dam the Meuse River delta against salt seepage and storms. But if any doubt existed of the necessity to shore up defenses against the sea, it came to an end with the devastating storm surge of February 1953, which made scores of breaches in the dikes, inundated 200,000 ha (770 sq mi) ofland, drowned 1,835 people, as well as forcing the evacuation of 72,000. Although damage was widespread, the brunt of the storm surge had hit the delta, so the Rijkswaterstaat concentrated its efforts in the decades after the flood on a large-scale delta works project to realign river dikes and to construct barriers against storm surges in the fiver outlets to the sea. But by 1970, when major parts of the project remained to. be constructed, many of the leaders of public opinion in the Netherlands - writers, artists, and academics including scientists - raised environ- mental objections to some aspects of the plan and received wide support. Not only safety, they argued, but also values such as. the diversity of wildlife, the beauty of the landscape, and the preservation of objects of cultural history, should receive consideration. Also, if dams blocked some of the river mouths from the sea, they observed, the result- ing lakes would be dead water where pollution brought down by the rivers would stagnate.

Bureaucrats and engineers were initially outraged at these criticisms, but the design that emerged after a political struggle showed the Dutch genius for compromise and action as a community. The new plans integrated environmental concerns with technological innova- tion.77 For example, the centerpiece of the.project, the storm surge barrier that protects the Oosterschelde estuary, 9 km (5.4 mi) long, is provided with a 4 km (2.4 mi) section of huge vertical sluice gates with steel doors 42 m (126 ft) wide that are ordinarily open to allow the tides to pass through, but are closed when a tide or storm surge is predicted more than 3 m (9 ft) above normal high tide, an event that happened on average about once a year between 1986 (the year it was completed) and 2007. The Oosterschelde itself, with its rich variety of sea life, was thus preserved, and was designated the Netherlands' largest national park in 2002. This barrier is the largest of thirteen such barriers connecting islands and peninsulas

The transformation of the biosphere 133

fttt,'.J)elta; in addition 300 other structures and 16,500 kilometers of dikes are part of the · · orks.

be end of the Oosterschelde barrier, an inscription proudly announces, "Here the tide by the wind, the moon, and us." Most Dutch experts would not express that much even though the project has been declared one of the world's seven engineering s. The sea and the rivers are ever changing, and the battle to safeguard the land is never

)' won: The Netherlands is understandably one of the nations most concerned about a 1111g global climate, rising sea level, and a possible increase in the energy and severity of ·: surges. Steps have already begun to fortify the coastal defenses. The ministry of water

r/l (Rijkswaterstaat), is dredging up sand from the North Sea anadumping it in the water lil front of the beaches, so that the waves will build higher beaches. Also, it has identified •Weakest low spots in the dune system, typically situated where· former fishing villages . ii; on the beach, and built artificial dunes there, planting them with marram grass intended

:kounter wind erosion. The effectiveness of these measures remains to be seen. l.)ne proposal for the future includes a new, higher and wider vanguard dike along the ''1•e North Sea coast from border to border, storage basins for river water, and new "super lping stations" to empty excess river flow and rainfall into the sea. Such a plan would be ntinuation of the trajectory of water control works in the history of the Netherlands. It

old also represent an escalation of human attempts to control nature by orders of t\nitude.

ndon: city, country, and empire in the Industrial Age

1; -:oal burned in London during the age presided over by Queen Victoria left a dingy ,Ky on the city's great buildings. It was there as late as the 1950s, when I first visited p;land: a black deposit coated the facades, and residents and visitors alike were incredu-

lli when reminded that St. Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, and the British Museum .. ·r not originally dark gray, but built oflight-colored stone. The pollution carried in Lon- .· !IJ 's murky air did more than darken the architecture. It attacked the stone, creating a ilbk, soluble crust that accelerated erosion. Reliefs and statues took ~n a surrealistic look they dissolved over the years. Victorian architects and contractors were already aware of

w problem when they planned the new Houses of Parliament in 1839, and searched for it.1ble stone, but their choice proved unsatisfactory.78 Travelers who knew the clear air of r nineteenth-century American West, such as Francis Parkman and James Fenimore

.· •H•pcr, were offended by the pall of smoke and the besooted buildings in London, but Joni Byron saw pollution as "the magic vapour/ Of some alchymic furnace, from whence lm,kc/ The wealth of worlds." 79 December 1879 was a month of polluted fogs, with a 'l\iortality rate that rose 220 percent. Reformers organized a Smoke Abatement Committee, whid1 faced a problem that seemed insurmountable.80

The discoloration invaded the countryside, where rain falling through smoky air brought ,\l1;w11 pollution and deposited it on trees and bushes, killing lichens and other organisms. 'J\111ong the darkened vegetation, blacker forms of butterflies and moths gained a protective '. ,1,lvrntage of camouflage against their predators, and outnumbired lighter-colored ones

hrp,inning in the nineteenth century, a phenomenon termed "industrial melanism."81 First nn1 i.:ed in the coal and steel producing country of the English Midlands, it also occurs ,i1rn111d London. 82

I ,ondon was the leading city of the Industrial Revolution throughout the nineteenth , rn111ry, although facing competition from continental Europe and North America as the

I

134 The transformation of the biosphere

decades passed. No city had as large a number of workers engaged in manufacture, although not in iron and steel making, which were located in the north. London's manufacturers made clothing, including shoes, furniture, carriages, ships, clocks, bread, beer, liquors, leather, silk, paper, books, machinery, tools, jewelry, and musical instruments, to name a few. Many of these industries used machines powered by steam engines, and produced noxious emissions to the air and water.

The Industrial Revolution in the Victorian Age was powered by new sources of energy, led by coal and gas. In the precedirrgcentury, metallurgy and steam had depended on wood and charcoal, raising the specter of forest exhaustion, and in an attempt to prevent that, some continental governments had enacted conservation laws. But coal seemed to give the forests a reprieve. Industries and homes switched to coal for heat and gas for lighting, adding a burden to London's air. By 1880 there were 600,000 homes in the central part of the city with 3,500,00Q fireplaces, virtually all burning coal. London became the most important coal-shipping center, receiving "sea coal" from Newcastle and other northern ports for its own use, but also for export.

In the 1850s, steam began to replace sail, and iron to replace wood in ships, and for a time London's shipyards continued to lead the world. Britain built the world's first great railway system, and several lines ran from the city, strengthening London's role in com- merce. The economic growth of this period was phenomenal. Although the rate was not even, and spurts of growth alternated with depressions, the production of the UK more than quadrupled during Victoria's reign, an increase averaging 2.5 percent per year.83

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was organized by Prince Albert, Victoria's consort, as a celebration of the achievements of inventors and engineers, many of them British. 84 It was held in a huge glass and iron structure called the Crystal Palace, built in Hyde Park for the purpose, and boasted 14,000 exhibitors. Six million or more visitors viewed works of art and technology, including telegraphs, sewing machines, revolvers, reaping machines, and steam hammers. It was a defining public moment for the Industrial Revolution.

How did these far-reaching changes in methods of production, sources of energy, and means of transportation affect ecological conditions? London suffered some of the worst results, and contemporary descriptions challenge the imagination. Crowding a comparatively small area and taxing its limited facilities, the population grew to an extent never before seen in a city. Indeed, it was the world's largest city throughout the century. From about 1 million in 1801, Greater London grew to 2.3 million in 1854 and 6.6 million in 1901.85 Most of the increase was the result of migration from rural areas and smaller towns.

Low in a river basin, London is subject to natural fogs which were greatly exacerbated by smoke and chemicals from industrial and domestic sources. Under stagnant conditions, a malodorous fog of pea-soup yellow hung over the city, reducing visibility so that people were almost blinded and were known to stumble into the river. It was suffocating, and many with lung problems died. In January 1880, during,a four-day fog, there were 700-1,100 deaths in excess of the normal rate, and this is only ;one instance of a phenomenon that increased in frequency as the century wore on:86 The worst incident would occur in 1952. Dr. H.A. Des Voeux of the Coal Smoke Abatement Society in London proposed in 1905 that the noxious mixture of smoke and fog be called "smog," a word that caught on.87 Irate citizens sued polluters in court under the nuisance laws but although convictions were obtained, the fines were too small to be a deterrent. In 1891, the Public Health Act prohib- ited the emission of "black smoke," and shortly afterwards a generating station defeated a suit by showing that its smoke was dark brown! 88 Industries were not required to halt pol- lution, but to show that they had used the "best practicable means" of reducing it.

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The transformation of the biosphere 135

Disposing of liquid and solid wastes by flushing them into a nearby river and waiting for ,h(.'!l1 to be carried downstream has been a practice of cities from early times. But London's K,ver Thames is an estuary of the North Sea, and tidef sweep up it through the center of the , itV and above it to Teddington ("Tide-end-town"). Sewage might flow down the river during low tide, but twice a day a wall of water would carry it back upstream.89 While the ,Hie was at its height, the water backed up the outfalls, and precipitation of solids occurred. t llc mixture of organic sewage and industrial chemicals killed virtually all the fish and sea

, !i!rlJnmals. At low tides, a vast area of tainted mud was exposed tq_J:he air, producing a ter- !ihlc smell. The infamous Great Stink occurred in 1858 during hot weather and a series of !qw tides; the odor was so intolerable that Parliament adjourned for a week.90 Worse than ill!; smell was the danger of disease and poisoning. Private water companies drew much of 1 .,mdon's drinking water from the Thames or from tributaries whose condition was not much better. A cholera epidemic killed 6,800 Londoners in 1832; it-was not understood ihat the disease is carried by fecal matter in water. Cholera recurred in 1848 and 1849 with

:\ toll of 14,000 deaths. In 1854, Dr. John Snow provided a circumstantial demonstration ih,IC cholera is spread by drinking water. He had observed that most of the 500 people who

:\lkd of it in Soho had drawn their water from one company's pump in Broad Street, but 11dghbors who had used local wells had escaped. When he persuaded authorities to lock the f•l.imp, the deaths ceased.91 Medical officers took ten years to accept his findings but were nm in time to prevent the'last great cholera epidemic in 1865_-6. With water quality much

j111proved, London escaped the cholera epidemic of 1891 that ravaged the continent. ·Improvement of sewers was also needed; a Royal Commission in 1861 approved a plan to .n•rlstruct two main lines to intercept numerous smaller sewers and carry the effluent to an iilll:fall below the city. A new sewer was incorporated into the design of an embankment rnnstructed along the north side of the river.92 Simply relocating the point at which sewage tr,ii.:hed the estuary was not enough; treatment was later added. For a time, much of the J11lid matter was barged out and dumped into the North Sea, with an effect on the oceanic .wosystem that can only be guessed. , .

The effects on the inhabitants of London, however, could be observed. Overcrowding extreme, especially for the poorest one-third of the city's inhabitants, who were housed

small rooms, often in basements, that contained entire families and sometimes pigs as that is, if they could find a roof to shelter them at all. The Rev. Andrew Mearns, who

h,td visited many of these unfortunates, described their homes in a pamphlet, The Bitter Cry ;,{Outcast London, in 1883:

. Il ew who will read these pages have any conception of what these pestilential human wokeries are, where tens of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind what we have heard of the middle passage of the slave ship. To get into them you have to penetrate courts with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from accu-

. mulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions and often flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air, and which rarely know the virtues of a drop of cleansing water.93

environmental conditions in which the poor lived and worked contributed to a series )ifhread riots and other uprisings in nineteenth-century London. A bread riot in Hyde Park ·· 1855 involved 150,000 and led Karl Marx briefly to think that the English revolution had

i,t(l;ltn. Serious incidents followed in 1861, 1867, and 1886.94

136 The transformation of the biosphere

There were proposals on the part of humanitarians, architects, and planners to improve conditions in the city. A number of the projects involved leveling portions of the crowded warrens for new roads, hardly a way to help the inhabitants who were displaced and had to find quarters elsewhere, usually in similar conditions. The parks movement sounded a more positive note. 95 Sometimes the amenities of open space were reserved adjuncts to the man- sions of the affluent, but the more civic-mindeg__9f the elite hoped to set a moral tone for the working class, offering them a better way to spend their leisure than in pubs, gambling dens, and brothels. In 1845, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests opened Victoria Park, East London. Its trees, fountains, follies, and flowerbeds drew up to 30,000 visitors a day, offering a forum for speakers and preachers, along with habitat for birds and small mammals.96 On the other hand, when Battersea Park replaced a marsh, nature lost a wetland and biodiversity suffered. Still, if it had not become a park, it would undoubtedly have been occupied by industries. By 1878, the City of London recognized the value of open space to the extent that it preserved 1,200 ha (3,000 acres) of Epping Forest.97

The city and its inhabitants, particularly the poorest ones, were increasingly cut off from the countryside by the phenomenal spread of suburbs. The area covered by Greater London grew at a rate twice that of the population.98 William Cobbett, in his 1830 book, Rural Rides, called London a "Great Wen" that w;is disfiguring the landscape, but he could hardly have imagined the territory that the suburbs would cover in another fifty years.99 The popu- lation of the outer ring of the urban area swelled from 414,000 in 1861 to 2,045,000 in 1901. 100 Meanwhile the resident population of central-London declined. There were mid- dle-class suburbs, and suburbs for workers who commuted daily into the city on three-hom: omnibuses. Each horse dropped 8-11 kg (17-24 lb) of dung daily, which amounts to 3-4 tons annually. In 1859, work began on the first underground railway. There were electric trams after 1890. As transportation improved, the price of suburban land rose, and the financial motivation for subdivision and construction increased. With the spread of the con- urbation came worsening air pollution. :

The built-up area of London presented a new environment for plants and animals. Much of the wildlife disappeared and was replaced by species adapted to human constructions and human presence, such as rats, mice, flies, spiders, and cockroaches. But there were still tl1c interactions of species that form an ecosystem. For example, house sparrows and pigeons flourished in the city, and their predators - kestrels,and peregrine falcons - continued to nest in inaccessible locations on towers and high buildings. 101

Forests suffered continuing attrition, even outside the advancing edge of urbanization. England had proportionally less woodland than any other European country at the begin- ning of the nineteenth century. The demand for ships' timber and fuel had taken a heavy toll from the royal forests. 102 Tohelp assure a supply, plantations were made, such as the 2,000 ha (5,000 acres) ofoak planted in the New Forest in 1819. But Sherwood Forest and less famous woods were gone. The disafforestation ofWychwood Forest, Oxfordshire, led to the creation of four farms. 103 Disafforestation meant the termination of the royal forest and usually its sale to private owners, not necessarily the removal of trees, although the latter also often happened. Along with many thousands of old trees went the wildlife, even the deer long protected by royal ownership. In 1851, pursuant to the "Deer Removal Act," Hainault Forest in Essex was disafforested and its deer removed or destroyed. There were many other such cases. 104 Wildlife also suffered from loss of habitat through the movement to remove hedgerows between fields. Many oaks from the Forest of Dean, noted as particu• larly fine shipbuilding timber, went to assemble the last of the great wooden warships. But if coal for fuel and iron for ships reduced the amount of wood taken from British forests 01·

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The transformation of the biosphere 137

ed from abroad, timbers were needed for props in coal mines, the rapidly expanding system demanded wooden sleepers beneath the rails, and the construction and fur-

industries provided a growing market for wood. Between 1864 and 1899, timber s trebled to 10 million tons. 105 Some wood came from renewable sources: one-third · sh woodland was coppiced ( a method in which trees were cut back, but regrew from er trunks and roots). Denizens of the forest were killed-to meet demands of the city. ercial hunters gathered wild birds' eggs by the thousands and sold them in London,

tJ1ere was a booming market in feathers for ladies' hats. Naturalists remarked that some ies such as lapwing had become hard to find. The upper classes increasingly treated r as an amenity, an area where they could pursue foxes, shoot birds, and enjoy the ery, which may account in part for the survival of woodland and plantations covering aps 10 percent of the land in Britain. uring the Victorian Age, England changed from a predominantly rural country to an strialized, urban nation. In 1800, three-quarters of the population lived in the country- : by 1900, a similar proportion lived in towns and cities. The percentage of the work t employed in agriculture, forestry, and fishing dropped from 25 in 1831 to 9 in 1901. .lC course of the nineteenth century, Britain changed from being self-sufficient in food

· fttction, or nearly so, to importing almost half of all foodstuffs consumed. dore the 1860s, it seemed that the mechanization of agriculture might be improving

· Juction and bringing new land under cultivation. For example, steam pumps and dredg- machines made the draining of the fens possible. The wetlands north and east ofCam- lµc and Ely became farmland after 1820, when the first Watt engine began to drive a ip at Bottisham Fen. 106 New machines such as seed drills, ploughs, harrows, hoes,

'w,:rs, and reapers increased speed and efficiency. 107 But agricultural laborers did not share enthusiasm oflandowners as wages fell and jobs became scarcer. Disturbances followed passage of the Corn Law of 1815, which restricted wheat imports to protect landowner fi1s and resulted in higher bread prices for workers. In 183G~the Captain Swing riots royed 387 threshing machines. 108 Urban wages, though high only in comparison with

Jill could be earned in agriculture, contributed to the depopulation of the countryside. 1\s the decades went by, more farmland was lost to factories, railroads, roads, housing, I facilities such as tips, landfills, and incinerators for the disposal of urban waste. A major m:ssion began in 1873 and lasted into the 1890s. Within twenty years, agricultural lj'llt fell by one-half. Landowners, particularly in the western counties, found that con- \ion of arable land to grazing was profitable, and 911,000 ha (2,250,000 acres) was

r, 1td. 109 The New Domesday Book, a survey ofland ownership published in 1873, showed ii 363 landowners controlled 24 percent of the total land surface. uo At the end of the mury, British agriculture was at its lowest ebb. J3ritain was producing annually only l1111gh grain to feed its population for eight weeks. - The difference was made up by imports from continental Europe, the United States, and

.l: British Empire. As B.W. Clapp put it, "The acreage of land lost to houses, factories, lwols, roads, and railways has been regained many times over through the use of land · -rrscas that has supplied Britain with food, industrial crops and minerals. »m The comment, l1ilr true, is too optimistic; there are ecological costs to such replacements. In the process

1ii11dustrialization, Britain began to draw raw materials from ecosystems abroad, subjecting Jlw111 ro monoculture, simplification, and deterioration. This was part of the reason for the J, 1w ity with which Britain defended and extended its empire in the Victorian Age.

I on don was the capital of an empire: the financial and commercial center, the administra- if1.1.· 1111d military center, the nerve center of the colonial organism. This was true even at the

138 The transformation of the biosphere

beginning ofVictoria's reign. Although the thirteen American colonies had been lost more than fifty years before, Canada remained. In addition, there were great possessions such as India, Australia, and the recently acquired Cape Colony in South Africa. Smaller dependen · cies existed in Guyana and on islands and outposts scattered across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas. New Zealand was annexed in 1840, but otherwise the empire grew by little during the first thirty years of the monarch's long reign. In 1857 a part of the Indian army mutinied against its British officers, a rebellion that was crushed with much fighting and loss of life. The government in London took direct rule of India in the next year, abolishing the East India Company. The Suez Canal opened a new sea route to India in 1869, and in 1876 Victoria took the title "Empress oflndia." Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had delivered a spirited oration in defense of Britain's right to empire at the Crystal Palace in 1872; for the rest of the century fierce competition ensued among Britain and other powers for new colonies. They sliced up the African continent, Britain receiving a lion's share. British possessions expanded in south and southeast Asia and across the Pacific Ocean. At the turn of the century, the British Empire included about one- quarter of the Earth's land area and population. Just as importantly, Britannia ruled the waves. Her navy was by far the world's most powerful, and Britain had one-third of the world's merchant marine, including for a time one-half of all the steam ships. London was the busiest port, providing for those great fleets.

The reasons for the expansion are complicated, but they certainly include the desire to integrate new lands, with their natural resources and cheap labor, into the growing British

Figure 6.3 The Tower Bridge over the Thames River, in London, built in 1886-94, seems to epitomize the triumphal attitude ofhuman conquest over nature that was characteristic of the Victorian Age and the Industrial Revolution in general. Photograph taken in 1953.

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The transformation of the biosphere 139

@onomy. Industrialization changed patterns of supply and demand and led to an uneven 11111: inexorable aggrandizement of world markets. 112 The British gorernment evidently tl.11dded that, with European states becoming more protectionist, it Would act to secure

:Jili.wes for trade and investment overseas. 113 The British plan for foreign trade was to import raw materials from abroad and to sell

nmnufactured goods in return. 114 The empire did not smooth Britain's economic course; t'{lUllting all the costs, it may even have represented a net loss, and there were bank failures J\Jld depressions as the century wore on. But an empire offered the opportunity to set terms !J exchange for the one-quarter to one-third of British trade that was with the colonial ter- JiWdes; The trade with India in cotton is a prime example: The imperial government dis- rJ1ilraged the rise of textile manufacturing industries in India, while encouraging the ·)Ihmting of cotton. us British traders paid low prices for the raw cotton and shipped it to ;!Jritain, where it was spun and woven by machine into fabric, cut and sewn into garments. ,Mnch of the labor was done by women and children. Cotton goods were Britain's largest \j~port, although Britain grew no cotton. And India was Britain's largest market for finished vo1wn goods. 116 The Civil War in America, when the Union blockade of southern ports and 1kv,1station of the South's plantation economy cut off the world's leading supply of raw fam:on, encouraged the expansion of production in India and a similar scheme in Egypt.

What was the effect of the imperial economy on the ecosystems of the empire? It involved jf,rnoval of forests and other native ecosystems, and their replacement by monocultures that b,1ppened to be profitable. Many of the latter were introdueed species. The plantation tit0tlomy expanded, especially in the tropics. Again India offers an example. Coffee and tea t1hmters moved into the coastlands and hills of Malabar, Cochin., and Travancore; by 1866 ihm·e were hundreds of plantations.117 So many trees of one species so close together pro- viikd the opportunity for diseases and insects to attack and grow rapidly. Coffee trees were }Hore susceptible; in time tea plantations (and rubber in the early twentieth century) largely ;h,placed coffee. But the original forests were almost gone, with many species greatly reduced 1n number or extirpated from whole districts. Since the planted trees did not protect and

\\lintain the soil as well as the former dense vegetation, erosion was a problem. There were animal introductions, too. Sheep spread across New Zealand. Wool exports

.horn the Cape Colony in South Africa, produced by the voracious Merino sheep, increased Jlnrn 51,000 kg (113,000 lb) in 1833 to 2,471,000 kg (5,447,000 lb) in 1851.us The nr;ition of "Neo-Europes" described above was repeated in "Neo-Britains" in the nine- tffnth century. u 9

The establishment of centers of trade and administration gave ~- stimulus to urbanization. t\1110ng centers whose population and occupation of land swelled in the course of the

·1;i'tt1ury were Calcutta, New Delhi, Madras, Bombay, and Singapore. l'he mammals and birds of plains and forests in Africa and India, and of the oceanic

!illi!11ds, were decimated by habitat destruction and hunting. As John MacKenzie remarked, ''The exploitation of animals is everywhere in the imperial record. " 120 In England, hunting h,,d been regarded as the privilege of the elite; now, in the empire, it would become the Jiltl'ilege of the conquerors. The quintessential image is that of the great white hunter on *Al:1ri in Africa. There were examples of this type who shot at literally every wild animal large ri1n11gh for a target. Some would take trophies from the most impressive of the slaughtered k,1.~ts, and leave the rest to their African bearers or the scavengers. The predators, too, they •Ii! 11 as "vermin." Some of them wrote books about their exploits, while others were content

· 1w,1 to kill thousands of antelope, elephant, giraffe, rhinoceros, and anything else they hap- l"'ti<:d to see. Eventually wide swaths ofland were emptied oflarge mammals. The great

140 The transformation of the biosphere

days of hunting were over in South Africa by the 1870s; there were no more buffalo in Natal and the quagga, a kind of zebra with stripes on only part of its body, was extinct. 121 The native Africans, who had managed to hunt for centuries without destroying the herds, were supplied with guns by the colonizers and induced to assist \n the slaughter. Perhaps the appeal of pay and market goods won many of them away from their traditional ways. Later, British administrators tried to restrict the use of firearms to themselves.

Another stereotypical image, unfortunately all too true, is that of the lordly British hunter in India shooting tigers from high on an elephant. The hunt had been a pastime of the Indian elite, but after 1857 the Indians were disarmed and hunting tigers became a European priv- ilege. The tiger is a keystone species in the Indian forest ecosystem, the top predator. By making tiger heads and tiger skins a mark of prestige, the great cat was eliminated from sec- tions oflndia; by the twentieth century it would be on the verge of extinction. Of course the hunt was not limited to tigers. In 1875, the Prince ofWales, the future Edward VII, came to India and celebrated the installation of his mother as empress by hunting not only tigers but elephants, pigs, and other mammals and birds. 122 The lion was persecuted until only a small population remained in the Gir Forest. Cheetahs, which had often been captured and trained to hunt for the maharajahs, became extinct in India. Many--other mammals such as gaur, blackbuck, and even elephant were rarer. Hunts of wildfowl were popular; when I visited the great bird sanctuary on the lakes at Bharatpur, I found names of European hunters listed on a monument with the numbers of birds killed, in the hundreds.

Hunting was also the basis of lucrative trade. The export of ivory grew as the British brought Africa into the world trade economy. By the 1880s, 12,000 elephants were killed for their ivory each year in East Africa. The trade financed the penetration of the interior by missionaries, prospectors, and entrepreneurs. Ivory was used for piano keys, billiard balls, knife handles, combs, and various ornaments and curiosities;As the substance became rarer, its price rose so that the trade continued. A similar pattern occurred with rhinoceros horns, hippopotamus teeth and hides, and ostrich eggs and feathers.

Many hunters not only wanted to display trophies of their success at gunning down unsuspecting animals, but also donated specimens to museums and wrote about the crea - tures they had bagged, giving the cloak of natural history to the depletion of the greatest herds surviving from the Pleistocene. The craving of collectors and museums for specimens of disappearing species sometin:ies led to the actual disappearance of the last few individuals, as happened to the great auk.

However, some of the scientists sent out to the colonies recognized that the activities fostered by the empire were doing environmental damage. Richard Grove, in Green Impe- rialism, has pointed out that a few individuals, some of them involved in the creation of botanical gardens and interested in research that was not necessarily encouraged by the imperial government, made observations that connected deforestation, for example, with desiccation of the climate and decline of agriculture, and subsequent increase in famine and disease. 123 They advocated reafforestation and the creation of reserves to restore the climate, water supply, and production of food, wood, and other resources. Worthy of mention is Edward Green Balfour, who was an environmentalist, a feminist who forwarded the opening of medical education to women, and eventually an anti-colonialist as well. Balfour worked in India, but many other scientists made observations on tropical islands where deforesta- tion and other major environmental changes took place rapidly within a small area, allowing their effects to be seen clearly. But if imperial expansion provided the opportunity for envi- ronmental awareness, the empires rarely gave support to positive efforts springing from this awareness.

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tJly the last decades of the century, the interest in natural history combined with the · · tion that the animals were being extirpated to produce a concern for conservation.

olations for the protection of wild elephants were promulgated'in British India in the Os. The Boers in South Africa enacted game laws, and created in 1898 the reserve that became Kruger National Park. Other reserves were set aside in the face of opposition farmers and herders who complained that they sheltered animals that raided their fields

herds, and served as reservoirs for disease-carrying tsetse flies . .In 1900, the Foreign like in London hosted the first international conference on African wildlife. The agree- Jnts reached there proved ineffective, but set a precedent for more potent efforts in the Hlowirrg century.

e Galapagos Islands: D~'s vision of evolution · wught of Darwin as I jumped out of an inflatable boat and waded up onto a short beach greenish sand. Sea lions lounging on the shore showed minimal interest. In low trees

anging the beach were a few small birds: "Darwin's finches," I recajled. When he was this island, they were so unafraid that he could almost grab them by the feet. No longer unwary after another century of human contact, they still stayed closer to me than any I would at home. Over the crest of a lava hill lay a brackish lagoon where flamingos

lkcd gingerly. Around the corner in Post Office Bay were rocks covered with black marine Mnas and bright red crabs. Darwin had seen all these things. He didn't snorkel among the ndcrful variety of colorful little fish that I saw, but he caught ones like them, preserved m, and sent them back to England. To him, the Galapagos were a kaleidoscope of

Hgcs requiring understanding. He scarcely knew where to look nextd!_nd he certainly did I suspect the power these islands would exercise upon his ideas as he reflected in the next

· · · years on what he had seen there. He later apologized to himself more than anyone else not realizing sooner that each island was a separate biological assemblage. He had not

dully identified which islands his specimens came from: "It never occurred to me, that · productions of islands only a few miles apart, and placed under the same physical condi-

orn, would be dissimilar." 124 · · The phenomena that were to impress Darwin existed in the Galapagos because they were f!d,illds that lacked human inhabitants, and had few visitors, from the time volcanoes built llu:in out of the sea 3-5 million years ago until, relatively speaking, not long before his \,frill. 125 This meant not only that they were free from the destructive_ effects of settlement, ht11 also that they were unaffected by species of animals and plants. brought by humans 1\i,.t\Jss the seas. The organisms that reached the Galapagos got there either under their own jlnwcr by flying or swimming, floated there on ocean currents, or were blown there by irt)rms. The arrivals were few, and they survived only by adapting to the harsh local environ- )Hrnt. Plants had to be established before land animals could survive. A species ofland birds hhi\' have arrived as a single pair or a small flock. From a growing colony on one island, a

· ti',,, of their descendants may have made the perilous flight over water to a neighboring i~l.111d. There they encountered slightly different conditions. Each island became a unique ,,, psystem, changing as new species arrived and others became extinct. Among those that

\,1rnc were land-dwelling tortoises, which may have been carried from the mainland on rafts qt I cgetation. They evolved into a series of species, different on each island, and eventually fP 1·t' their name to the archipelago; galdpago is a Spanish word for tortoise. Two species of

._ !f1,11.111a descended, possibly, from one that made it to the islands: a yellowish-brown land · 1gi1.1na and the world's only marine iguana, black and seaweed-eating. Clues endured on the

142 The transformation of the biosphere

Galapagos to explain how evolution worked, because they were protected by their remot'. ness from changes that might have erased them.

Such changes were underway when Darwin arrived in 1835; the first settlement, a pen colony, had been established only in 1832, but before that buccaneers and whalers h often landed, looking for water and the huge tortoises that could be caught easily, dragg on board ship, and stored upside down, living for months without anything to eat or dri as a source of meat. Rats jumped ashore and found abundant food. The seafarers maroone goats and pigs, betting that they would find numerous offspring when they returned in lat years. Visitors and settlers were to bring dogs, cats, donkeys, and weedy plants, all ofwhidr did untold damage to native biota. At the time of Darwin's visit, tortoise meat was the most prevalent item of animal food in the islanders' diet. But enough continuity remained of pat, terns from the deep past to serve as evidence for the evolution of communities oflife.

Darwin arrived in the Galapagos on the Beagle, a ship whose Captain Robert FitzRoy · accepted him after hesitation because he thought the shape of Darwin's nose indicated lack of character. At first Darwin's father refused permission (Charles was 22), but Josiah Wedg, wood talked him into changing his mind, arguing that for "'a man of enlarged curiosity,' .. , the voyage was a golden opportunity to see 'men and things.'" 126 It was an understatement, · Later Darwin wrote, "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career ... I have always felt that I owe to the voyage my first real training or education of my mind. I was led to attend closely to several branches of natural history, thus my powers of observation were improved, though they were already fairly developed." 127 The Beagle sailed on December 27, 1831. She was 27 m (90 ft) long 1 with two masts; one 15 m (50 ft) tall, ofa class of ships called "coffin brigs" because of their · propensity to sink. But FitzRoy knew how to handle a ship in a storm.

The Beagle's landfall in Brazil, at Bahia;··gave Darwin his first view of a moist tropical forest. "Delight ... " he wrote, "is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, fol' the first time, has been wandering by himself in a Brazilian forest." 128 Unfortunately, that Atlantic coastal forest is now almost gone. 129

For the next two years the Beagle's crew mapped south of Montevideo. Darwin crossed the pampas and collected fossils of extinct mammals - sloth, armadillo, and llama - appar- ently related to modern species. He puzzled over this "succession of types:" why was there such a parallel between extinct and extant forms? It hinted that one species could transmute into another. The Falklands, uninhabited by humans for almost all their history, were a preface to the Galapagos. The birds, and the "wolf-like fox," were unusually tame in human presence; a fox could be killed by a man with a piece of meat in one hand and a knife in the other. A Mr. Lowe assured Darwin that "all the foxes from the western island were smaller and of a redder color than those from the eastern." Darwin would remember this comment when he noted the island-specific distribution of species in the Galapagos. Darwin predicted that with settlement of the Falklands, the fox would "be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished from the face of the earth." 130 Lamentably, he was right; none has been seen since 1875. The comment shows that hewas aware of the process of extinction; if early giant forms could die out, then the Earth's present complement of species could hardly be the same as at Creation, permanent and immutable, as Christian biologists then thought.

After sailing through the Straits of Magellan, FitzRoy decided to return to England by crossing the Pacific. On September 15, 1835, the Beagle arrived at the Galapagos, volcanic islands 950 km ( 600 mi) west of mainland Ecuador. The equatorial heat is cooled by south- east trade winds and the Humboldt Current. At first, Darwin was repelled by their aridity: "Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic

The transformation of!the biosphere 143

· ,is.every where covered by a stunted brushwood which shows little signs of life. " 131 Later · overed that the higher parts of the islands catch moisture from the clouds and have

nt vegetation. Beagle spent five weeks among the Galapagos; Darwin went ashore to observe and

ect on four of the larger islands. From the start, he speculated about the relationship of species on the Galapagos to those on other land masses. In his diary, he wrote: "It will e1y interesting to find ... to what district or 'centre of creation' the organized beings of archipelago must be auached." 132 He soon decided that the Galapagos assemblage of

n1als and plants, though unique, was related to that of South America. This could not Uy be explained by the idea of a separate creation on the isla:nds, but could be the result

igration from the continent and subsequent variation. 1e vegetation was remarkable. Many species and genera were new to science. High on i islands, the commonest trees (Scalesia) were members of the sunflower family, with

ry leaves and stems festooned with lichens giving the forest a weird aspect. 133 Darwin H.ed the absence of such common tropical plants as tree ferns and palms. He made a rela- 1dy complete collection of plants, only later suspecting that there was a pattern ofrelated 1 distinct species on separate islands. Ne was astounded to learn that the giant tortoises differed from island to island. Mr. W60n, the governor, told Darwin "that he could at once tell from which island any one

·1,~ brought." 134 Darwin was fascinated by the tortoises; he tried to ride them, confirming HII they were strong enough to carry his weight. He noticed that the birds were even more naive than those on the Falklands. He saw a

:111 sit by a pool of water with a stick and kill enough birds to make a pile for supper. "I 11,hcd off a branch with the end of my gun a large Hawk," he added. 135 At the time he ~ired they were already becoming warier; earlier explorers had reported that they alighted l their hats and arms. Their lack of fear was not due to absence of predators - the hawk, i' i: xample, caught smaller birds - but to unfamiliarity with humans. f hc first related bird species that Darwin noted were limited to certain islands were not

he famous finches, but mockingbirds. One species was exclusively found in Charles Island, iicrond on Albemarle, and a third common to James and Chatham. As he jotted these facts . l1is notebook, he was reminded of the tortoises and the Falkland foxes. He was not yet He whether these animals were species different from the others like them, or "only varie- 1'1,>, He continued, "If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks, the zoology of r, hipelagoes will be well worth examining, for such facts would undermine the stability of ledcs." 136 Here is the germ of the idea that the pattern of distribution of species in the

1,tl,\pagos is evidence for the way in which evolution takes place. Jl1rwin did not promptly observe a similar distribution among the finches because their

h1b, and the birds themselves, came in such a variety of shapes and sizes that he initially JP!lght they belonged to different genera: finches, wrens, grosbeaks, and blackbirds. It was

. ill\' when he returned to England, and the ornithologist John Gould told him that they ~'I'll" ,1ll finches, that he realized that they might have descended from a common ancestor f!i.11 came from the mainland, whose descendants developed specialized beaks for different t!h,1~. In 1839 he would declare, "It is very remarkable that a nearly perfect gradation of .:~1r11nure in this one group can be traced in the form of the beak, from one exceeding in \{1111c11sions that of the l.µ-gest grosbeak, to another differing but little from that of a \V,111,lcr." 137 Some finches use their beaks to probe flowers and bark, others crush hard seeds. I11ill others - the woodpecker finch and mangrove finch - use twigs and cactus spines as f\1i ik There is even a vampire finch that wounds sea birds and drinks their blood. There are

144 The transformation of the biosphere

species that are found on more than one island, but no two islands have exactly the same set of species. They were such a good example of the idea he was searching for that today they are famed as "Darwin's finches." By 1845, he would venture, "Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that, from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one. species had been taken and modified for different ends." 138 ,

On the return voyage, the Beagle called at Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, several islands in the Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, and Bahia again before landing in England on October 2, 1836. In Australia, Darwin was amazed by a collection of animals and plants so different from any other biota he had seen that he joked that there must have been two Creators at work on Earth. 139 He already doubted biblical creation as an adequate descrip• tion of the origin of the forms of life. But before he could put evolution in its place, he needed to discover how it happens, and to marshal evidence. That process would take years, but it started before the voyage was finished. In 1837, he jotted,

In July opened first note-book on "transmutation of species". Had been greatly struck from about month of previous March on character of South American fossils, and species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts origin (especially latter) of all my views. 140

This is only the first of many statements by Darwin on the importance of the Galapagos organisms to his thought on evolution. Much later he wrote,

During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards over the Continent; and thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which they differ slightly on each island of the group; none of the islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense. It was evident that such facts as these ... could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually became modified. 141

Darwin's most important contribution to the explanation of evolution was the idea of natural selection. It was suggested by the work of Thomas Robert Malthus, who had pointed out that human populations tend to increase exponentially, while the amount of cultivable land, and therefore food, can be increased only in linear fashion. Thus population will grow until limited by famine or some other factor. Darwin applied this principle to all living species. If unchecked, any species will increase until it uses all the resources available to support its numbers. Then members of the species will compete against each other for resources. Darwin further maintained that as species reproduce, they give rise to variations in their offspring. Some of these variations give individual organisms an advantage in com" petition for resources. These individuals survive longer, and are able to pass on their favora· ble variations to many of their own offspring. As this process continues, a new species may gradually evolve which is better adapted to its environment.

It would be incorrect to suggest that Darwin built his system of evolution only on the observations he made in the Galapagos. He spent much of the rest of his life observing and collecting information on the ways in which breeders of domestic species produce the

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The transformation of the biosphere 145

A Galapagos tortoise, "Lonesome George," the last surviving member of the Pinta Island subspecies. The tortoises were decimated by sailors who caught them for food, and by introduced species such as dogs, goats, and pigs. The birds in the foreground are "Darwin's finches." Photograph taken at the Charles Darwin Research Center, Santa Cruz Island, in 1996.

· rnzing varieties of form one sees in pigeons, for example. But the-Galapagos offered the dal stimulus, a fact he often acknowledged. Darwin never returned to the islands, but his

r11c has been associated with them ever since. Natural selection is an indispensable basis for understanding how ecosystems operate over w. The species that compose an ecosystem do not evolve by themselves, but through

·trraction with the other species that are part of the same community. Antelope that are 1i~c:d by lions experience natural selection favoring watchfulness and swiftness. Plants ten by caterpillars experience selection for poisonous and unpalatable characteristics; and

]lH· clterpillars in turn will be selected for resistance to those characteristics. Sexual selec- Jlnn, in which mates are preferred because they possess certain characteristics, is an impor- , 1H part of natural selection. Darwin came close to discovering the concept of the ecosystem, ~ltlwugh he never understood how variations are created and passed from one generation !J• ,11wther by genetic mutation and by recombination of genes through sexual reproduc- l\illiL But without Darwin's ideas, there could be no science of ecology. Donald Worster, in \{1/uture,s Economy, names Darwin "In many ways the most important spokesman for the ,i11,1,cntric attitude in ecological thought." 142 Further, it is possible to find some intimations (11 rnmmunity ecology in Darwin's thoughts on his observations in the Galapagos.

"By far the most remarkable feature in natural history of this archipelago ... is, that the 1!ilkrcnt islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by a different set of beings," he mused,

never dreamed that islands, about fifty or sixty miles apart, formed of precisely the same rh< ks, placed under a similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been dif- frrrn tly tenanted." 143 Here Darwin is considering, not just that related species live on dif- tnrnt islands, but that each island has a different complement of species. The communities

146 The transformation of the biosphere

also vary. A "web of complex relations' binds all of the living things in any region, Darwin writes. Adding or subtracting even a single species causes waves of change that race through the web, "onwards in ever-increasing circles of complexity."

For Darwin the whole of the Galapagos archipelago ,argues this fundamental lesson. The volcanoes are much .more diverse in their biology than their geology. The contrast suggests that in the struggle for existence, species are shaped at least as much by the local flora and fauna as by the local soil and climate. Why else would the plants and animals differ radically among islands that have "the same geological nature, the same height, climate, &c. "?144

Speculating on why the Galapagos organisms were so closely allied to those of South America, Darwin had recorded another thought that presaged the idea of evolution occur- ring within an ecosystem:

Why, on these small points of land, which within a late geological period must have been covered by the ocean, which are formed of basaltic lava, and therefore differ in geological character from the American continent, and whic;h are placed under a pecu- liar climate, - why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may add, in different proportions both in kind and number from those on the continent, and therefore actin.11 on each other in a different manner - why were they created on American types of organization? 145 ,

That is, the species on one of the Galapagos islands interact with each other in a community in a different pattern than that found on the mainland. This is not a fully developed theory of coevolution, but it looks in that direction. Darwin's observations in the Galapagos led him not only to the theory of evolution, but also toward community ecology.

The Galapagos Islands have had an increasing measure ofrecorded history. After Darwin left, the raids on tortoises continued until few or none could be found, so that ships stopped coming to the islands for them. Of fourteen subspecies of tortoises in the islands, thret~ became extinct, and another, from Pinta Island, is at least partially biologically extinct, since it was reduced to one known specimen, a male called "Lonesome George." In 2008, he apparently succeeded in fertilizing genetically similar females from the island oflsabela, who laid eleven eggs. At last report, however, none had hatched. Some of the other subspecies recovered after hunting subsided, especially on Isabela. Another onslaught of overhunting, against the fur seals, almost succeeded in making them extinct by 1900, but they are still present.

In the late nineteenth century, the human population of the Galapagos was quite small, consisting mainly of prisoners and their wardens, with a few farmers and miners. These people introduced many domestic animals and plants, added to the ones already there; which escaped, became feral, and multiplied. With goats, pigs, donkeys, horses, cattle, cats, dogs, rats, and mice searching many islands for food, the tortoises were again threatened with extinction, since few of the eggs and young survived, even though the adult tortoise~ could fend for themselves.

Scientific expeditions, such as that ofWilliam Beebe and the New York Zoological Society, began in the 1920s. In 1934, desiring to protect the islands, the Ecuadorian governmen1 passed laws which for a time existed only on paper. An expedition sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) studied the islandh and their biota in preparation for the centennial anniversary of The Origin of Species in 1959, Finally, effective legislation was enacted to protect the surviving ecosystems of the islandt and to make all of them (except the areas settled and farmed) a national park. The Charles

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Foundation was established to study and restore native fauna and flora, and it a home when the Charles Darwin Research Station was founded at Academy Bay

ta Cruz Island in the early 1960s. The research station gathers essential data on ered species, provides scientific information, and helps the national park with educa- grarns, including many for Ecuadorian students. It has a project to restore the giant

· populations by collecting eggs, and hatching and rearing the young tortoises until e large enough to protect themselves when they are returned to their native islands.

cial support for the station comes from, among others, the Ecuadorian government, mithsonian Institution, the San Diego Zoo, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, and c donors. The Galapagos have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and

here Reserve under the Man and the Biosphere program. ·nection for the wildlife and natural environment of the islands, including removal of

tic species, and the opening of tourism, were the purposes of the Galapagos National k Service, organized in 1968. Goats were eradicated from some islands. 146 Tourists came,

although permits were required and there was talk of limits, the number of visitors i:msed exponentially from the 1970s through the 1990s to about 60,000 per year. Tour- must be accompanied ·by national park guides, and are instructed not to'remove any- ty; nor to touch any wildlife. Along with tourists came an increase in residents, in large . to serve tourism. Others came to fish. The resident population rose from 1,500 in 1950 ri,119 in 1982. In 1997, it was estimated at more than 16,000 and growing 8 percent a

,\r. Ecuadorian attempts to limit immigration met with political stalemate. To restrict !ling and depletion of the marine ecosystem, the government established the Galapagos ;1rinc Resources Reserve, extending 15 nautical miles (27.8 km) from the islands, in 1986. •p,al fishing continued. In the early 1990s, poachers entered Galapagos waters to take rk fins and sea cucumbers, popular delicacies in east Asia, and when park wardens tried dose down an illegal fishing camp, poachers shot and badly wounded .. Qne of them. 147

.Passed and signed in March, 1998, a new Ecuadorian law created a ~arine sanctuary r nding 40 nautical miles ( 7 4 km) from the islands, banned industrial fishing, and directed 1 some revenues from tourism be designated to support conservation, including the uoval of aggressive introduced species. It also established the island's first inspection and

. ,1rantine system to prevent introduction of exotic species, and granted permanent resi- 111 status only to Ecuadoreans who have lived on the islands for five years or more. 148

.1111Toduction of non-native plants continues to be a problem as bad as that of animals. At •~cnt there are 250 introduced plants, including aggressive weedy species such as guava d lantana. The latter, a native of Mexico, has proved to be a scourge in every part of the

ppics where it has been introduced. Quinine, introduced to Santa Cruz Island in 1946, _\h spread through 4,000 ha (10,000 acres) of the rare Miconia vegetation zone. In 1996, · plot of kudzu was found on a Galapagos farm; in the southeastern United States, this pest

,1111 grows into impenetrable thickets and climbs up trees that often fall under its weight. :munately, botanists from the Charles Darwin Research Station convinced the farmer to

tfrr:t roy the kudzu before it could spread. •..• I 11 spite of these problems of conservation, the Galapagos continue to help in answering \jucstions that are asked by Charles Darwin's scientific successors. One of the most interest-

%w. biological projects of recent times has been conducted since 1973 by Peter and Rose- ,.JH,1ry Grant. Peter is professor of biology at Princeton University and a graduate of the /University of Cambridge (Darwin's university, where there is now a Darwin College). 149

c';J'l1cy return each year to Daphne Major, an islet in the center of the Galapagos Archipelago, _!JJ rapture, band, measure, weigh, and release every one of the 400 or so finches that live on

148 The transformation of the biosphere

Figure 6.5 A cactus finch, one of "Darwin's finches," which are perhaps the most well-known examples of the evolution of species by natural selection. Photograph taken in 1996.

it, and observe their behavior. 150 They record which finches mate, how many offspring they have, and how many have survived each year. As closely as possible, they have charted th~ family trees of all the finches. Their observations show that the rate of evolution is much faster than had been expected. For example, the average size of the bills of a species popula, tion changes rapidly in response to stresses brought on by seasons that are wetter, such as those that come during an El Nino incident, or drier than normal. If the weather is drier, seeds of plants that withstand aridity, and are generally larger and harder, are more common 1 and smaller, softer seeds are in short supply. Among seed-eating finches, this situation favorfi the survival of larger birds with larger, heavier bills. Males survive better than females, and the surviving females choose to mate with the largest males. The average beak size increaseff by a millimeter or two, and this is observable over a period of years, not of centuries or mil,

The transformation of the biosphere 149

!Jiv But it is something like the stock market; a series of wet years favors the survival of liwith smaller bills. Still, the Grants have observed evolution occurring in Darwin's

something that Darwin would have been happy to know. It would have surprised l:Ja.t sometimes evolution can move with more than glacial speed. ·

modern times saw a greater transformation of the biosphere, and of the face of the ,than any previous period. One reason for this was the acceleration in the growth of mnan population that began in the later part of this period and would continue in the Heth century. Another cause was the explosive dispersion of European explorers, 1'81 conquerors, and colonists into virtually every other part of the world, along with the " rms of life they brought with them, intentionally or not. Not only did they spread

pean organisms, but they also transferred animals, crops, and diseases from various of the tropics to others. The result was a tendency to homogenize ecosystems and to linique native species into decline or extinction. Introduced diseases decimated popu-

rn unfamiliar with them. Settlers and exploiters removed forests, killed vast numbers of tuls, and established plantations of products valuable in world trade. hcsc were centuries of technological invention. Europeans were often the inventors, but iilso realized the potential ofinnovations made elsewhere and exploited them. They did ln their homelands, often regarding their achievements as human triumphs over nature. Mory of "Holland against the sea" is an example. It was the Europeans who first aced the Industrial Revolution, and it gave them a margin of military and economic for a time, indeed a long time, over other peoples. It also produ~ed unprecedented

Huts of pollution of the air, waters, and soil. Transportation, especially by sea, coloniza- .; ,ind the industrialization of increasingly urbanized countries created the first world is economy worthy of the name. It operated for the benefit of the metropolitan states, made possible the exploitation of resources located in far distant parts of the globe. ,t('nce began its modern odyssey in this period, although like Odysseus it was not always re of where its quest would take it. At times it seemed to offer humankind the ability to · c rstand and, in association with technology, to control the processes of nature. But it hcgan to learn how the various forms of life are interconnected, and the dangers of the

picnt destruction it had helped to make possible. Ideas of preserving and restoring 11r, appeared, even among the colonizers, and were to gain greater currency as the J\ks passed.

1't ,r the purposes of this chapter, "early modern" is taken to mean the period from Columbus to the 1·rit,n of Queen Victoria, or roughly 1492 to 1890. The latter date is chosen to indicate the beginning , ,!" the period of conservation, with the creation of wildlife reserves and national parks. I, ,I 111 F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: The Environmental History of the Early Modern World, Ber- kdcy and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2003. Nl'il Roberts, The Holocene: An Environmental History, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989, 155. /\,1thony S. Travis, "Poisoned Groundwater and Contaminated Soil: The Tribulations and Trial of the hrst Major Manufacturer of Aniline Dyes in Basel," Environmental History 2, 3, July 1997, 343-65. Vktor Perkiss, Nature, Technology, and Society: Cultural Roots of the Current Environmental Crisis, N,w York, New York University Press, 1993, 48. i\,bm Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776], Cambridge, MA, I Luvard Classics, 1909.

150 The transformation of the biosphere

7 John Bellamy Foster, Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature, New: York, Monthly Review Press, 2000; Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective, New York, St. Martin's, 1999; Reiner Grundmann, Marx and Ecology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1991.

8 Paul Demeny, "Population," in B.L. Turner II, William C. Clark, Robert W. Kates, John F. Richards, Jessica T. Mathews, and William B. Meyer, eds, The Barth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, 41-54.

9 William H. McNeill, A World History, New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, 306; McNeill, after reviewing the literature, concluded that the population of the New World fell from 50 million in 1492 to 4 million in 1650.

10 Donald Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977.

11 Anton van Leeuwenhoek, letter to the Royal Society of London, in Forest Ray Moulton and Justus J. Schifferes, eds, The Autobiography of Science, Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1945, 158.

12 Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins 1!(' Environmentalism, 1600-1860, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

13 Ibid., 221. ,, 14 Ibid., 203,206. 15 George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature: The Barth as Modified.by Human Action, New York, 1864

(reprint, Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 10-11. 16 Ibid., 11-12. 17 W. Bruce Lincoln, The Life of a Russian Geographer, Newtonville, MA, Oriental Research Partners,

1980, 30-3. .. 18 Keir Brooks Sterling, Last of the Naturalists: The Career of C. Hart Merriam, New York, Arno Press,

1974, 270. 19 Fernando Benftez, The Century After Cortes, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965, 1-2. 20 Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of the Aztecs: 'freasures of Tenochtitlan, London, Thames

& Hudson, 1988, 25. ··· 21 Victor E. Shelford, The Ecology of North America, Urbana, University oflllinois Press, 1963, 469. 22 David Rockwell, The Nature of North America: A Handbook to the Continent, New York, Berkley

Books, 1998, 290-1. 23 M. Walter Pesman, Flora Mexicana, Globe, AZ, Dale S. King, 1962, 115-16. 24 Eric G. Bolen, Ecology of North America, New York, John Wiley, 1998, 325-6. 25 Pesman, Flora Mexicana, 118-19. 26 Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519-

1810, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1964, 319. 27 Ibid., 5. 28 Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., The Columbian :Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, West•

port, CT, Greenwood Press, 1972. 29 Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological :Expansion of Europe, 900-1900, Cam-

bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, 89-90, 162, 270, etc. 30 Ibid., 2. 31 Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., Germs, Seeds, and Animals: Studies in Ecological History, Armonk, NY, M.E.

Sharpe, 1994, 29. 32 Florentine Codex 12. 29, in James Lockhart, ed., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest 1!(

America, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1993, 182. 33 Ibid., 12. 57. 34 Frans:ois Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico, tr. Alvin Eustis, Berkeley and Los Angeles,

University of California Press, 1963, 59. 35 Ibid., 94. 36 Ibid., 93. 37 Ibid., 103. 38 Crosby, Germs, Seeds, and Animals, 55. 39 Berutez, Century After Cortes, 89. 40 Crosby, Columbian :Exchange, 82. 41 Elinor G.K Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico, Cam·

bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Jnthly Review !'re , St. Martin's, J<itJ

es, John F. Richan :n Action: Global,, lge University Pre

306; McNeil!, all 1 50 million in H'

unbridge Univrn'

Julton and Jus1111. l58. , and the Origi11,

1965, 1-2.

s, 1963, 469, ·ew York, Berk

Jd Los An

The transformation of the biosphere 151

Ibid., 53. Andrew Sluyter, "From Archive to Map to Pastoral Landscape: A Spatial Perspective on the Livestock Ecology of Sixteenth-Century New Spain," Environmental History 3, 4, October 1?98, 508-28, at 519, 522. These were probably mostly black rats, skilled climbers that are common aboard ships. Crosby, Colum- bian Exchange, 97. Chevalier, Land and Society in Colonial Mexico, 75. C.}ibson, Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, 231-5. Marsh, Man and Nature, 1864. l am grateful to Petra J .E.M. van Dam, who took me to the Schermer Windmill Museum in September 1998, and who made the request to the miller-curator to start up the mill and pump. She also showed me the Rijnlandshuis, headquarters of the Rhineland water board, including tl1e allegorical painting mentioned in the following paragraph. Richard L. Hills, Power from Wind: A History of Windmill Technology, Cambridge, Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1994, 128-9. John G. Landels, "Engineering," in Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger, Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome, Vol. 1, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988, 323-52, 345-7. Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, 28, 344. Its title is: "Count William II of Holland gives the founding charter to the water board of Rhineland." Christopher Wright, Paintings in Dutch Museums: An Index of Oil Paintings in Public Collections in the Netherlands by Artists Born before 1870, London, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1980, 119; Albert Blankert et at., Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt, Washington, DC, National Clallery of Art, 1980. Paul F. State, A Brief History of the Netherlands, New York, Facts on File, 2008, 1. William H. TeBrake, "Taming the Waterwolf: Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages," Technology and Culture 43, 3, July 2002, 475-99, at 479-80. G.P. van de Ven, ed., Man-Made Lowlands: History of Water Management anti, Land Reclamation in the Netherlands, The Hague, Uitgiverij Matrijs, 1993, 17-21. Charles Cornelisse, Energiemarkten en energiehandel in Holland in de late Middeleeuwen, Hilversum,

· Verloren, 2008, English summary, 287-97. Pliny the Elder, Natural History 16.4, tr. H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, Vol. 4, 1968, 389. Petra J.E.M. van Dam, "Ecological Challenges, Technological Innovations: The Modernization of Sluice Building in Holland, 1300-1600," Technology and Culture 43, 3, July 2002, 500-20, at 505. Petra J.E.M. van Dam, "Sinking Peat Bogs: Environmental Change in Holland, 1350-1550," Environ- mental History 5, 4, 2000, 32-45; TeBrake, "Taming the Waterwolf," 476. Van de Ven, Man-Made Lowlands, 67-70. Charles Singer, E.J. Holmyard, A.R. Hall, and Trevor I Williams, eds, A History of Technology, Vol. 2, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956, 682-3. Arne Kaijser, "System Building from Below: Institutional Change in Dutch Water Control Systems, .Technology and Culture 43, 3, July 2002, 521-48, at 531. Milja van Tielhof and P.J.E.M. van Dam, "Losing Land, Gaining Water: Ecological and Financial Aspects of Regional Water Management in Rijnland, 1200-1800," Water Management, Communities, and Environment: The Low Countries in Comparative Perspective c. 1000-c. 1800, Jaarboek voor Ecolo- gische Geschiedenis (Yearbook for Ecological History) 2005/2006, 10, Gent, Academia Press, 2006, 63-94. Van de Ven, Man-Made Lowlands, 27. TeBrake, "Taming the Waterwolf," 497. Petra J.E.M. Van Dam, "Ecological Challenges, Technological Innovations: The Modernization of Sluice Building in Holland, 1300-1600," Technology and Culture 43, 3, July 2002, 500-20, at 506. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, NewYork,AlfredA. Knopf, 1987. De Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy, 31. Hills, Power from Wind, 120; van de Ven, Man-Made Lowlands, 148-9. Van de Ven, Man-Made Lowlands, 168. De Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy, 22.

152 The transformation of the biosphere

72 Van de Ven, Man-Made Lowlands, 289. 73 Harry Lintsen, "Two Centuries of Central Water Management in the Netherlands," Technology and

Culture 43, 3, July 2002, 549-68. 74 Hills, Power from Wind, 130. 75 Van de Ven, Man-Made Lowlands, 204. 76 Zuiderzeepolders Development and Colonization Authority, The Enclosure of the Zuiderzee and the

Reclamation of Polders in the Yssel-Lake, The Hague, Zwolle, 1957, 29. 77 Lintsen, "Two Centuries of Central Water Management," 567. 78 M.H. Port, ed., The Houses of Parliament, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1976, 97. 79 Peter Brimblecombe, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London since Medieval Times, London,

Methuen, 1987, 90-1; the Byron quotation is from Don Juan, 1819. 80 David Stradling and Peter Thorsheim, "The Smoke of Great Cities: British and American Efforts to

Control Air Pollution, 1860-1914," Environmental History 4, 1, January 1999, 6-31, at 10-11. 81 Brimblecombe, Big Smoke, 156. 82 H.B.D. Kettlewell, The Evolution of Melanism, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973; A.W. Mera, "Increase

in Melanism in the Last Half-Century," London Naturalist, 1926, 3-9. 83 Frani;:ois Crouzet, The Victorian Economy, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982, 33. 84 Asa Briggs, Victorian People: A Reassessment of Persons and Themes, 1851-67, rev. edn, Chicago, Uni·

versity of Chicago Press, 1970, 15-51. 85 Stephen Inwood, A History of London, New York, Carroll & Graff, 1998, 411. 86 Brimblecombe, Big Smoke, 124. 87 Ibid., 146, 165. 88 Ibid., 163. 89 Dale H. Porter, The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London,

Akron, OH, University of Akron Press, 1998, 56. · 90 B.W. Clapp, An Environmental History of Britain since the Industrial Revolution, London, Longman,

1994, 76. 91 Anthony S. Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain, Cambridge, MA, Harvard

University Press, 1983, 124-5. 92 Porter, Thames Embankment, 120-1. 93 Andrew Mearns, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, ed. Anthony S. Wohl, New York, Humanities Press,

1970. 94 Inwood, History of London, 503, 512, 602. 95 Hazel Conway, People's Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 1991. 96 Inwood, History of London, 666-8. 97 Clapp, Environmental History of Britain, 134. 98 Inwood, History of London, 569. 99 William Cobbett, Rural Rides, 1830 (1967, ed. G. Woodcock), 165,216,229. 100 Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, New York, Harper & Row, 1965. 101 R.S.R. Fitter, London's Natura/History, London, Collins, 1945, 101, ll8. 102 John Harold Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain, 3 vols, Cambridge, Cambridge Univcr•

sity Press, 1930-8, Vol. 1, 9-10. 103 J. T. Coppock, "Farming in an Industrial Age," in Alan R.H. Baker and J.B. Harley, eds, Man Made tl1v

Land: Essays in English Historical Geography, Totowa, NJ, Rowman&. Littlefield, 1973, 181-92, at 186.

104 Clapham, Economic History of Modern Britain, Vol. 2, 501. 105 Clapp, Environmental History of Britain, 107. 106 Clapham, Economic History of Modern Britain, Vol. 1, 18. 107 Coppock, "Farming in an Industrial Age," 184. 108 Crouzet, Victorian Economy, 153. 109 Coppock, "Farming in an Indµstrial Age," 191. 110 Crouzet, Victorian Economy, 176. 111 Clapp, Environmental History of Britain, 119. 112 B.R. Tomlinson, "Empire of the Dandelion: Ecological Imperialism and Economic Expansion, 1860*

1914," in Peter Burroughs and A.J. Stockwell, eds, Managing the Business of Empire: Essays in Honout• of David Fieldhouse, London, Frank Cass, 1998, 84-99, at 90-1.

I:

I I

11 11

I'

mds," Technoll{ff.1' 11

!le Zuiderzee and 1

1976, 97. wal Times, Lo11d11il'

l!Ilerican Effort,; 1 31, at 10-11.

T. Mera, "lnn,·,1

82, 33. n, Chicago, l !1.

The transformation of the biosphere 153

C.C. Eldridge, Victorian Imperialism, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1978, 143. D.K Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, 1830-1914, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973, 10-14. Ibid., 58-63. Crouzet, Victorian Economy, 193. Richard P. Tucker, "The Depletion of India's Forests under British Imperialism: Planters, Foresters, and Peasants in Assam and Kerala," in Donald Worster, ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, 118-40, at 133. John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation, and British Imperialism, Manches- ter, Manchester University Press, 1988, 92. Thomas R Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999; Alfred W. Crosby, "The British Empire as a Product of Continental Drift," in Germs, Seeds, and Animals, 62-81, at 66. MacKenzie, Empire of Nature, 7.

I Ibid., 149-56. Ibid., 171, 179, 187, 193-4. Grove, Green Imperialism, 441-56. Charles Darwin, The Works of Charles Darwin, ed. Paul H. Barrett and R B. Freeman, Journal of llesearches, 2 vols, New York, New York University Press [1839], 1986, 474,629. Allan Cox, "Ages of the Galapagos Islands," in Robert I. Bowman, Margaret Berson, and Alan E. Leviton, eds, Patterns of Evolution in Galapagos Organisms, San Francisco, CA, American Association forthe Advancement of Science, 1983, 11-24. ' Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, New York, Time Warner, 1991, 102. Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin's Autobiography, ed. Francis Darwin, New York, Henry Schuman [1876], 1950, 38. Darwin, Journal of Researches, 11. . Warren Dean, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Braziliail Atlantic Forest, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1995.

il(J Darwin, Journal of Researches, 250-1, 476-7. ,11 [bid., 454.

Charles Darwin, The Works of Charles Darwin, ed. Paul H. Barrett and R. B. Freeman, Diary of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, New York, New York University Press [1836], 1986, 337. Michael H. Jackson, Galapagos: A Natura/History, Calgary, AB, Canada, University of Calgary Press, 1993, 86-9. Darwin, Journal of Researches, 465. Darwin, Diary, 334. Nora Barlow, ed., Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle, New York, Philosophical Library, 1946, 246-7; Nora Barlow, "Darwin's Ornithological Notes," Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series 2, 1963, 201-78, at 262. Darwin, Journal of Researches, 1839, 462. Darwin, Journal of Researches, 1845, 379-80. F,W. Nicholas and J.M. Nicholas, Charles Darwin in Australia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

tO Darwin, Journal (Pocket Book), 1837. 1\ ! Darwin, Autobiography, 52-3.

Worster, Nature's Economy, 180. Darwin,Journal of Researches, 1845, 393-4. Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch, New York, Vintage Books, 1995, 225-6. Darwin, Journal of Researches, 1845, 393. ,Ole Hamann, "Changes and Threats to the Vegetation," in R Perry, ed., Key Environments: Galapagos, Oxford, IUCN and Pergamon Press, 1984, 115-31. l:lliecer Cruz, "News from Academy Bay," Noticias de Galapagos 58, May 1997, 2-3; "Galapagos: Too Many People," The Economist, May 10, 1997, 44. "New Law," La Carta (Charles Darwin Foundation), Spring 1998, 3. Peter R. Grant, Ecology and Evolution of Darwin's Finches, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986. Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

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