European Colonialism and the Anthropocene - A View from the Pacific Coast of North America (2013) (15 pages)

G Model ANCENE-12; No. of Pages 15 e2 K.G. Lightfoot et al./Anthropocene xxx (2013) e1-e15 agree with Stiner et al. (2011) that the focus on the past two centuries has tended to flatten the great time depth of humanity, rendering an understanding of “deep history” as unknowable or at least unimportant. The dramatic fluctuations caused by previous periods of growth, decline, intensification, and overexploitation that would have had profound impacts for earlier societies are smoothed and erased in comparison to the scale of recent developments. In this paper we peel away the tunnel vision of the past two centuries to examine the dramatic changes of the colonial period as they unfolded beginning in the late 1400s and 1500s Second, the expanding early modern global world transformed local environments that had already been constructed, to varying degrees, by local indigenous peoples over many centuries and millennia. Nowhere in the Americas or elsewhere did European colonists encounter purely pristine, natural environments. The landscapes had long been modified by hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies, who initiated various kinds of exploitation and management strategies that greatly influenced the diversity and distribution of floral and faunal populations. Third, colonialism and the growth of the early modern world both preceded and stimulated the development of the Industrial Revolution. The global exploitation of resources by European nations that began in earnest by the late 1500s-1600s provided the material means, world markets, and labor supplies to launch fullscale industrialization in Great Britain by the1800s that was accelerated by the commercial development of the steam engine and the switch to coal fuels. Thus, it is important to consider the Industrial Revolution as part of a broader long-term process of globalization that had been on-going for several centuries. We begin by discussing some of the major environmental changes associated with early modern globalization. Whereas the other papers in this special issue of the Anthropocene rightly draw attention to the flattened left tail of the J curve prior to the Industrial Revolution (see Stiner et al., 2011:242-246), this article focuses on the initial upswing of this curve. We highlight the rapid deployment of managerial and mission colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, arguing that these colonial endeavors had significant reverberations in altering pre-existing human-land relationships. We conclude our paper with a case study of environmental transformations as they played out during the colonialism of Alta and Baja California in the 1600s through the early 1800s. Specifically, this study examines how early modern colonialism in the Californias transformed anthropogenic landscapes created by indigenous peoples, and how commercial fur hunting and missionary agriculture further modified, in substantial ways, local marine and terrestrial ecosystems. 2. Early modern globalism The emergence of early modern nations in Europe was a key factor in the transformation from feudalism to the global economies that began to unfold in the late 1400s and 1500s. Beginning with Spain and Portugal, and rapidly followed by the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, and other countries, these increasingly centralized polities, defined by Wallerstein and others as core-states, initiated surplus producing strategies that involved intensified agrarian production, long-distance trade, mercantile networks, territorial expansion, and colonialism (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980; Wolf, 1982:101-125). The driving force in the creation of the new world order was the territorial expansion of the corestates into new lands from which valued goods and commodities could be exploited at great profit (Richards, 2003:17-20). This process of colonial expansion and world trade was accelerated by the advent of new transportation technologies, particularly the development of more efficient and safer sailing vessels for moving people and goods across oceans. With state supported colonies becoming the lynchpin of this expanding global system, early modern nations competed with each other for the establishment of new outposts in Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Oceania, and the Americas from which minerals, timber, furs and skins, teas, spices, sugar, cotton, tobacco and other profit-generating goods could be obtained and/or produced. 2.1. Settler, managerial, and mission colonies Our perception of European colonies tends to be colored by accounts of those peripheral places settled by European immigrants seeking a new and better life. Known as settler colonies, these colonial formations were most common in places where lands and climate were relatively similar to Europe, what Crosby (2004:2-3) has termed the “Neo-Europes,” including North America, Australia, New Zealand, and some temperate areas of South America. The relentless push westward by Euro-American pioneers into the North American frontier is a familiar trope. As detailed by Crosby (2004), Cronon (1983), and Merchant (2002, 2010), the resulting settler colonial economies, which involved primarily farming and ranching, had significant environmental consequences across the Neo-Europes. Settler colonies, however, were only one of many colonial enterprises unleashed by European core-states during early modern times. In this paper we focus on two other, lesser known entities managerial and mission colonies — that facilitated massive environmental changes on a global scale prior to the Industrial Revolution. They differ from settler colonies in three crucial ways. First, managerial and mission colonies were outposts managed by a small number of colonial agents or missionaries who depended for their economic success on inexpensive indigenous laborers and/or imported workers, usually African slaves. In contrast, settler colonies were largely comprised of immigrant Europeans, either free born or indentured, who worked largely in family owned businesses or farms. Second, many immigrant families in early settler colonies participated, at least initially, in subsistence-oriented agrarian economies. This was particularly true for colonists situated in outlying frontier zones away from good transportation arteries and market towns. As Merchant (2010:149-197) details for colonial New England, immigrant family farmers pursued a mixed agrarian economy in which they raised grains, fruit, poultry, livestock for daily use, exchanging surplus goods for commodities and other manufactured goods they were not able to produce. In contrast, managerial colonies were explicitly profit-oriented enterprises from the outset that produced commodities on plantations or extracted resources for global markets, as exemplified by fur trade outposts or commercial fishing factories. Situated between these two poles in the economic spectrum, mission colonies usually strove to be self-sufficient, but also produced food and goods that typically supplied many of the needs of the colonial infrastructure (colonial administrators, military, and other secular interests). Third, as the first wave of colonization in many global regions, managerial and mission colonies often predated the widespread expansion of settler colonies. They were not only the first colonial institutions to disperse widely across many Neo-European regions, such as North America, but they served as the primary colonial institutions for core-states expanding into the tropical lands and islands of Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and South Asia. This early surge of colonization left an indelible environmental imprint on a global scale. The earliest managerial and mission colonies were administered as state-run monopolies by Portugal and Spain beginning in the late 1400s and 1500s in the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, South Please cite this article in press as: Lightfoot, K.G., et al., European colonialism and the Anthropocene: A view from the Pacific Coast of North America. Anthropocene (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.09.002

G Model ANCENE-12; No. of Pages 15 e2 K.G. Lightfoot et al./Anthropocene xxx (2013) e1-e15 agree with Stiner et al. (2011) that the focus on the past two centuries has tended to flatten the great time depth of humanity, rendering an understanding of “deep history” as unknowable or at least unimportant. The dramatic fluctuations caused by previous periods of growth, decline, intensification, and overexploitation that would have had profound impacts for earlier societies are smoothed and erased in comparison to the scale of recent developments. In this paper we peel away the tunnel vision of the past two centuries to examine the dramatic changes of the colonial period as they unfolded beginning in the late 1400s and 1500s Second, the expanding early modern global world transformed local environments that had already been constructed, to varying degrees, by local indigenous peoples over many centuries and millennia. Nowhere in the Americas or elsewhere did European colonists encounter purely pristine, natural environments. The landscapes had long been modified by hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies, who initiated various kinds of exploitation and management strategies that greatly influenced the diversity and distribution of floral and faunal populations. Third, colonialism and the growth of the early modern world both preceded and stimulated the development of the Industrial Revolution. The global exploitation of resources by European nations that began in earnest by the late 1500s-1600s provided the material means, world markets, and labor supplies to launch fullscale industrialization in Great Britain by the1800s that was accelerated by the commercial development of the steam engine and the switch to coal fuels. Thus, it is important to consider the Industrial Revolution as part of a broader long-term process of globalization that had been on-going for several centuries. We begin by discussing some of the major environmental changes associated with early modern globalization. Whereas the other papers in this special issue of the Anthropocene rightly draw attention to the flattened left tail of the J curve prior to the Industrial Revolution (see Stiner et al., 2011:242-246), this article focuses on the initial upswing of this curve. We highlight the rapid deployment of managerial and mission colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, arguing that these colonial endeavors had significant reverberations in altering pre-existing human-land relationships. We conclude our paper with a case study of environmental transformations as they played out during the colonialism of Alta and Baja California in the 1600s through the early 1800s. Specifically, this study examines how early modern colonialism in the Californias transformed anthropogenic landscapes created by indigenous peoples, and how commercial fur hunting and missionary agriculture further modified, in substantial ways, local marine and terrestrial ecosystems. 2. Early modern globalism The emergence of early modern nations in Europe was a key factor in the transformation from feudalism to the global economies that began to unfold in the late 1400s and 1500s. Beginning with Spain and Portugal, and rapidly followed by the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, and other countries, these increasingly centralized polities, defined by Wallerstein and others as core-states, initiated surplus producing strategies that involved intensified agrarian production, long-distance trade, mercantile networks, territorial expansion, and colonialism (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980; Wolf, 1982:101-125). The driving force in the creation of the new world order was the territorial expansion of the corestates into new lands from which valued goods and commodities could be exploited at great profit (Richards, 2003:17-20). This process of colonial expansion and world trade was accelerated by the advent of new transportation technologies, particularly the development of more efficient and safer sailing vessels for moving people and goods across oceans. With state supported colonies becoming the lynchpin of this expanding global system, early

modern nations competed with each other for the establishment of new outposts in Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Oceania, and the Americas from which minerals, timber, furs and skins, teas, spices, sugar, cotton, tobacco and other profit-generating goods could be obtained and/or produced. 2.1. Settler, managerial, and mission colonies Our perception of European colonies tends to be colored by accounts of those peripheral places settled by European immigrants seeking a new and better life. Known as settler colonies, these colonial formations were most common in places where lands and climate were relatively similar to Europe, what Crosby (2004:2-3) has termed the “Neo-Europes,” including North America, Australia, New Zealand, and some temperate areas of South America. The relentless push westward by Euro-American pioneers into the North American frontier is a familiar trope. As detailed by Crosby (2004), Cronon (1983), and Merchant (2002, 2010), the resulting settler colonial economies, which involved primarily farming and ranching, had significant environmental consequences across the Neo-Europes. Settler colonies, however, were only one of many colonial enterprises unleashed by European core-states during early modern times. In this paper we focus on two other, lesser known entities managerial and mission colonies — that facilitated massive environmental changes on a global scale prior to the Industrial Revolution. They differ from settler colonies in three crucial ways. First, managerial and mission colonies were outposts managed by a small number of colonial agents or missionaries who depended for their economic success on inexpensive indigenous laborers and/or imported workers, usually African slaves. In contrast, settler colonies were largely comprised of immigrant Europeans, either free born or indentured, who worked largely in family owned businesses or farms. Second, many immigrant families in early settler colonies participated, at least initially, in subsistence-oriented agrarian economies. This was particularly true for colonists situated in outlying frontier zones away from good transportation arteries and market towns. As Merchant (2010:149-197) details for colonial New England, immigrant family farmers pursued a mixed agrarian economy in which they raised grains, fruit, poultry, livestock for daily use, exchanging surplus goods for commodities and other manufactured goods they were not able to produce. In contrast, managerial colonies were explicitly profit-oriented enterprises from the outset that produced commodities on plantations or extracted resources for global markets, as exemplified by fur trade outposts or commercial fishing factories. Situated between these two poles in the economic spectrum, mission colonies usually strove to be self-sufficient, but also produced food and goods that typically supplied many of the needs of the colonial infrastructure (colonial administrators, military, and other secular interests). Third, as the first wave of colonization in many global regions, managerial and mission colonies often predated the widespread expansion of settler colonies. They were not only the first colonial institutions to disperse widely across many Neo-European regions, such as North America, but they served as the primary colonial institutions for core-states expanding into the tropical lands and islands of Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and South Asia. This early surge of colonization left an indelible environmental imprint on a global scale. The earliest managerial and mission colonies were administered as state-run monopolies by Portugal and Spain beginning in the late 1400s and 1500s in the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, South Please cite this article in press as: Lightfoot, K.G., et al., European colonialism and the Anthropocene: A view from the Pacific Coast of North America. Anthropocene (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.09.002