Historians look at cause and effect, not just facts
Historians look at different kinds of causes

• natural resources
• ideas
  
• great men (and women) can cause events
• economics can be a cause
• natural disaster
• religion
• technology
  

This book asks what can scientific understanding of the natural environment (ecology) tell us about the causes of historical events?  To what extent can ecology explain where European expansion succeeded and where it failed?

This book: we need to use ideas that come from the science of ecology to understand these particular historical events

The nature of science

• science is more than just the facts
• science gives us predictive knowledge about the physical world
• science is facts and then theories (description of cause and effect) of how those facts are connected
• the scientific method makes progress possible
  
• science changes because scientists work to come up with better theories
• if you look carefully at how science works you find there isn't a neat dividing line between theories and facts
• science is not something fixed, it is human ideas that humans keep improving
• science is a tool
  

What is the difference between ecology and environment? 
An ecologist is a scientist, an environmentalist is a concerned citizen

• ecology is scientific study of relationships within the natural environment
  
• environment is our surroundings
• in environmental history we are talking about the natural environment
• we are making a distinction between the human-created world and the natural world (humans vs. the environment)
  
• actually we can't draw a simple line between the two
• so ecology looks at the patterns of interaction within the environment (tending to leave humans out)
  

What are the different ways we can put history and environment together?

• history of a specific issue
• look at human history using the tools of ecology: Crosby
• look at how human ideas about nature have changed and vary: Nash
• look at the history of environmental policy: Rothman
• write history from the point of view of the land instead of from the point of view of people

Step 1: the Crosby book is looking at how ecology shapes human history

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How did Europe go out, starting in the 15th century, and dominate the rest of the world?
Why did they decide to try? How did they do that?  How come they succeeded?

• European culture encouraged curiosity. 
  
• There isn't much reason to do so unless you believe in progress.  Starting in the renaissance Europeans increasingly believed in progress
• progress--things will keep getting better
• technology and science progress
• live longer
• better standard of living
  
• they needed more land and resources to feed all the people they had (economic arguments)
• people wanted more opportunity (they were beginning to believe they could make their lives better--capitalism makes that possible)
  
• usual explanation of how they succeeded is that European civilization was more advanced, but that wasn't really true in the beginning
  
• they became more advanced in thinking and in technology

This seems natural to us, but it is odd and surprising.  A couple of centuries earlier China was way ahead of Europe in technology, including gunpowder.  Why did the Europeans do it when the Chinese didn't? 

• Chinese tended to have the idea that the rest of the world was not worth conquering
  
• Europeans had new ideas--they believed in progress
• therefore they wanted to conquer the rest of the world
• they were more were beginning to develop the idea that humans could change the world
• were interested in expansion
  

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We can understand this by looking for ecological explanations.  Use the ideas of ecology to look at what human beings do, where they go, and what happens when they get there.   Europeans went to climates similar to their own and took their own livestock and plants. 

But why did European plants and animals win rather than lose the competition with native species?

• why did Europeans go out to explore the rest of the world? you can make an argument about ideas or you can argue that they needed resources and food for a growing population
• why did they succeed?  they had better technology (but this may be an effect rather than a cause)
• or you can argue that European people and the plants and animals they brought had a ecological advantage as well as a cultural advantage
• ecological advantage--European plants and animals did better than the native ones
  
• cultural advantage: "better" ways of doing things
  

Historians don't usually use ecological arguments--what is this field of environmental history?

• when Crosby published The Columbian Exchange people thought it very strange
• compare impact of European plants and animals on North America with the impact the other way (North American plants and animals on Europe)--very one-sided
  
• history traditionally focused on human beings--their society (how people interact) and culture (ideas and art)
• environmental history started from a political motivation--how did we get into the mess we are in?
• are we just going to look at how and why human beings messed up the environment?
• what about the other direction--how did the environment change human beings?
  
• environmental history deals with the intersection of the natural and the cultural/social
  
• not one controls the other but how do they interact
• how do you integrate ecology, social relations, technology, and culture into a unified explanation of social change?

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