Globalization: A Continuation of Euro-American Colonialism

The major lasting impact of human mobility across borders and across cultures is the rise of the western domination and exploitation of cultures; and which now manifests itself globalization. In this essay I seek to explain the cultural values which made western domination possible and the impact this culture, once globalized had on ecosystems. The supremacy was the product of cultural forces which were favorable to European domination, and on the part of conquered peoples, their biological susceptibility to European diseases. The cultural tradition of Western Europeans favored travel and exploration, the possession of technologies as well as a judgment system which based the value of a culture on it's technological capabilities. From an evolutionary perspective, Europeans harbored stronger disease strains than the cultures they came in contact with, particularly in the Americas; the resulting spread of illness and death among susceptible peoples gave Europeans a huge window of opportunity in which to perform their cultural imperative, which was world dominance. The ramifications of travel are a combination of cultural and environmental results. The environmental effects of travel supercede the purely ecological disruptions of forests, rivers and wildlife, and encompass the spread of cultural values and ideas about the environment and their establishment.

Motivations which drove European exploration

One question it is useful to answer in examining the effects of anything is, "Are the motivations behind events as important as the fact that something happens?" In the outcome of European exploration, motivation greatly influenced circumstances. According to Cipolla, the main motivation for travel, are the pursuit of material riches. One possible reasoning for this material greed is that the small countries of western Europe competed among each other because of their small size, and proximity to each other.

European expansion "cannot be described as the result of Malthusian pressures either. Recurrent epidemics were constantly checking population growth and no population pressure of any relevance was felt in Europe until the second half of the eighteenth century. He continues on to say that "European expansion was essentially a commercial venture." Although missionaries were the main deliverers of Western culture, religion and diseases. "But it is doubtful whether the religious element was as relevant among the motives that drove people overseas as it was among the forces that helped them once they were there"(Cipolla 132). 'Religion supplied the pretext and gold the motive"(Cipolla 136).

European missionaries were significant spreaders of cultural influence and the dominant sources of disease transmission.