Impact of European Expansion on the Environment

Impact of European Expansion on the Environment

Technology has facilitated the transportation of a mass of people from one part of the world to another. This massive human travel, either it be the exploration, colonization, or trade of the early European nations or the contemporary infrastructure of trade, tourism, or globalization, has impacted the environment and the humans involved. This paper focuses on the era of European expansion to examine the effect of human travel on the environment and humans. The Europeans were not only responsible for the actual exploitation of natural resources in the places they discovered, but they also took diseases, new technologies, and non-native plant and animal species which had a tremendous impact on the native human population as well as the environment.

The hunger for more natural resources and the need to trade for exotic goods were the main causes for European exploration and colonization. Even though religion was used as a “pretext” for European expeditions, “gold” was the real motive (1). Cippola further explains that, “Through the idea of mission and crusade the conquistadores succeeded where the medieval merchants failed and were able to reconcile the antithesis between business and religion that had plagued the conscience of medieval Europe”(2). Cipolla also discards Malthusian pressure as a possible cause for European expansion. Devastating and recurrent epidemics were constantly keeping the population growth in check and “no population pressure of any relevance was felt in Europe till the second half of the eighteenth century” (3). By eliminating these two powerful driving forces as the motivation for expansion, Cipolla claims that European expansion was basically a commercial venture (4). This expansion, being a very aggressive commercial venture, has some effect on the environment. The Europeans exploited the natural resources of the places they ‘discovered’. Excessive mining for natural resources and deforestation for shipbuilding are examples of environmental damages caused by European expansion (5). As the expansion spread throughout the world and the European Empires grew bigger and stronger, so did the pressure put on the environment to sustain this expansion.

In addition to the actual exploitation of the natural resources of discovered nations and the harm to the environment associated with it, the Europeans brought with them diseases and introduced non-native plant and animal species that had catastrophic effect on to the native human population and the ecosystem, respectively.

Even though the Europeans ventured into all the continents, the Americas were the ones that were greatly affected by the diseases that traveled with the Europeans.