Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Studies in Environment and History) Book

People of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain; but, as this highly original and fascinating book demonstrates, the Europeans' displacement and replacement of the native peoples in the temperate zones was more a matter of biology than of military conquest. By focusing on the ecological side of European expansion, the author shows how the Europeans were able to take over temperate lands because of the rapid and almost automatic triumph of the plants, animals, and germs they brought with them. European organisms had certain decisive advantages over their New World and Australasian counterparts: Europeans and their descendants shared in these advantages. As a result, in the centuries after Columbus's voyages the proportion of Europeans and their descendants to the rest of the human species expanded, and these imperialists became proprietors of perhaps the most important agricultural lands in the world.