BACK STORY - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 21

Alfred Crosby has christened the process by which this assemblage of domesti-
cated animals and plants (along with the weeds, pests, and diseases that inevitably
accompanied them) achieved their current global range, 'ecological imperialism',
replacing or subsuming his earlier coinage, 'the Columbian exchange' (see Crosby,
1986, 1972). These labels are somewhat inconsistent in their political implications,
but they both have validity. Especially with regard to plants, the Americas have
transformed the rest of the world at least as much as they have been transformed
by it: corn (maize) and potatoes are now everywhere. But of course American
imperialism, when it emerged, did not result from this multidirectional dissemina-
tion of indigenous vegetables. Instead it was a consequence of the final westward
transfer of the combination of domesticated plants and animals initially developed
in ancient southwest Asia, and gradually adapted to the colder wetter climates of
northern Europe and eastern North America.
The instigators of the wave of acclimatization attempts that crested in the late
nineteenth century often claimed that their motives were similarly utilitarian. But
as is often the case, their actions told a somewhat different story. The American
experiences of the English sparrow and the camel suggest the much smaller scale
of such transfers, though the relatively few imported sparrows ultimately popu-
lated an entire continent through their own vigorous efforts. In addition, most
nineteenth-century introductions resulted from the vision or desire of a few
individuals, not an entire community or society; they involved the introduction of
more or less exotic animals to that community, rather than the transportation by
human migrants of familiar animals along with tools and household goods in order
to reestablish their economic routine. Self-conscious efforts at acclimatization also
embodied assumptions and aspirations that were much more grandiose and self-
confident: the notion that nature was vulnerable to human control and the desire
to exercise that control by improving extant biota. In many ways acclimatization
efforts seemed more like a continuation of a rather different activity, which also
had ancient roots, though not quite as ancient: the keeping of exotic animals in
game parks and private menageries (for the rich), and in public menageries and
sideshows (for the poor). This practice similarly both reflected the wealth of human
proprietors, and implicitly suggested a still greater source of power, the ability to
categorize and re-categorize, since caged or confined creatures—even large dan-
gerous ones like tigers or elephants or rhinoceroses—inevitably undermine the
distinction between the domesticated and the wild.
The scale of these nineteenth-century enterprises was often paradoxical: they
simultaneously displayed both hubristic grandeur in their aspirations and narrow
focus and limited impact in their realizations. For example, the thirteenth Earl of
Derby, whose estate at Knowsley, near Liverpool, housed the largest private
collection of exotic wild animals in Britain, was one of the founders of the
Zoological Society of London and served as its President from 1831 until he died
in 1851. He bankrolled collecting expeditions to the remote corners of the world,
and there were frequent exchanges of animals between his Knowsley menagerie
and the Zoo at Regent's Park, as well as other public collections (Fisher and