Geo 139 Quiz 1

The Worlding of the World Definition (Gayarti Spivak)

The imperialist process of forcing colonized lands to fit into a Western/European worldview. It involves erasing indigenous history and culture by pretending the land was “blank” or “uninscribed” before the colonizers arrived

Geographical Imagery Definition

The shared, subconscious mental map a society holds of a specific place. It is a “taken for granted” way of seeing the world that highlights certain features while ignoring others.

Globalization Definition

The increasing integration of economies, cultures, and populations around the world, driven by trade, technology and information flow.

Events that set the stage for a global world,

1) The Silk Road

2) The Crusades and Outre-mer

3) The Black Death

4) The fall of Constantipole in 1453

Events that led to the unfold of Globalizations

1) Zheng He and Indian Ocean/SW Pacific Chinese economic networks

2) Portuguese move into the Indian Ocean/SW Pacific

3) Treaty of Saragosa/Tordesillas

4) Spanish find silver at Potosi, 1545

Colonialism Definition

The Silk Road

Primary pre-modern trade network connecting China, India, and the Mediterranean. Represents an early form of globalization because it facilitated the exchange of luxury goods and ideas. It established the desire in Europe for Asian goods which later drove the need for new trade routes.

The Crusades and Outre-mer

The Crusades were military expeditions by Western Christians to seize the Holy Land. The Crusades exposed backward Western Europe to the advanced wealth, luxury goods, and knowledge of the Islamic World. It created a permanent European demand for Eastern Products.

The Black Death 1348-1350

The bubonic plague pandemic wiped out 30-60% of Europe’s population. It was a socio-economic reset button that made expansion possible.

Concentration of Wealth (The Black Plague)

With fewer people alive, the existing wealth (gold, land, and resources) was divided among fewer survivors. This created a class of people with disposable income to buy luxury goods

Labor shortage (Black Plague)

Because so many workers died, labor became scarce and valuable. Peasants could demand higher wages or leave bad masters

Beginning of the end of feudalism (Black Plague)

The labor shortage broke the rigid feudal structure. Lords could no longer force serfs to stay on the land without pay. This loosened social bonds and allowed for a more mobile, market based economy to emerge.

Degradation of European Soil Fertility (Black Plague)

Before the plague, Europe was overpopulated and the soil was exhausted from over-farming to feed everyone. The population drop allowed the land to recover, but the memory of resource scarcity drove the desire to find new land and resources elsewhere (The Americas)

Fall of Constantinople in 1453

The capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks. This was the immediate “trigger for the Age of Discovery. The Ottomans blocked the traditional land routes (Silk Road) to Asia or taxed them heavily. Europe was forced to “go West to get East”. It pushed Portugal and Spain to find sea routes to the spice markets, leading to the accidental “discovery” of the Americas.

Zheng He and Indian Ocean/SW Pacific Chinese Economic Networks

Zheng He (Muslim Admiral) led treasure fleets on seven voyages. Zheng He’s fleet had 317 ships, making Columbus’s fleet look tiny in comparison. This proves globalization didn’t start with Europe. China had the technology and capacity to colonize the world decades earlier, but chose to turn inward because it didn’t see the value in foreign conquest.

Portuguese Move into the Indian Ocean/SW Pacific

The Portuguese entered the Indian ocean trade network not as peaceful partners but as armed aggressors. They introduced “armed trading”. The Portuguese had nothing the Asians wanted to buy, so they used cannons to sink competitors and seize key ports to tax the trade. They forced their way into the market using violence.

Treaty of Saragosa/Tordesillas

Two treaties brokered by the pope that literally divided the world in half between Spain and Portugal. This is the ultimate example of “The worlding of the World.” Two European powers looked at a map of the entire globe and simply drew a line to claim ownership of millions of people and lands they had never seen.

Treaty of Saragosa 1529

Divided the Pacific/Asia to resolve disputes over the Spice Islands

Treaty of Tordesillas 1494

Divided the Atlantic/Americas. Spain got everything to the West (most of the Americas), Portugal got everything to the East (Brazil and Africa).

Spanish Find Silver at Potosi 1545

Potosi was a mountain made of silver ore and became the industrial complex in the world in the 16th century. This fueled the global economy.

Ecological Imperialism

Concept defined by Alfred Crosby. Argues that European settlers didn’t just conquer with guns and laws; they conquered with biology. They brought plants, animals, and diseases that terraformed the “New World” into a version of Europe. This made it easier for them to settle and push indigenous life out.

Potatoes and the Irish Famine

Potatoes were brought to Europe as part of the Colombian Exchange. Became the primary food source of the Irish Poor. The British colonial system forced the Irish to rely on a single crop. When a fungus hit in 1845, it wiped out the entire food supply. Food was still exported from Ireland to Britain while people starved, proving that colonialism reorganizes local ecology to serve the empire not the locals.

Effect of Domesticated Grazers

The introduction of European livestock to places like the Americas and Australia. Europeans viewed these animals as property but the animals acted as biological shock troops.

Imported Animals as Bioweapons, Acclimatization as Strategy

Bioweapons: The use of animals or diseases to wipe out Indigenous populations or food sources.
Acclimatization: The deliberate effort by colonial Acclimatization Societies to introduce European species into colonies to make the strange new land “feel like home.”

What is Colonialism?

The practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. Involves territorial access, either taking the land itself or forcing access to its resources—a system of reorganizing the colony’s economy to serve the colonizer.

Settler Colonialism

A distinct form of colonialism in which the primary goal is to replace the original population with a new society of settlers. Often requires the removal or elimination of indigenous people because their presence rivals the settlers’ claim to the land.

Extractive colonialism

A form of colonialism focused on taking raw materials rather than permanent settlement. Colonizers may not live in large numbers but they set the rules so that all valuable resources flow out to the empire.

Genocide

The intentional destruction of a people. Often, a necessary tool of colonialism to clear the unclaimed land.

Transformation of Livelihoods to create Labor Force

Changing how people survive so that they have to work for the colonizer. If people can grow their own food, they won’t grow in minds so colonizers tax them, take their land, or destroy their crops to force them into wage labor or slavery

Using knowledge of resources to strategize economic production

The scientific cataloging of a colony’s nature to maximize profit. Colonizers didn’t just take what was there; they studied the climate and soil to decide the kind of colony it would become completely ignoring what the ecosystem was originally.

Incorporation into a Trading Bloc Centered on the Colonial Power

Forcing the colony to trade only with the colonizer.

Colonization of the Mind

The psychological aspect of colonialism where the colonized are taught to believe their own culture is inferior.

Justus Von Liebig and Nitrogen

Discovered that soil fertility depends on specific minerals-nitrogen phosphorous and potassium. Justus identified that modern urbanization was creating a broken cycle. Nutrients were taken away from the countryside instead of being returned to the soil. He then accused Britain of robbing all other countries of the conditions of their fertility.

Guano Islands and Wars

Guano found in massive deposits on islands off the coast of Peru serves as the world’s most potent natural fertilizer before chemical alternatives existed. A prime example of extractive colonialism and the lengths nations go to fix ecological imbalances. Countries fought for control over the white gold deposits to sustain their industrial agriculture.

Metabolic Rift

A concept describing the rupture or rift in the natural nutrient exchange between humans and the earth. Soil in the countryside becomes depleted while cities become polluted with human waste. The rift represents the ecological crisis caused by separating production from the natural environment.

The Anthropocene

A proposed geologic epoch defined by the period during which human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment. (For example engineering projects poison soil with salt, fertile soil washes away or turns to desert).