Many of us think that rapid environmental change is a quintessentially modern crisis. Today, temperatures are soaring, topsoil is washing away, phosphorous is being diluted, forests are retreating, pesticides are sterilising farmland, fertilisers are choking waterways, and biodiversity is plummeting under the onslaught of overpopulated, industrialised societies. Some of these changes are indeed truly new. But many others have deep roots and distant echoes in the early modern period, the years between around 1400 and 1800 when much of the world began to assume its present form. Recently, scientists, geographers, historians and archaeologists have combined expertise and evidence to reveal just how profound early modern environmental transformations really were.
No environmental changes were more far-reaching than those that accompanied the exploits of European explorers and colonisers. From Australia to Cuba, Europeans landed in territories long separated from the Old World. European ships harboured plants and animals, and European bodies carried bacteria and viruses, neither of which had spread beyond Eurasia or Africa. When these organisms made landfall, many multiplied with shocking speed in ecosystems and human communities that had never encountered them before.
The consequences were often catastrophic. In the Americas, for example, the viruses responsible for smallpox and measles swept through so-called ‘virgin soil' populations – that is, populations with no experience of them. By the 17th century, tens of millions had died. European settlers added to the death toll directly, by murderous violence, or indirectly, by forcing survivors out of communal territories and into gruelling forced labour.
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