Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons Faculty Publications Department of Geography & Anthropology 2001 Colonialism and Landscape in the Americas: Material/Conceptual Transformations and Continuing Consequences Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/geoanth_pubs Part of the Anthropology Commons, and the Geography Commons Recommended Citation Andrew Sluyter, Colonialism and Landscape in the Americas: Material/Conceptual Transformations and Continuing Consequences. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 91 (2001) 410-28. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Geography & Anthropology at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Colonialism and Landscape in the Americas: Material/Conceptual Transformations and Continuing Consequences Andrew Sluyter Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University Despite a congenital relationship between colonization and geographic scholarship, and despite the significance of colonial landscape transformation to current social and environmental challenges, a comprehensive geographic theory of colonialism and landscape remains incipient at best. In this article, a historical sketch provides some basic perspective on the scope appropriate to such a theory by outlining how the goals of scholarship on colonial land- scape transformation have changed over the last century in relation to social and environmental context. The sub- sequent analysis compares and contrasts prior and existing conceptualizations of colonialism and landscape, each emphasizing particular elements and relationships at the expense of others but all thus jointly delineating what a more comprehensive framework must include. That analysis provides a preliminary basis for elaborating a compre- hensive geographic theory of colonialism and landscape with an immediate focus on the Americas. Key Words: co- lonial triangle, colonization, conservation, development, native ecologies, postcolonial studies, sustainability. It is clear that, for the most part, they have taken on only an increment of geographic knowledge at the same time the more superficial aspects and values of modem life. Can as producing a prospectus and resource for the extension western civilization offer them no more? (Lewis 1951, 448) of European power through space (Cormack 1997). Sim- How rare it is when one is in such an "underprivileged," ilarly, the colonial bureaucrat who developed techniques "backward" country, or wherever life is alien to ours-think to inventory and analyze landscapes refined geographic of the gall of these almost official designations-to find one method at the same time as consolidating European sur- of us who is there in order to learn of other ways and options veillance and control (Butzer 1992). But rather than fos- instead of working for the adoption of our own. That such ter the building of a comprehensive theory to understand intervention increases or introduces ecologic unbalances the relationship between colonization and landscape receives little notice. (Sauer 1956, 1133) transformation, the conjunction of knowledge and power involved in disciplinary genesis seems to have sti- he lack of anything that even approximates a fled such a project in favor of environmentalistic and comprehensive geographic theory of colonialism teleological justifications for colonialism (Keller 1908; and landscape seems somewhat astounding at Bowman 1931). In hindsight, then, the suppression of a first. Landscape, after all, is a key unit of geographic anal- thorough theorization of colonialism and landscape is ysis and its transformation through social/biophysical not very astounding after all. That suppression has per- processes a primary phenomenon of geographic inquiry. sisted well into the postcolonial period, well beyond the At the same time, the establishment of the discipline has waning of sovereign European control of colonies, so been congruent with and inseparable from European col- that "settler geographers" have continued to labor under onization, a congenital relationship that presumably and perpetuate colonial fusions of knowledge and power should have catalyzed a thorough theorization of the re- even while rebelling against them (Harris 1997, 194- lationship between colonialism and landscape. Begin- 95). Only relatively recently, stimulated by the blossom- ning in the fifteenth century, as the landscapes of the ing of self-critical Western intellectual movements such world successively became geographic objects of Euro- as postcolonial studies, has a comprehensive effort to pean power, landscape became an object of increasingly theorize the relationship between colonialism and land- professionalized geographic knowledge (Stoddart 1986; scape even begun to achieve momentum. Livingstone 1992; Godlewska and Smith 1994; Bell, Practical imperatives suggest that such a project is Butlin, and Heffernan 1995). The explorer who textu- well overdue. The scope and magnitude of colonial land- ally or cartographically represented landscapes generated scape transformations have ensured their continuing Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91(2), 2001, p. 410-428 ? 2001 by Association of American Geographers Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. This content downloaded from 130.39.62.90 on Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:15:52 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Colonialism and Landscape in the Americas 411 consequences for some of our greatest postcolonial chal- This brief essay, therefore, can be no more than a pro- lenges, such as achieving global social and environmen- posal for filling a vast yet compelling theoretical lacuna. tal well-being (Porter and Sheppard 1998). Throughout In that spirit, the following first seeks some basic perspec- the Americas, to use one of the major colonial realms as tive on the scope appropriate to such a theory by out- an example, native depopulation due to epidemics and lining how the goals of scholarship on colonial landscape the introduction of exotic biota, technologies, institu- transformation have changed in relation to social and tions, and ideas transformed landscapes on a scale and environmental context. This historical sketch focuses on to a degree unprecedented since the retreat of the con- the Americas in order to maintain rigor by staying close tinental ice sheets (Wolf 1982; Crosby 1986). With a to places and literatures most familiar to me. It focuses on sometimes subtle but nonetheless powerful inertia, the development and environmental conservation liter- material landscape transformations have continued to ature in order to maintain connection with the practical affect postcolonial land uses that relate to, for example, imperative of achieving social/environmental well- food production and biodiversity. In the Valle de Mezquital, being. And it focuses on the nonurban landscapes that to take one striking case, overgrazing so eroded soils literature has tended to emphasize in geography, not nec- that current agricultural options remain severely limited essarily so but as a function of intellectual and institu- (Melville 1994). Just to the south, in the Basin of Mex- tional genealogy (Butzer 1989). With the project's scope ico, drainage of the lakes that ringed the Aztec city of thus specified and historically contextualized, the subse- Tenochtitlan has had even more dire continuing conse- quent analysis compares and contrasts prior and existing quences, not the least of which has been near complete conceptualizations of colonialism and landscape. Each destruction of the highly productive chinampa agro- such theoretical framework has emphasized particular ecosystem (Sluyter 1994). Conceptual landscape trans- elements and relationships at the expense of others, and formations ("ideological," "discursive," "symbolic," and thus they jointly yield insights into what a more compre- so on') equally continue to affect postcolonial land uses. hensive framework must include. Again, and for the same Planners now categorize regions that had dense precolo- reasons, that analysis maintains a focus on the Americas nial populations, such as Valle de Mezquital, as having a and nonurban landscapes. That analysis then provides "naturally impoverished resource base" that limits agri- the basis for elaborating a comprehensive geographic cultural productivity. Entire categories of landscape that theory that relates colonization and landscape in the were agriculturally productive before colonization have Americas, or at least a preliminary plan for working to- become reconceived as "wastelands" (Sluyter 1999). For ward such a theory. example, natives from Mexico to Bolivia long favored tropical wetlands as foci of highly productive agricultural systems and dense settlement; Westerners think of the Historical Sketch of Changing Goals same environments as nasty tropical swamps that need to be claimed (or, rather strangely, reclaimed, as if they With the vast reduction of European sovereign power had been lost) through drainage projects (Denevan in the Americas in the nineteenth century, mainstream 1992a; Siemens 1998). Since, as a general rule, inade- geographers studied the process of colonization as an en- quate theorization of process