Brian Griffith's Blog - Posts Tagged "colonization"

Obviously, Europe’s colonists wanted far more than freedom to hunt and grow food on the Natives’ land. They were also bent on transforming the country into the likeness of the world they left behind. In “New Spain,” “New England,” etc., the foods, plants, animals, and landscapes of the Americas had to be systematically replaced with those of the old country. People wanted familiar things, and hoped to make the surrounding environment match their preferences. All this was a matter of taste, but thinkers like William Goldsmith made it a matter of religion as well. In his eight-volume "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" (published 1774), Goldsmith presumed that his tastes were those of the Lord: “God beholds with pleasure that being which he has made, converting the wretchedness of his natural situation into a theatre of triumph; bringing all the headlong tribes of nature into subjugation to his will; and producing … order and uniformity upon earth.”
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals