Nature Responsible For Success Of Europe s Expansion

Cassandra DeSantiago Professor Vargas History 103-3186 24 May 2015 Nature Responsible for Success of Europe’s Expansion In today’s society, many people wonder why there are countless Caucasians living in different places around the world that are not Europe. The author of Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, Alfred W. Crosby, makes this question the main point in his book and thoroughly addresses his viewpoint as the answer. The places these people live are what Crosby likes to call, the Neo-Europes, â€Å"lands thousands of kilometers from Europe and from each other† but are lands that are conquered by the Europeans (Crosby 2). Crosby believes that the reason the Europeans were able to succeed and spread out across the†¦show more content†¦With the concepts of culture and adaptation came the start of the Old World Neolithic Revolution. The Neolithic Revolutions starts with the developing of better tools and the most important factors, the ability to produce more food and the domestication of animals. The Old World Neolithic Revolution was very significant because it showed that, not only the Europeans but other peoples as well, were able to learn how to use their agriculture and domesticated animals to their advantage and they were soon able to create civilizations, and advance their food making, labor, and technology. After the Europeans learned how to create civilizations, they were able to start colonizing in different places, but first before the talk of how the they were able to succeed, the question of how the Europeans were able to travel from place to place should be discussed. Crosby explains that â€Å"the births of the Neo-Europes had to wait for the sailors of Europe, who rarely ventured beyond the continental shelf, to become blue-water sailors† (Crosby 105). Sailing was a pretty new concept to the Europeans, and it was not something they particularly advanced in. Usually when the European sailors were not able to face harsh winds they would just give up and go back to their home land, but the Europeans that sailed through the Mediterranean figured out a new strategy. If unable to sail against the wind, they had to