English conservation policy exported environmental destruction to the American colonies

Evidence

Among Evelyn’s recommendations for improved forest practice was the removal of most iron mills to New England, lest they “ruin Old England.” The New Englanders “should hasten thither to supply us with iron for the peace of our days, whilst his Majesty becomes the great sovereign of the ocean and of free commerce.” Conservation at home was thus to be purchased at the expense of frontier expansion abroad, a program rationalized by the New Englanders’ need to “clear their surfeit of woods” lest they be “hindered in their advance.” “It were better to purchase all our iron out of America, than to thus exhaust our woods at home.” — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 886

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the polyad’s settler-colonial and environmental-racism thread: home conservation purchased by displacing extractive harm onto colonized land. — connects to: Enlightenment environmentalism furnished a rationale for colonial hierarchy — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 232; Colonial power instrumentalized reason and thereby corrupted modernity’s promise — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 615; Leopold marked American resource consumption as an imperial, transnational harm — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 200
• DEFINE: Exemplifies ‘ecological frontier expansion’ as the spatial corollary of domestic conservation in the polyad reading.

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment environmentalism furnished a rationale for colonial hierarchy #expands (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 232
• Colonial power instrumentalized reason and thereby corrupted modernity’s promise #expands (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 615