Dominion and improvement: The moral ecologies of colonial encounters

Abstract

Environmental relationships were critical to most early colonial encounters, especially for those involving permanent settlements. The ability to successfully establish a colony required developing relationships with plants, animals, and the land because they were central to providing for the colonists’ basic subsistence needs. The ways European colonizers developed these new relationships rested on their moral ecologies, a mix of beliefs and practices which give a sense of right and wrong to actions that are informed by ontologies. In this paper we use the concept of moral ecologies to explore the relationships that two empires—the British in New England and the Spanish in New Mexico—created as they established colonies that also entangled Indigenous peoples. The differences in moral ecologies between these empires and the peoples they invaded help explain tensions in the past that remain powerful today.