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US Environmental History Class at CSW
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#Post#: 313--------------------------------------------------
Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: TeacherRachel Date: February 19, 2019, 3:33 pm
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Please read pp. 60-64*; 70-83, Joyce Chaplin, "Natural
Philosophy and Racial Idiom: Comparing English and Indian
Bodies"
* Stop at paragraph break
Please post your thoughts/responses to the article, but also
please respond to each other
#Post#: 314--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: ngood Date: February 19, 2019, 6:30 pm
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1) If you believe that Native Americans are not native but are
“continually wandering” and without “the dignity of an ancient
history” (and in fact are believed to be weak and unsuited to
the environment of the New World), it is easier to rationalize
removing them from their lands because the land doesn’t ‘really’
belong to them (Chaplin 81).
2) The notion of maternal character and impressions has
interested me for a while, and I was interested to read how it
factored into English assessments of their bodies as well as
those of Native Americans. Since Chaplin didn’t unpack the term,
I’ll make a go at it here, since it’s not something that’s
talked about a lot (despite the fact that it still influences
discussions of pregnancy). The idea of maternal impressions is
that if a pregnant person sees something frightening, it would
affect their child (often through a birth defect). The current
question over whether or not it’s okay to watch a scary movie
while pregnant comes from this idea. The idea of maternal
character is similar—if a pregnant person has mean, unholy, or
vulgar thoughts, it will reflect in their child.
#Post#: 315--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: afreitag Date: February 19, 2019, 6:46 pm
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This was definitely my favorite reading so far. The level of
understanding the paper ensures in any type of reader is
refreshing, and the depth in which it goes is fascinating. There
were many stand-out points for me, which I’ll list below
“Scholars have pointed to English statements that the Indians’
afflictions were providential, supernatural mandates against the
natives and in favor of the invaders.” - p 244
This brought me back to last night’s Eden, specifically the
passage in which the colonizers thanked god for sparing them
while the Indians were dying out.
One of my questions after reading Eden was “Did the colonizers
thank god not only for sparing them but also for killing off the
natives?”.
It had seemed like Krech conveniently left out a piece of that
story, as it would not serve his argument - and this detail in
tonight’s reading fills in the blank.
“The reluctance to describe settlers as natives perhaps was
owing to the fact that the English word native originally meant
a person born into bondage, a legal meaning that persisted at
least into the eighteenth century and perhaps beyond.” - p 247
This information blew my vocabulary mind; I had no idea of the
original meaning.
How did the word for person born into slavery become a term for
original inhabitants of a place? - “It distinguished the
conquerors from the conquered.”
What does that say about how the English viewed original
inhabitants?
“Morbid fascination with the Indian body” - p 249
Also an ongoing topic in this paper
This brought me to the idea of dehumanizing races and comparing
them to animals.
I believe this is still an occurrence in the modern day,
although far more subtle now.
“And this unplanting of native bodies was perhaps related to the
similar project of uprooting and commodification of African
bodies - as if the people in these bodies, American and African,
had no real place to which they belonged.” - p 251
This emphasizes the parallel relationship between how English
have treated Native Americans and treated Africans.
In general, an interesting idea to sit on
This clip brings back the idea of dehumanization, as humans are
connected to places and have identities shaped and rooted by
them.
If anyone read this far I’m impressed because I have so much to
say and perhaps went overboard. I hope we get to discuss this in
class.
#Post#: 316--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: Ahmed_A Date: February 19, 2019, 7:02 pm
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I found natural philosophy’s stance on the relation between
physical traits and environment intriguing. For a Hippocratic
and Aristotelian believer, people inherently change based on
their location. I think that was deduced from the fact that
certain physical traits are more prominent in some regions than
others - especially in the times when travel was much harder
than currently. In the sixteenth century, people in England were
speculating that the colonists that have settled in America were
going to drastically change in appearance, and biological
function. They expected that the children born in America would
start picking “region-distinct properties”(239). The Colonists,
on the other hand, had similar fears; they felt the need to
prove that their English identity was not going to change. As
time passed, it became evident that physical appearance, in
fact, stayed the same, the English made a new distinction. They
said, that the change is not necessarily physical but cultural.
So, they started looking out for behavioral shifts in Colonists
that would resemble Native Americans, and thus deem them
inferior to the British. My question here is: How much did the
environmental divide between the English and Colonists have to
do with the eventual conflicts between them, which led to the
Revolution?[font=georgia][/font]
#Post#: 317--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: amacdonald Date: February 19, 2019, 7:06 pm
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Out of all the readings so far, I thought that this passage
highlighted the arrogance and vanity of the Europeans when
comparing themselves to the Native Americans. One term that
stood out to me was “Indianize” (244). This term was used by the
English to “distance themselves from the natives” (244). It
continued to push the made-up idea that “America’s effects on
them were cultural rather than physical” (244).
Another example of English arrogance comes at the bottom of the
same page. To explain the deaths of native populations, the
English concluded that there were “supernatural mandates against
the natives in favor of the invaders” (244) and that “God [had]
laid the country open for [them]” (244). This is not the first
time that God has come up in a reading and, evidently, was the
explanation of choice for many settlers in the New World.
Also lingering in this passage is the idea of Natives and
Europeans being completely different beings. Like Rachel said in
class today, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that the English
thought of the Natives as children or as animals. This obscure
view obviously permeated itself into the mainstream thinking of
new settlers as they had “speculated that American nativity
would produce radically different individuals --- Indians, say,
rather than Europeans” (242). I was surprised at this. This is
the one instance where Europeans do not hold themselves to a
higher standard. This land is still so foreign that they even
believe that it would be able to corrupt their children.
#Post#: 318--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: nanaafiaba Date: February 19, 2019, 7:08 pm
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What an essay! I have to say this piece by Chaplin is quite
engaging and presents multiple intriguing ideas. Chaplin dives
into the race aspect of environmental history, deeper than
Merchant did in her essays. The root of Chaplin's essay is
essentially about the origin or first examples of racism in
America. European colonists utilized an ideology they created to
reinforce their claim over North America. This ideology was
based on the idea that since Native Americans were dying by the
thousands from diseases that Europeans brought to America in the
first place, that the Native Americans were not true natives of
North America, and God meant for Europeans to have the land.
Time and time again, the Europeans used religion and fraudulent
proof to assert control of North America.
I find this incredibly preposterous and foolhardy. Europeans
really just wanted to express their nonexistent superiority over
the Native Americans so that they could easily rule over them.
They made claims without any factual evidence to back it up. And
even when they supposedly had "factual" evidence, their claims
were still untrue. For example, when they claimed that the
"Indian" people must be weaker simply because in America they
were dying from illnesses and when they traveled to Europe they
continued to die. Yes, it is true that Native Americans did seem
to fall ill wherever they went, however, this was because they
encountered diseases their bodies were not immune to because of
the environment they lived in, not because they were less than
or weaker than White Americans. Unfortunately, this sort of
thinking still exists today, except not just against Native
Americans, despite all the advances we have made in our modern
world.
#Post#: 319--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: nanaafiaba Date: February 19, 2019, 7:13 pm
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To Ally:
I definitely agree with you about how refreshing this piece
seems to be! it goes into such depth about just the one topic
and in such a way that it is easy for us readers to understand.
I think that our class can really conduct a fruitful discussion
tomorrow about this reading.
#Post#: 320--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: samfarley Date: February 19, 2019, 7:51 pm
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This reading was interesting simply because of how much the
English simply theorized about the differences between the New
World and the Old World. Because the concept of a vast, new
continent was so new to them, they really let their imaginations
run wild and then accepted that as fact. Just because the New
World was a different continent, a different place, they
believed that they could simply apply completely different
scientific principles to it. One example was how they were
skeptical of transporting food between the two ‘worlds’, or
people from England simply eating food from the New World. They
just assumed that their bodies were different because they came
from the Old World, the ‘civilized’ world. It was also
interesting to see how differently they approached the concept
of race. Unlike its modern use, to keep people separate within a
society, during these times it was just used to keep people from
even entering that society in the first place. Natives were just
thought of as inherently different, and that was the colonist’s
best argument against them
I like Natalie’s point about how this piece discusses and talks
about mothers and maternity. For some reason the English just
assumed they could treat people and things in the New World in
completely different ways, arguing that women here were more
fertile than those in England, simply because the land itself
was just more fertile as well.
#Post#: 321--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: Annaliese Date: February 19, 2019, 8:15 pm
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I think this reading showed much more fully just how egotistical
the English are and how they believed they were superior to the
Indians. They tried to explain that their impact on the natives
was cultural and not physical, even though they brought disease
that killed many of the native people. The English also came up
with another idea to both explain their superiority and what was
happening to the native people. “Indian susceptibility to
disease was described as an innate weakness, more easily
explained by internal factors that presented themselves
externally as symptoms of imbalance than by climate.” (244)
they could use this perceived biological superiority as evidence
for their superiority in general and why they could look down
upon the native people. This connects with our discussion in
class today about how the English saw the Indians as being less
than them and treating them as such.
#Post#: 322--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading 5: Joyce Chaplin
By: zwalker2020 Date: February 19, 2019, 8:23 pm
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The reading for tonight was pretty interesting since it quite
unexpectedly explored the idea of "human types", or races, and
explored why these differences exist in a historical manner. I
think the most intriguing thing for me was the idea that water
would "could impart its region-distinct qualities to people,
with disastrous consequences". This was vague to me but this
idea seems ridiculous nonetheless. It was thought that "beer and
cider were safer drinks" because of this, which probably led to
many unneeded medical issues related to alcohol consumption
happening to those who outright refused to drink water in
America. A fear of different air in America seemed similar to
me. William Bradford declared that because of this different
environment Europeans would suffer from many horrible diseases
in America, when in reality it was the natives who truly
suffered from contagious diseases, mostly brought by the
Europeans to America without them even originally knowing it.
This didn't seem like a kind of problem to the European settlers
though. Yet another odd idea was the belief that Europeans
wouldn't be able to survive on a strictly American diet, which
might seem just as ridiculous today as the other theories at the
time but I think it's the most plausible compared to them.
Either way, this idea of forced English adaptation to living in
the Americas seemed to persist for a pretty long time, whether
it was including dealing with foreign air, water, or food.
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