DANIEL IMMERWAHR ON GUNS, GERMS, AND WOOD: THE LANDSCAPE OF U.S. SETTLER COLONIALISM

In the nineteenth century, settlers spread across North America with astonishing speed, dislodging Native peoples as they did. In this lecture, Daniel Immerwahr explores the environmental dimension of that. North America was (and is) unusual for its bounty of timber; the present-day United States is where the world’s tallest, oldest, and largest trees all grow. This timber, Immerwahr argues, facilitated settler colonialism in two important ways. It attracted settlers and subsidized their activities, allowing them to build up their habitations quickly and cheaply. And it allowed them to not just evacuate but annihilate Native towns, with torches.

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