‘Biological factors aided colonialisation of N.Z'

Press, 20 October 1986, Page 16

‘Biological factors aided colonialisation of N.Z'

PA Wellington Biological and ecological factors were more important than military superiority in the colonialisation of New Zealand, according to a newly published book by a former Fulbright Scholar. Professor A. W. Crosby, was a Fulbright Scholar at the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1979, and drew heavily on New Zealand experience in his new interpretation of the success of European colonisation of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. Re said Europeans

were able to take over temperate lands because of the rapid and almost automatic triumph of the plants, animals and germs they brought with them. European organisms had certain decisive advantages over those in the New World, Australia and New Zealand, Professor Crosby said. As a result, the proportion of Europeans and their descendants to the rest of the human species increased, and they became proprietors- of the most important agricultural lands in the .world. Native peoplesjhad no prior immunity m > com-

mon European diseases such as whooping cough, smallpox and measles, and in some cases 90 per cent of the indigenous population died.

The . diseases were followed by swarms of escaped goats, rabbits and other animals, whose populations exploded in lands of abundant food and few competitors. Professor Crosby took New Zealand as‘a model of the process, and closely analysed the European take-over.

Professor Crosby is professor of American studies at the University of Texas. •