Jack Bouchard: “Floating Colonialism: Ecology and Occupation in the Northwest Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century”

About This Event

In the sixteenth century, European fishworkers and whalers created a massive commercial fishery in the waters of the northwest Atlantic, which they called Terra Nova. Historians and archaeologists have struggled to find terms to describe European activity in the northwest Atlantic before 1600. Did Europeans create a fishery? A proto-colony? A system of transhumance or cyclical migration? How do we describe a history that is both enduring and transitory? This presentation will do two things. First, it will argue that historians should recognize Terra Nova as a European colony. This is despite the lack of settlements, year-round occupation or imperial control/claims. Second, this paper will consider the ecological consequences of this floating colony, and what it says about our models for the environmental history of European colonialism in the sixteenth century western Atlantic. Together, these two lines of thinking may set up an important model for work on marine environments elsewhere

Featured Guests

Dr. Jack Bouchard, Rutgers University