Nature and the native

Abstract

Critics of climate collapse and colonization in the Americas rightly identify the origin of these twin crises in early modern political theologies. They seek to combat these crises with new political theologies of nature that pay greater reverence to “native” peoples’ ecological knowledge. But in doing so, these critics subtly, perhaps unwittingly, recall elements of the colonial power they criticize. I explain why this is the case, examining Bartolomé de Las Casas’s use of naturales in his critiques of Spanish Conquest, and Thomas Harriot’s use of naturall inhabitants in his writing on English colonization to describe “native” Americans. Both authors aimed to promote politico-theological reverence for “native” peoples and their relationships with “nature.” This set into motion a productive form of power operating in modern political theologies. This power works by legitimizing the European-Christian presence in the Americas through their ability to recognize, respect, and protect “native” relationships with “nature.”

Power, Profit, and Prometheanism, Part II

“…Without the flood of American silver, the inter-regional division of labor knitting together Brazilian sugar, Polish cereals, Norwegian timber, Dutch shipbuilding, and Swedish copper could never have stabilized. All of it depended on imperial reforms in Peru after 1571 and the attendant ideological redefinition of indigenous peoples-conscripted under various mitas-as naturales (Moore 2010;Vasko 2022).…”