Blame the Invisible Hand of the Market
The near-extinction of the buffalo (or bison as the sciencey-types call it) has long been laid at the feet of mass hunting (sometimes actually perpetrated by US soldiers) aimed at 1) reducing what had become a vital food resource for Plains Indian groups in order to force them off the plains an onto reservations and bording schools and 2) making the Great Plains safe for innocent railroad engines who might find themselves on a collision course with a menacing stamped of buffalo (or maybe just the occasional loan cow).
Piles of bison skulls on the Great Plains ca. 1870.
But a recent study by University of Calgary environmental economist M. Scott Taylor says that we can now blame Europe's technological innovation and market forces for the buffalo death toll. "The story of the buffalo slaughter is surprisingly not, at bottom, an American one," Taylor said. According to Taylor, the bison killings were a result of an expertise in tanning heavy hides into leather developed in Europe and not practiced in the United States at the time...This sustained Europe's high demand for bison hides (for use mostly as industrial leather)...the study cited about 30 million bison hides were exported from 1871 to 1883 (12 years).
"These market forces overwhelmed the ability of a young and still expanding nation, just out of a bloody civil war, to carefully steward its natural resources," Taylor said...and an the United States Government did not regulate the market in anyway...
On one hand, I find this much more plausible than some recent archeological studies which suggest that the Native Americans themselves were responsible for the die out (see Wade, 2006 in World Archeology)...on the other...I think shifting blame to the so-called "invisible hand" of the market seems like a scape-goat...or at least a cop-out...
I do like how complicated this analysis makes the issue, however...there are social factors (the desired removal of the bison and Native Americans and the desire to make money through international trade), technological factors (leather innovations, the need for industrial leather than drove...the literally belt-driven Industrial Revolution), economic factors (lack of regulation) resulting in dramatic environmental and social consequences for the Great Plains and the Plains Indians....gotta love social histories...even when they are economic.
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Check out:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20181774/from/ET/
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/wirtschaft_finanzen/bericht-88259.html
Labels: archeology history, bison, buffalo, Calgary, environment, europe, technology
posted by Jamie Brandon @ 8/08/2007 03:26:00 PM
1 Comments:
Jamie, you should read the paper to find out that the author really blames no one. He also, unlike others in this area, has actual DATA on the number of killed and exported. As some science types like to say Data rules.
cheers from Canada
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