November 11, 2014 | On November 12, 2014 at 12:00 noon, Dr. Michael Perri, Associate Professor of History at A&M-Texarkana, will present a lecture entitle “’Ruined and Lost:’” Destruction of the Pearl Coast in the Early Sixteenth Century.” As part of its new thematic program and lecture series, Texas A&M University-Texarkana invites the public to this first November “super lecture”. “Super lectures” are class lectures presented during regular class times. What sets them apart is that the lectures touch upon some aspect of the university’s annual thematic program, and they are open to the public.
Perri bases his lecture on his article with the same title that the journal Environment and History published in 2009. Using Garrett Hardin’s concept of the “tragedy of the commons,” Perri examines how competing groups of Spaniards overexploited both the pearl-rich oyster beds around the island of Cubagua and the native peoples along the Venezuelan mainland in the 1520s and 1530s. In this little-known history, environmental damage went hand in hand with the enslavement and decimation of native populations, turning a once promising region into a poor and depopulated backwater of the Spanish Empire.
The lecture will be in the University Center, room 210 on the Texas A&M-Texarkana campus and is free. Everyone from the community is welcome.
