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Changes in the Land, Revised Edition: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
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Average Rating:  out of 21 Reviews
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Price: $14.00
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Sale: $5.99
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Manufacturer: Hill and Wang
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780809016341
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: William Cronon
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Publisher: Hill and Wang
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Edition: Revised
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Dewey Decimal Number: 304.20974
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Publication Date: 2003-09-01
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Reading Level: 242
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Description: Much historical writing is far more concerned with the players than the stage: narratives of kings and cabbage-merchants, although acted out in fields and forests, typically include nature only as a convenient prop to provide the occasional splash of color. In Changes in the Land, Cronon treats the land of New England with the same sensitivity and attention to detail as the lives of the American natives and the colonists--he depicts the effects of changing land-use patterns on the texture of the New England landscape, and gives voice to the changing communities of trees, rock walls, and rivers. The chapter on the effects of changing notions of "property" on the ecology of New England are especially strong. Changes in the Land is almost the equal of Cronon's masterpiece, Nature's Metropolis, a monumental study of the ecological effects of Chicago on the entire central portion of the United States in the 1800s. Highly Recommended to specialists and general readers alike.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: The Live it Up Now, Pay for it Later Approach to the Environment in the Colonial Period |
Date: 2008-02-03 |
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Details: William Cronon's book Changes in the Land illuminates the relationship and impact the European colonial settlers had with their environment in New England. The main premise for this book is that different human cultures interact with their environment according to their cultural norms and subsequently have varying effects upon their surrounding environment as a result. Furthermore, Cronon illustrates that these effects created by humans on the environment have consequences which in turn affect the human population and its society. Ultimately he accomplishes the task of showing historically that Americans have the live it up now and pay for it later approach with the environment they live in and unfortunately most Americans still have not learned from previous mistakes with regards to the environment because they still think in terms of wastefulness instead of practical conservation. Even though the concept of Americans being wasteful with their natural resources is common knowledge today, this book truly shows the magnitude of wastefulness European colonial settlers had with their natural resources and the resulting negative consequences for the ecosystem and their own society. Changes in the Land does s superb job of highlighting the fact that this wasteful relationship that Americans have had with their environment has been ongoing since day one they set foot on the North American continent.
William Cronon definitely has the expert knowledge to write a book on the subject of environmental history. In a sense you can say his whole life has involved history and the environment. The afterword in Changes in the Land clearly shows that this book was not only a work that was initially started while he was at Yale as a graduate student, but also was influenced by his own interest of history and the environment even from his childhood. According to Cronon he was inspired as a youngster by his father who was a professor of American history at the University of Wisconsin and by growing up in an area that already had citizens aware and concerned about environmental issues. (pp. 171,173) Furthermore, Cronon's list of academic positions, writings on environmental history, and professional memberships are too numerous to account for in this small book review. Needless to say, after reading his list of lifetime accomplishments in this area on his website it is overwhelmingly clear he wrote this book from an authoritative viewpoint on the subject at hand.
Cronon accomplishes this authoritative viewpoint by juxtaposition of different perspectives and integrating evidence and information from other disciplines. Cronon initially uses the contrast of Henry Thoreau's account of the natural environment in1855 with an over two hundred years earlier account of the environment in New England by an English traveler named William Wood from 1633. Thoreau was obviously disenchanted with changes that had taken place in the environment since William Wood's day which was evident in his comment, "Is it not, a maimed and imperfect nature that I am conversant with?" (p. 4) Famous intellectuals, early naturalists, and traveler's documentation of the landscape were only some sources of evidence. Cronon also used a wide variety of other sources of information such as colonial town records from the courts and legislation, ecological data, and archeological records to build his case although he was wise enough to note that "caution is required in handling all these various forms of evidence (and nonevidence), together they provide a remarkably full portrait of ecological change in colonial New England." (p. 8) In chapters two through five he juxtaposes the European colonists' and Native Indians' society by comparing their relationship with and effect they respectively had on their environment. The general points Cronon makes, hopefully not oversimplifying too much, were firstly, Europeans viewed the natural resources of New England as commodities and the value they attached to them were based on whether or not the were valuable commodities in Europe. Secondly, Indians had a subsistence economy and moved to different locations depending on the season of the year which dictated where adequate food supplies could be found verses the Europeans who had fixed settlements in which they utilized agriculture and husbandry to generate food and eventually a profit for the excess that they cultivated. Thirdly, Indians' perspective of property was they owned the use of the resources on the land and shared the use of the resources with others where as Europeans perspective of owned property was that they owned a specific tract of land identified by clear boundaries in which the land and everything on it was owned by the individual. This comparison served to highlight the impact and consequences on the environment by European colonists due to the way the viewed land and natural resources of New England. The remainder of the book dealt with the consequences of the Europeans interaction with their environment.
Chapter five more or less made the point that due to the impact of diseases on the Indian population and the subsequent restructuring of their social and political system they needed to find a way to survive. One way to survive was to trade with the Europeans and a commodity that was valuable to the Europeans was fur. Indians participated in the decimation of animals that provided these furs and hence they got sucked into the European mercantile trade economy in which eventually they ended up trading their way of life away and the environment suffered for it in the process by losing large populations of animals. Chapters six and seven clearly illustrated the wasteful practices of European colonists with the natural resources such as timber which lead to deforestation, hotter summers, colder winters, and more floods as a consequence. The wasteful shortsighted practices of European colonists were also pervasive by the use of their non-friendly environmental agriculture and husbandry practices which only resulted in a vicious cycle of destruction with the environment they lived in. Cronon used an eyewitness account of the colonial time period to conclude his book. A Swedish traveler Peter Kalm summarized nicely the shortsighted wasteful practices of the Europeans colonists by saying "the grain fields, the meadows, the forests, the cattle, etc. are treated with equal carelessness." (p. 168) Kalm concluded that "This kind of agriculture will do for a time, but it will afterwards have bad consequences, as everyone may clearly see." (p. 169)
With that being said, Cronon did a wonderful job a presenting his case and providing evidence which made this book a very interesting read. The only downside for a reader (which is no fault of Cronon's because he is only the messenger), was the disappointing feeling and thought that this is typical behavior of humans when interacting with their environment and why don't people in general learn from their past mistakes? |
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Review Summary: Good piece of work |
Date: 2007-09-29 |
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Details: This is a very good piece of work. Cronon manages to keep all possible biases aside. He attributes ecological changes or problems to both natives and colonists. However, he argues that English Colonists were responsible for the greatest amount of damage. It was not a 200 page book on Europe ruined America but a well written analysis on European, in particular England, ways of life and how they dramatically altered the face of America. Natives and Europeans has two completely different ideas of property, life, etc. Without criticizing the English he shows how the English colonists ideas of agriculture changed the face of New England. It was not a thirst for destruction but a way of life or agriculture that Europeans worked with for 2-3000 years. Cronon does a good job showing how English recognized the problem, although little was done to fix it, and attempted to find solutions. It was a well balanced piece of work and narrated from a neutral perspective. |
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Review Summary: Want to know how ecology can help us to understand history? |
Date: 2006-06-09 |
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Details: This is not so much a book about New England per se as on how ecology should mould our understanding of history. For too long historians have ignored the ecological/environmental dimension to history, especially colonial history; and Cronon's book is one among a number of path-breaking works that serves to redress the balance.
As Cronon convincingly argues, the strength of ecological analysis in writing history lies in its ability to uncover processes and long-term changes which might otherwise remain invisible. Indeed, ecological change is used throughout the book as a window through which to uncover the complex long-term changes wrought by the arrival of the puritans to New England since the seventeenth century. The full impact of European colonisation cannot be understood apart from the new relationship they established with the New England ecosystem though their commoditisation of resources and their involvement in the international capitalist economy, both of which greatly impacted the land and its previous inhabitants, the Indians. These changes were cultural as much as they were simply environmental or economic: the arrival of the pig, for one, was bound in a cultural relationship to, among other things, the fence, the dandelion, and a very special definition of property.
Of course, the book also offers up fascinating insights into the changing New England landscape from 1600 to 1800. It corrects misconceptions about an unchanging primeval forest before the arrival of the Europeans, or of Indians as passive agents in subsequent changes wrought. It also establishes the origins of the environmental problems in the region such as deforestation, soil erosion, and resultant climate changes - the legacy of which we still live with today.
If this book interests you, so should other landmark studies on ecological or environmental history, such as Alfred Crosby's `Ecological Imperialism' or Donald Worster's `Dust Bowl'.
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Review Summary: A seminal work |
Date: 2006-04-29 |
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Details: William Cronon's book was a seminal effort in 1983 that established a new way of thinking about history. It has stood the test of time. The book describes the modes and manner of the ecological impacts that English settlers had on the New England landscape in the colonial era. Some impacts were intentional, others not so much. For example, by the time first permanent settlements were established beginning at Plymouth in 1620, many Indian villages had already been devastated by European diseases (Europeans, especially fishermen had been frequenting the New England fisheries for decades).
The English settlers brought the English methods of farming, new concepts of property, and a market economy that overwhelmed the tribes and transformed the landscape. Forests were cleared, beaver were over-hunted, fences erected, new and domesticated animals and plants were introduced.
An added bonus in this 20th anniversary edition is a delightful afterword by the author reflecting on the book and how it came to be only through repeated serendipity. An added bonus for Wisconsin readers are his reflections on growing up in Madison as the son of a UW history professor and how those experiences shaped his professional life.
Cronon sagely instructs us to asks 'how so Alien a Then could have become so familiar a Now'. Changes in the Land also wrought changes in the way we think. |
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Review Summary: A New Perspective |
Date: 2006-03-09 |
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Details: This text was assigned as part of a college history course. As part of my initial reading I found the text to be wordy, indirect and a little overly complicated. However, after reviewing the test for an essay it became far more easily to take meaningful information from. Cronon does an excellent job explaining the transition of Indian culture and society. He also does a very good job of explaining the complex interaction between Indians and European settlers and the American wilderness. In my opinion Cronon focuses on capitalism and the transitions towards capitialism and Indian society. Overall a good history read, very applicable to American history. |
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