Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon

Jan 31, 2012 Becky rated it it was amazing

Shelves: environmental-history, favorites

How wonderfully enjoyable and informative this compact book turned out to be! Though I'm sure environmental history doesn't elicit much excitement from most people in general, I could see how most anyone could enjoy this book, at least anyone who has some curiosity as to the chain of events in nature in some fundamental ways or anyone who has an interest in the Indians' versus the settlers' ways with the land.

This book starts out describing the Native American Indians’ relationship with their How wonderfully enjoyable and informative this compact book turned out to be! Though I'm sure environmental history doesn't elicit much excitement from most people in general, I could see how most anyone could enjoy this book, at least anyone who has some curiosity as to the chain of events in nature in some fundamental ways or anyone who has an interest in the Indians' versus the settlers' ways with the land.

This book starts out describing the Native American Indians’ relationship with their environment (in this case, the New England environment) which is very interesting in itself because of how cleverly in sync they were with what the land had to offer - that is the way they molded their way of life to fit what nature had to offer them as opposed to molding nature to fit their way of life. It reminded me of things I'd read in the books 1491 by Charles Mann and American Colonies by Alan Taylor, the first of which disappointed me due to its confusing and semi-hostile delivery, and the latter which I appreciated very much. This book greatly complimented both for me by honing in on some interesting environmental details. It was great at telling the why and how of what it told you, such as the influence of the old world system on the settlers ways of using the land and how deforestation changed soil composition in crucial ways.

I learned so much from this book. I learned what trees were valued for what such as white pines being valued for their height and straightness and their use to build ship masts. I learned that black oak worked best for the bottom of ships because it was more resistant to some of the sea life that would bore into the hulls of ships. I learned how deforestation specifically affected the soil and subsequently water shedding and flooding. I learned how livestock too wreaked havoc on the soil. In sum, I learned what occurred to the New England environment from the beginning of the settlers’ arrival with reasoning as to why it happened, whether that reasoning was good or bad, and I learned how and why the land was used in ways unique to both the Indians and the Europeans. With all the details given in this book, one clearly sees how the land was depleted and drastically changed from what it had been and one sees why this happened from both cultural and economic standpoints.

I have to admit that I occasionally ponder the idea of existing in nature a little more like how the Indians did, especially in the way that they placed a priority on mobility as opposed to accumulation of things. And I guess you could say that our world is, in its own way, evolving to a style reminiscent of this, for example, streamlining of goods & entertainment through technology, the increase in renters versus home owners, organic diets, etc. ...more

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Aug 22, 2007 Cat rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: historical ecologists

Shelves: culturalhistory, americanhistory

Even though I live in San Diego, I found this book to be well worth the read. Dense but short, "Changes in the Land" gives a close reading to the ecological impact of British colonization in New England. As Cronon states in his conclusion, this transformation has ramifications far outside New England, since the environmental degradation that accompanied early colonization forced settlers farther and farther afield.
Twenty years after it was published, the scholarship is still, what I would ...more

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Sep 23, 2007 Jonny rated it liked it

Shelves: personal-collection

I used this text and compared to Crosby's "Ecological Imperialism." This text offers a different approach to environmental hsitroy, once that is much more "homo-centric" if you will. Whereas Crosby discusses humans as being a small part of the bursting dam that is nature, Cronon argues that human beings are the chief agents of environmental change. I personally side with Crosby on this one, and as a result, I like Cronon's work less. But it is still a solid piece of writing in a field starving ...more

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Jan 27, 2017 Kevin Topolovec rated it liked it

A very detailed description of every way Europeans ruined America.

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Mar 25, 2015 Richard Reese rated it it was amazing

Historian William Cronon was one of a group of scholars that pioneered a new and improved way of understanding the past. Environmental history put the spotlight on many essential issues that were ignored by traditional history, and this made the sagas far more potent and illuminating.

His book, Changes in the Land, is an environmental history of colonial New England. It documents the clash of two cultures that could not have been more different, the Indians and the settlers. It describes the ...more

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Dec 22, 2012 William Kerrigan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, colonial, agriculture, nature

William Cronon begins Changes in the Land with a discussion of a journal entry Henry David Thoreau made in January of 1855. Thoreau, a keen observer of the natural landscape, had just finished reading William Wood's New England's Prospect, a 17th century tract in which Englishman Wood describes his visit to New England in 1633. Thoreau reflects on the radical transformations that have occurred to the environment of New England since Wood's time. Thoreau concludes "When I consider . . . the William Cronon begins Changes in the Land with a discussion of a journal entry Henry David Thoreau made in January of 1855. Thoreau, a keen observer of the natural landscape, had just finished reading William Wood's New England's Prospect, a 17th century tract in which Englishman Wood describes his visit to New England in 1633. Thoreau reflects on the radical transformations that have occurred to the environment of New England since Wood's time. Thoreau concludes "When I consider . . . the thenobler animals have been exterminated here,--the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc.,--I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country."

It is hard to believe that Changes in the Land was published thirty years ago. It seems as fresh today as it did when I first opened it shortly after its publication. It was my first introduction to something called "environmental history," and while it may not have invented the field, it was certainly critical in popularizing it and expanding its boundaries.

Changes in the Land is not simply about the ecological transformation of the New England landscape. It is a history of European and Native American early encounters in New England that puts the natural world at the center. It was not until I read this book that I really understood that the contest between Europeans and Native Americans for control of the Americas was not so much a war waged with varied weapons technology, but a contest between to conflicting and largely incompatible ways of getting a living from the land. Ecological factors, including the introduction of Old World plants, animals, and pathogens, and well as European practices of environmental transformation, were critical in determining how this contest played out. That might seem obvious today, especially in the wake of best-selling books like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. But it was not so obvious when Changes in the Land was first published. And for those who have not read it, Cronon's Changes in the Land is still a worthwhile counter-perspective to the broad, sweeping strokes painted by Diamond and others. By taking a micro-approach, and focussing exclusively on one small region, Cronon avoids the sweeping declarations that made Diamond's work so popular.

By placing environment at the center of the story, Cronon has influenced a generation of historians in varied ways. One of those ways has been to elevate the role the Euro-American farmer played in the transformation of North America over that of the role of the soldier. Had changes in the land not blazed a trail, works like Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord, and my own work,Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard: A Cultural History, would not have followed. But ultimately, you shouldn't simply read this book because of its influence. You should read it because it is a very good read.

To learn more about the history of apples in America, check out my blog, http://americanorchard.wordpress.com ...more

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Sep 18, 2016 William rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-star

A brilliant book that contextualizes and links the environmental history of New England to larger historical forces of colonization, the transAtlantic trade, and global capitalistic economy.

Cronon persuasively and effectively argues for ecological history as assuming "a dynamic and changing relationship between environment and culture" or as "dialectical"--that one cannot exist without the other (13).

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Oct 05, 2017 Max Potthoff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: environmental-history

Let me preface this by saying that I think William Cronon is the most important ecological voice of our generation. When environmental historians are piecing together the canon in one hundred years, it will go Muir, Leopold, Cronon (with many more sprinkled in between). That being said, you can tell that this was born out of a doctoral thesis. The writing isn't nearly as literary and compelling as it is in Nature's Metropolis. That being said, I derived a tremendous amount of joy reading this in ...more

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Jan 24, 2015 Samuel rated it it was amazing

Cronon is a very clear writer. His thesis is simple enough to be sustained but nuanced enough to be believable. This is a seminal work in environmental history. I will allow his preface to demonstrate: “My purpose throughout is to explain why New England habitats changed as they did during the colonial period. It is not my intention to rewrite the human history of the region: this is not a history of New England Indians, or of indian-colonial relations, or of the transformation of English Cronon is a very clear writer. His thesis is simple enough to be sustained but nuanced enough to be believable. This is a seminal work in environmental history. I will allow his preface to demonstrate: “My purpose throughout is to explain why New England habitats changed as they did during the colonial period. It is not my intention to rewrite the human history of the region: this is not a history of New England Indians, or of indian-colonial relations, or of the transformation of English colonists from Puritans to Yankees….Although I attribute much of the changing ecology of New England to the colonists’ more exclusive sense of property and their involvement in a capitalist economy—both present to some extent from the 1620s onward—I do not mean to suggest that the nature of the colonial economy underwent no fundamental alterations between 1620 and 1800. It of course did, and some of those alterations, by accentuating tendencies already present, accelerated the process of ecological change. Equally importantly, the reader must be very clear that the Indians were no more static than the colonists in their activities and organization. When I describe precolonial Indian ways of life, I intend no suggestion that these were somehow ‘purer’ or more ‘Indian’ than the ways of life Indians chose (or were forced into) following their contact with colonists” (xvi).

Cronon goes on to describe not only how the Indian populations of New England (whether conscious or subconscious we don't know) maintained a much more sustainable population before colonial settlement altered their way of life and imposed a much less controlled population increase/strain upon the land, but he also focuses on the paradox that colonists saw in Indians: the natives seemed to be suffering wants in a land of plenty. Deforestation was the ultimate and most ecologically devastating effect to the region. Not only did clear-cutting (as well as girdling and burning to lesser degrees) remove forests and change the land use, but it also changed how water was stored in the region, how nutrients cycled through the soil, and how the land would be viewed and used. Worm fences--wasteful uses of wood would only be replaced by stone fences in the late 18th century as forests turned to fields were dug up and their stones along with them. Ecological changes influenced by human behaviors began well before industrialization; Native Americans caused changes in the land and then colonists did in accelerated ways. Land use is a dynamic process that can be depicted falsely as static if historians don't treat it as such:

"Although we often tend to associate ecological changes primarily with cities and factories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it should by now be clear that changes with similar roots took place just as profoundly in the farms and countrysides of the colonial period....colonists and Indians together began a dynamic and unstable process of ecological change which had in no way ended in 1800 " (170).

Finally, the afterword of the book is worth reading. It explains how the book came to be: a grad school seminar paper flushed out into a book by fortuitous circumstances. Cronon got into Yale for his History PhD intending to write about nineteenth century Chicago and its Middle West hinterlands, but instead began with his first success in writing about New England two centuries earlier. It is a lesson not only in luck and good fortune but also flexibility in research interests and running with a good idea. ...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Karen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: re-read, comps

5/26/2015 - Upon re-reading this book, I upped it to 5 stars. My appreciation for Cronon's ingenuity has grown tremendously during the intervening years in which I first read it. This work has held up incredibly well and I can see its footprint on a multitude of other historians, myself included. It's a work I should re-read every few years to remind myself to and how to thick creatively about sources and to ask the big questions of the sources I have.

7/1/2008 - Excellent academic read, but his ...more

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Dec 12, 2014 Dan Allosso rated it really liked it

Shelves: envhist

This is the first Environmental History book many students read. Partly because it’s one of the books that helped establish the field; partly because it covers a time period at the beginning of traditional American History courses (my own course includes two units before North American colonization, but lots of people still start there). Cronon begins with an introduction called “The View from Walden,” that not only acknowledges some of the changes Henry David Thoreau saw in his neighborhood, This is the first Environmental History book many students read. Partly because it’s one of the books that helped establish the field; partly because it covers a time period at the beginning of traditional American History courses (my own course includes two units before North American colonization, but lots of people still start there). Cronon begins with an introduction called “The View from Walden,” that not only acknowledges some of the changes Henry David Thoreau saw in his neighborhood, but explodes the idea that these changes represent some “fall” from a pristine, ahistorical initial state. The landscape is always changing, and was changed by the Indians before white people arrived. Cronon states: “There has been no timeless wilderness in a state of perfect changelessness, no climax forest in permanent stasis.” (11) Cronon criticizes first-generation ecologists for assuming that all systems tend toward a stable equilibrium, and also for assuming “humanity was somehow outside the ideal climax community.” (10) This may be unfair to ecologists, who recognized their error and developed more complicated systems theories, but it’s an instructive metaphor for historians.

Cronon’s economic argument centers on the idea that European visitors’ and colonists’ response to New England was colored by their cultural baggage (valuation of the abundance they discovered was influenced by scarcity back home, as in the case of timber and firewood), and on the assertion that the colonists were part of a transatlantic capitalist market and drew the Indians into it as well (in his afterword, written on the twentieth anniversary of publication, Cronon seems to regret the slightly oversimplified depiction of “capitalism”). The pre-colonial landscape he describes is quite different from the trackless wilderness I’d always imagined, and Cronon’s detailed descriptions of the difference is one of the most attractive features of the book. Along the way, I picked up a lot of interesting details: for example, that the colonists were generally healthier and longer-lived than the people they left behind, since they were no longer exposed to the European disease environment (24). Of course, the diseases the colonists brought with them killed 90-100% of the Indians in many affected villages. But the Puritan settlers saw this as a sign of their God’s providence. (90)

Cronon observes that “Many European visitors were struck by what seemed to them the poverty of Indians who lived in the midst of a landscape endowed so astonishingly with abundance.” (33) He argues this is a misunderstanding of the Indian approach to life and land use. In a passage that reminds me a lot of Colin Tudge’s argument about agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers in Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers, Cronon says that not only did the Indians have a noncommercial value-system that led them to shun accumulation, but they were actually managing their environment in sophisticated ways that the colonists completely failed to recognize. Burning the forest understory created “edge” environments preferred by game animals. Gardening in “tangles” of maize, beans, and squash maximized crop yields, reduced erosion, and increased soil fertility (relative to the colonists’ monoculture). (43, 51)

Cronon’s point is that the Indians had a more stable, sustainable approach to their environment than did the colonists. He frequently accuses the colonists of “mining” the soil, but the fact that their society treated land as a commodity doesn’t necessarily mean that individual farmers deliberately set out to put short-term gains before sustainability. Cronon may be leaning too heavily on Frederick Jackson Turner when he assumes the colonists all simply planned on moving west when they’d exhausted their farms.

The Indian approach clearly required mobility, which made it incompatible with settled European agricultural culture. In another passage that Tudge echoes in his 1998 book, Cronon contrasts the Indians’ seasonal migrations with the colonists’ construction of fences – even their pastoralism was sedentary! Cronon admits that Indian “conservation…was less the result of an enlightened ecological sensibility than of the Indians’ limited social definition of ‘need.’” (98) He invokes Leibig’s Law to explain low Indian population densities (“biological populations are limited not by the total annual resources available to them but by the minimum amount that can be found at the scarcest time of year” 41), but doesn’t elaborate on the mechanism of population control (was it by restricting fertility, or by the starving of the weak?). Clearly, though, the Indians are the “good guys” in Cronon’s account. (I don’t disagree, I’m just pointing it out)

The second half of the book continues these arguments but doesn’t extend them much. Cronon throws in several interesting items for me, though. Springfield, begun by William Pynchon in 1636, was the latest in a string of “fur posts” on the Connecticut River. (99) English colonists who had been restricted by the Game Laws in their home country, overhunted to the point that “Hunting with us,” said Timothy Dwight, “exists chiefly in the tales of other times.” (101) A typical New England household consumed thirty to forty cords of firewood a year.” (120) “Roads…were typically between 99 and 165 feet wide…since they facilitated moving large herds to market.” (140) And Narragansett sachem Miantonomo made a speech in 1642 that complained about ecological degradation and warned “we shall all be starved” (162), so the colonists assassinated him in 1643. Overall, Changes in the Land is a very good read. Cronon makes a strong case for and environmental understanding of early America, and the book helped establish the field of Environmental History in the US. ...more

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May 27, 2019 Beth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm fascinated by the natural environment. What I learned in this book was you can't let nature just be nature if you intend on using it. The Native Americans knew this and treated the land in a way to make sure they could continue using it to live off. The other thing I took from this book was perspective, we know how things are now and read history with a current perspective, we know how it turned out, well the folks back then were living it and it was their reality. They did not have a ...more

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Oct 28, 2018 Frank rated it liked it · review of another edition

I listened to this book on hoopla thanks to my local library.

A landmark book on environmental history. Thoroughly researched, the subject matter is fascinating but it has an academic/textbook feel. I did learn quite a bit from this book. Excellent narration.

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May 04, 2017 Jen rated it really liked it

I found this to be an entirely fascinating read on the environmental/ecological history of colonial New England. Oddly enough, it answered quite a few questions I had pondered over since moving here five years ago. Highly recommend!

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Jan 11, 2011 Isabel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, ecology

I thought this book was incredible. After reading it, I can't stop looking at things around me differently, so automatically it got a 5 star from me. Some of the material can get a little dense, but the author breaks it down and analyzes it regularly and walks the reader along in his conclusions, most of which I was formulating at the time, anyway.

The final chapter was a great cap to the whole book. His ultimate conclusion, which was the one I was coming to terms with bit by bit through the I thought this book was incredible. After reading it, I can't stop looking at things around me differently, so automatically it got a 5 star from me. Some of the material can get a little dense, but the author breaks it down and analyzes it regularly and walks the reader along in his conclusions, most of which I was formulating at the time, anyway.

The final chapter was a great cap to the whole book. His ultimate conclusion, which was the one I was coming to terms with bit by bit through the pages is that even though we believe environmental degradation started in the 1800s with the Industrial Revolution, it was actually well on its way when the first English settler imported land grazing animals and their economic way of life into a land that was not initially suited to it. The ramifications continue to effect us today.

I had always associated the colonies with self sufficiency and independence, but in reality, it was an offshoot of an economy that had already ground up its natural and human resources. In order to "prosper" the English colonists continued to interface with English markets and commodification in a proto-global economy.

The author addresses alien species (animal, vegetable, and mircroorganism), societal conflice, legal mismatches, economic imbalance... all of it!

I'm still sorting out how the impact of English settlement altered the landscape, which in turn irrevocably changed the entire lifestyle of the Native Americans who had established a symbiotic relationship with it. The environmental balance was tipped and to this day our settlement patterns, politics and economy spill over and tumble chaotically in a direction that has led to environmental degradation, climate change, poverty, food shortages... the list goes on and on. How strange to be able to trace it back over 500 years...

"The colonial interaction of forests, furbearers, hunters, axes, grazing animals, plows, crops, weeds--and the rival ways of owning and selling these things--all contributed to a redrawn map of New England." W. Cronan. Not sure if that constitutes a "spoiler," but that, in a sentence is what this book sets out to illustrate and it did an awesome job of it.

Fact: corroborated that an Indian (I've already forgotten the name) was essentially orphaned when his entire village died due to illness brought by the English. This left him in receptive to joining the English and assisting them. ...more

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May 26, 2018 Runyan Xu rated it really liked it

William Cronon’s work, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England which was published in 1983, discusses the shifts of plants and animals because of European settlers’ arrival which reflects the history of the ecology and economy of colonial New England, human society influence on this region, and the relationship between environment and cultures. The main argument of this book is to indicate that both motivations of both Native Indians and Europeans are based on the William Cronon’s work, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England which was published in 1983, discusses the shifts of plants and animals because of European settlers’ arrival which reflects the history of the ecology and economy of colonial New England, human society influence on this region, and the relationship between environment and cultures. The main argument of this book is to indicate that both motivations of both Native Indians and Europeans are based on the economic desires by analyzing differences in lifestyles, agricultural practices, hunting habits and land use. He establishes the thesis by using a variety of evidence throughout the book. This book makes a great contribution of piece up some important concepts with works from a wide range of disciplines.
Cronon starts his argument with the analysis of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. The analysis on Walden’s work about human impacts on the environment is the perfect prologue for Cronon to start his argument about changes caused by the European settlers in New England. Nature means more than the physical environment for Cronon like he said “a changed landscape meant a loss of wildness and virility that was ultimately spiritual in its import, a sign of declension in both nature and humanity”(Cronon, 4). The changes in the environment convert residents’ attitudes, spiritual beliefs, and cultures. Environment changes the culture and the culture changes human impacts on the environment. As Cronon explains, “environment may initially shape the range of choices available to a people at a given moment, but then culture reshapes environment in responding to those choices”(Cronon, 13). Cronon continues the argument by providing historical evidence about the ecological impact of Europeans settlers and discusses the ecological and economic status as Europeans arrival. Before the Europeans’ arrival, nature was open and kept so with Native Indians’ management ideas. Europeans shipped the natural resources they found valuable in New England to Europe with the thinking of the land as a commodity. The ideas the European settlers had from their culture and tradition affect their thinking of the natural things which is the nature as goods to gain profit and wealth.
The difference between European and Indian cultures causes the dramatic changes in the environment at New England. Historical records and reports offer valuable evidence for Cronon’s argument. Some records attempted to make the colonies seem more attractive to Europeans and tend to focus on merchantable commodities. For example, the early description of New England was “saw only areas within easy reach of the coast “ and “the interior remained blank.”(Cronon, 19). The large areas of uncultivated land, dense forest coverage, and absence of domesticated animals let Europeans sniff a fresh opportunity when wide landscape belongs to the Crown, exhaust timbers as fuel back home, and livestocks play a significant role in Europe. Europeans destroyed the forest for agriculture and introduced European domesticated animal at a fast pace. It pushed high pressure on the environment. Trees’ leaves and roots help with reducing the runoff and soil erosion, which is a significant part of preventing flooding. Deforestation affected the climates, local water system, and soil health. Degrading land use such as the overgrazing and deforestation mentioned in this book can lead to desertification and flooding which are both water-driven natural disasters. Indians’ nomadic lifestyle leads them to only have necessities and low economy requirement. Their way of seasonal hunting and acquiring food from the nature gives the nature time and opportunity to recover and species to reproduce. The comparison of two different treatments implicates that European settlers’ actions have the destructive influence on the New England ecosystem.
From Cronon’s point of view, the environmental changes can be considered as a story of the triumph of capitalism and commodification of the nature. Native Indians changed the landscape by using fire to clear certain woodland areas but it was less destructive than the transformation did by Europeans. Soil fertility increases with low-intensity fires because the fires convert nutrients in dead plant and soil microorganisms change as well when the mineralization affected by the fires. The way how they use the land and decide whether overlapping groups can occupy depends on how they used the land. Fish, berries, and timber are not property to own, but part of the land. On the other hand, Europeans brought a system which land was a private commodity and a component of individual’s wealth. Commodification of the nature is not only on land, but also on other parts of the ecosystem. The fur trade is an example Cronon mainly discusses. In Europeans’ opinion, the fur trade encourages Native Indian to hunt and exchanging the furs to obtain status. It promotes the development of society as well. Europeans create a new forest ecology with their experience in Europe. They destroy the older forest and replace it with their idealized model. The mono-culture demolishes the diverse ecology when the land is covered by grasses and crops introduced from Europe. They considered this as making progress, but it was complete destruction for the people who lived for years.
This book offers a good instruction for understanding the environmental degradation in the future. In order to coherently explore the environmental change and respond to crises, it is necessary to understand the relation of nature, political organization, economic structure, and social factors. The world is built up by these factors and none alone functions by itself. Another advantage of this book is that the language is easy to understand, even for the reader don’t have much professional knowledge. The conclusions drawn from this book are effective and can be considered as timeless such as the capitalist economy induced the exploitation.
Cronon comprehensively discusses the history of European-caused environmental changes, but the analysis from the viewpoint of Native Indians was inadequate. Most of the reasons for environmental changes at New England talked about were created by Europeans. There are some limits on the Native Indians’ side to explain their compromise between traditions and new forms of properties. The motivation of Native Indians to satisfy the European market demands has not been discussed in this book either. Compare to the European culture altered the ecosystem at New England discussed, environmental changes caused by the possible changed Native Indian culture after the destruction of their autonomy and ecological relationship are missing. Cronon also falls short of the explorations about Europeans’ non-economic reason of overbroad expansion at the beginning.
Overall, Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England presents the changing circumstances in New England’s communities and builds up an interdisciplinary analysis of land and human influenced each other. Although it was written thirty-five years ago, the concepts conclude from it and method of thinking about the human relationship with nature are useful and meaningful for the researches today and in the future. ...more

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Feb 04, 2019 D. & J. Reads rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, books-i-own

Changes in the Land was helpful to me and greatly expanded my knowledge on Native American history because it was the study of the ecological system in America and how human contact with the environment both had a positive and negative impact on the climate and environment.

Normally we study the history of the United States or American Indian history through a political or religious perspective, but this book was the study of such history from a purely ecological one. It was very interesting and ...more

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Jul 07, 2016 Don rated it liked it

Shelves: history

This is certainly a great book, and by most measures, it's the book that really started blending disciplines together to create logical and more complete historical narratives. Think 1491 (and 1493), and even Guns, Germs, and Steel ... All the way to Big History!

Well, William Cronon wrote this book in 1983 -- when most environmental writing was still considered far off on the left wing in tree hugger territory. This, however, showed a much deeper understanding amid recognition of how humans and ...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Timothy Hill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An excellent and fascinating study. My only quibbles would be:

(1) The book is somewhat dated; while I'm not an ecologist or biologist, I feel reasonably certain our scientific knowledge and ability to reconstruct past ecosystems has improved in the last thirty years. It's time for a second, updated edition!

(2) The author to my mind struggles excessively not to portray the Native Americans as victims of European expansionism. At several points he states explicitly that Native Americans were not ...more

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Feb 16, 2010 Sara rated it it was amazing

This is a great ecological history of the transitions that occurred in the ecology of New England when colonists settled the land. Cronon does a great job of including human decisions, deliberate and unintended, in the narrative. There was a lot of interesting information here, and it's presented in a readable and thought-provoking way.

The dynamics of human interaction with ecosystems, both by Indians and British, are explored in detail and he carefully refutes the concept that any of the ...more

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Jan 30, 2016 Dijon rated it it was amazing

Excellent.
Cronon seeks to dispel notions of a precolonial New England in permanent wilderness stasis, with 'noble Indians' living in perfect harmony with nature. At the same time he ties the introduction of capitalism with European arrival, of viewing the land and its products principally as commodities.
He clearly shows how colonial attitudes toward the land set the stage for how many Americans act even today.

"Ecological abundance and economic prodigality went hand in hand; the people of plenty ...more

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Jul 26, 2011 ☯Emily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science

This was required reading in an environmental history class. It was readable and enjoyable. This will supplement any Colonial history you already know about New England. It begins with a description of the New World land and its abundant animals before the Pilgrims came. Within a century the abundance was gone, the land "tamed" and the Indians forced off the land. Cronon gives a balanced analysis of why these changes occurred. Surprisingly, all these changes occurred before the Industrial ...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Andrew added it

Shelves: history, environmental-history

The story of Changes in the Land is nowhere near as deep as that of Nature’s Metropolis. I’m a sucker for environmental history, but this wasn’t terribly enlightening. Yes, American colonists sucked at land management, squandered resources, and introduced invasive species and diseases. I certainly was aware of that. Really, I was far more interested in the descriptions of Indian lifeways, and how they sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally established sustainable patterns of ...more

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Jul 23, 2009 Claire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-history-of-interest, favorites

It may just be impossible to overstate the importance of this book and its detailed but succinct uncovering of the way Indians and Europeans interacted with the land of New England and with each other, critically historizing all three characters. For use in a undergraduate course, even to frame a lecture, this book can be used to challenge students' preconceived notions of static or ahistorical systems as dynamic, with all human characters endowed with agency. I've read this short volume ...more

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Sep 24, 2018 Pippa rated it really liked it

Other than a great oversimplification of a vast group of people ie: Native people, the book makes some very interesting points, but often leaves something to be desired in its connections to social history.

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Jun 26, 2016 Genevieve rated it it was amazing

Groundbreaking work of environmental history. Precise, succinct and well-written.

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Apr 28, 2008 Billy rated it really liked it

Shelves: environmental-history-and-lit

William Cronon’s Changes in the Land compares Europeans’ and Native Americans’ impacts on the ecology of colonial New England. He argues that the European worldview and lifestyle did not just affect native peoples, but New England’s ecology as well. New methods of farming, hunting, and gathering prompted this ecological system to respond to colonists’ “changes in the land.” In making this argument, Cronon gives nature itself agency. This paradigm shift away from human agency and towards nature’ William Cronon’s Changes in the Land compares Europeans’ and Native Americans’ impacts on the ecology of colonial New England. He argues that the European worldview and lifestyle did not just affect native peoples, but New England’s ecology as well. New methods of farming, hunting, and gathering prompted this ecological system to respond to colonists’ “changes in the land.” In making this argument, Cronon gives nature itself agency. This paradigm shift away from human agency and towards nature’s role in the past signifies a broad theme of environmental history. Traditionally human institutions—such as economy, government, class, and gender—are the subject of historical study. With environmental history, ecology gains equal prominence in its ability to explain historical changes. For this reason, Cronon’s work has gained a prominent place in American environmental historiography. His investigation into a changing New England ecology adds new dimensions to our colonial past. His arguments, however, are based upon a dichotomy between Anglos and Indians; capitalism and sustainability; both false dichotomies that form the basis of this critique.
Cronon’s two other notable works include Nature’s Metropolis, which tells of Chicago’s emerging economy, and Uncommon Ground, a collection of essays on contemporary environmental issues. In each of these works a common theme emerges: nature and humanity are seen by historical actors as standing in binary opposition to each other. For example, in his article entitled “The Trouble with Wilderness,” Cronon describes the problems with any dichotomy that sees humanity and nature as polar opposites. He points out that such binaries make any idealized place for humans within nature impossible and that humans are “unlikely to make much progress in solving [environmental] problems if we hold up to ourselves as the mirror of nature a wilderness we ourselves cannot inhabit.” The theme of binaries continues in Nature’s Metropolis. In this book, Cronon argues that participants in the windy city’s economy viewed nature and city as separate spheres. Regardless the hinterland and urban center shaped each other equally. Cronon’s first attempt with they type of dichotomous paradigm of environmental history, however, came in 1983 with Changes in the Land.
Cronon’s first book compares “New England ecosystems in 1600 with those in 1800 as if examining two snapshots—New England before the Europeans and New England after.” Anglos brought a new economic worldview across the Atlantic, one that vastly differed from the ideas of Native Americans. This argument is nothing new. Previous scholars have also attributed the shifts in New England’s environment with the onset of a European capitalist economy. But Cronon’s approach is slightly different. He shows that environmental factors themselves played a significant role in the shifting power structure of colonial New England. Power shifted away from Indians and towards Anglos. European conceptions of land use, especially the Old World practice of pastoralism, a practice that “antedates capitalism by four of five thousand years,” played a huge role in helping colonists conquer the land.
Pastoralism forced Anglos to shape New England’s ecology to fit their animals’ needs. Imported animals overgrazed on abundant fields, but over time pastorialism caused wear and tear took its toll on the land. Animals forced Europeans to create new pastures. Animals also exerted tremendous influence in changing New England’s ecology. To Cronon, colonists exerted ecological pressures because their “livestock—whether raised for market or for home consumption—were themselves a major reason for the dispersal of colonial settlements.” These “hordes of European grazing animals…constituted a heavier burden on New England plants and soils” than the New England’s ecology had previously experienced.
Anglo settlers and Indian inhabitants stood in ideological opposition to one another. Chapter seven, entitled “A World of Fields and Fences,” dissects the opposing views Anglos and Indians had of the land. It investigates the man-made boundaries that Europeans superimposed onto the landscape and reveals how their conceptions of land were based on Old World traditions. To settlers, land was owned precisely because it held property value and could create wealth. Colonists “brought with them concepts of value and scarcity which had been shaped by the social and ecological circumstances of northern Europe, and so perceived New England as a landscape of great natural wealth.” Native Americans, however, had a different view of the land. They endorsed a “usufruct” conception that viewed land not as something to be owned or quartered off. Instead, land was a common ground onto which all parties could take what they needed. These divergent worldviews led to an inevitable “conflict between the land uses of the colonists and those of the Indians.”
Indians’ place in their environment, to Cronon, was natural, while European’s uses of the land were not. Native Americans attained equilibrium with their surroundings, only taking what they needed when they needed it, even at the risk of going hungry. One Native American reflected on long bouts of hunger by stating “it is all the same to us, we shall stand it well enough; we spend seven and eight days, even ten sometimes, without eating anything, yet we do not die.” Europeans scoffed at such practices. They clung to their commodity-driven worldview and spent much of their energy commodifying nature. Anglos ultimately induced Indians to convert to a commodity driven worldview. Soon, Indians were using wampum for currency; they became relegated to manmade borders. Confined to lands outside well-defined grazing pastures, they sold beaver furs and excess crops for profit, just like Anglos. This dichotomy between necessity (Indian) and commodity (Anglos) driven economies reveals Cronon’s disdain for capitalism. On page 161, he bluntly states that in colonial New England “capitalism and environmental degradation went hand in hand.”
There are a few problems with this binary view of colonial New England. First, by separating its inhabitants into separate spheres—Anglo/Indian, Capitalist/Usufruct—Cronon makes value judgments of neatly divided groups. Anglos come across as being capitalistic and ecologically unfriendly. He states that “the colonists’ economic relations of production were ecologically self-destructive.” Conversely, Cronon sees Native Americans as being un-capitalistic, and therefore ecologically friendly. “Indians held their demands on the ecosystem to a minimum by moving their settlements from habitat to habitat [and] made sure that no single species became overused.” His distinction is clear: Anglos are ecologically destructive while Indians are in equilibrium with their surroundings. But this distinction between Anglo and Indian is a false dichotomy. Native American scholars, and many Native Americans themselves, might view Changes in the Land and its binary categorization as shortsighted. Native Americans did not view themselves as a large, coherent group which stood in opposition to Whites. In the colonial period, Indians belonged to distinct tribes, each with a unique culture and dialect.
Not all Indian tribes approached the environment in a similar fashion. Shepard Krech’s 1999 book The Ecological Indian explains that many Indian tribes endorsed ecologically harmful practices. Widespread burns and mass slaughter of animals were in no way uncommon. Not all Native Americans acted in similar ways, nor did they all follow environmentally-friendly practices. When Cronon does recollect Indian’s practice of mass burnings, he touts the ecological benefits of these actions--ecological benefits that were lost on Europeans. They “failed to see its subtler ecological effects. In the first place, it increased the rate at which forest nutrients were recycled into the soil [as well as] promoted the mosaic quality of New England ecosystems.” Cronon has no Native American written documentation to back his ecological insights. Native Americans might take issue with a white scholar appropriating their culture simply to endorse modern day environmentalism.
Cronon’s binary groups of Anglo/Indian and Capitalist/Usufruct are a little too neat. While he explains the roots of these two views of land use and economy, Cronon still underscores the nuances of European economic worldviews. For example, his contention that European settlers endorsed a “capitalist” worldview might be better articulated. The term “capitalism” gets his point across—certainly Europeans sought to commodify nature. But these colonists were not “capitalist” in a strict sense. They arrived under the auspices of a Mercantilist government and a Mercantilist worldview. Mercantilism emphasized both resource extraction and the systematic creation of markets via government intervention. It also helped colonists rationalize global confrontation and domination. Cronon’s “capitalism” is a loaded term. He uses it to set up a dichotomy between Native American usufruct ideology and European worldview. In the process creates a tension that he never really resolves with a term that he never actually articulates. Arguing that “economic and ecological imperialisms reinforced each other,” is not wrong, but colonial New England is not the place to view “capitalism” and ecological destruction going hand in hand.
For all of his digs against capitalism, Changes in the Land never sets forth any viable alternative. Not to say that historians need put on paper how they think the past should have played out, but keep in mind that the book is, at its core, a political work. First published in 1983, the book stood as a polemic against the ultra-conservative Reagan administration. Cronon’s continued bashing of “capitalism” speaks to his political stance of the early 1980s. He calls into question capitalism’s effects on ecology at the peak of Reagan’s anti-big government rhetoric. Reagan’s de-emphasis of environmental policies would not sit well with most avowed environmentalists. Cronon’s rant against capitalism is not necessarily unwarranted, but if he is going to write a book degrading an ecologically devastating economic system, he might also want to provide an alternative.
Within this “capitalist/usufruct” dichotomy environmentalists have only two options: capitalist devastation or pre-capitalist sustainability. This false dichotomy mimics the sentiments of Deep Ecologists, a radical sect of ecological theology that believes nature cannot co-exist with mankind. They maintain that these two entities need to remain separate and argue that humanity does not hold dominion over nature. Essentially, humans must treat nature as a separate entity. Cronon argues against deep ecologists in his article “The Trouble with Wilderness.” In it, he finds false the premise that these radical environmentalists “express the popular notion that our environmental problems began with the invention of agriculture.” Yet much of Changes in the Land focuses on agriculture’s role in New England’s ecological devastation.
Deep Ecologists’ views of a clear separation between man and nature are eerily similar to 1983s Changes in the Land, even if Cronon has eased his stance since the Reagan administration.
More moderate environmentalists take issue with Deep Ecologists and William Cronon for similar reasons. Environmental historian Samuel P. Hays contests Cronon’s dichotomy by calling such arguments elitist. To Hays, environmentalists need not be a separate group from working class people who view wilderness as separate. Nor does wilderness need to represent a sphere apart from work or home. Hays argues that the environment’s boundaries are more fluid—perhaps including one’s own backyard. French philosopher Luc Ferry also took issue with these binaries in his book The New Ecological Order. Ferry argued that binary separations between man and nature could ultimately lead to eco-fascism. This is not to say that Cronon is a radical by any means; educated at Yale and Oxford, Cronon might not necessarily fit into that political category. This critique simply suggests that Cronon’s tendency to setup dichotomies in one book and then criticize groups who endorse them in an article twelve years later are worth examining.
Changes in the Land remains an important work in the field of environmental history. It maintains its popularity because of its clear prose and modest length of 170 pages. The book provides students with an excellent introduction to environmental history and gives scholars ammunition for debate and discussion. Cronon was one of the first to incorporate ecology into the greater historical framework of American history. For these reasons, Changes in the Land promises to intrigue scholars for some time.
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Sep 15, 2019 George Siehl rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: politics, history-american, nature, landscape, conservation, owned

Found this at a used book sale last year and it looked interesting. Cronon provides a c0ntrast between the New England Indians and the English colonists who came to coexist among them. His particular emphasis is upon how their relative lifestyles impacted the ecology of the area over time. His basic timeline covers the period from the early 1600s to 1800. He also refers to the Europeans who came earlier to fish and trade, but not settle. This interaction is blamed for introducing diseases for Found this at a used book sale last year and it looked interesting. Cronon provides a c0ntrast between the New England Indians and the English colonists who came to coexist among them. His particular emphasis is upon how their relative lifestyles impacted the ecology of the area over time. His basic timeline covers the period from the early 1600s to 1800. He also refers to the Europeans who came earlier to fish and trade, but not settle. This interaction is blamed for introducing diseases for which the Indians held no natural immunities, thus decimating their population before the settlers arrived.

The original inhabitants had developed a nomadic lifestyle that allowed them to subsist, although in the northern region, winter starvation was known. They modified the forest environment, primarily through using fire to clear out the forest understory vegetation. This allowed them to raise maize and gourds on a sustainable basis. They also drew on local plants, berries, and wildlife, including shellfish, fish, birds, and game animals. This level of utilization is what the settlers found. To some extent, especially upon arrival, they shared in some of these practices.

However, the settlers were creatures of a different culture, one providing more creature comforts, and technology beyond sticks and stones. However this culture imposed a higher cost on the environment. They transplanted European agricultural practices to the new land, starting a wide range of environmental changes over the years. The agriculture was more intensive, lands were fenced to show property lines, the forests were heavily cut to provide farmland and pastures and to utilize the timber. As these practices continued, it disrupted the Indians in their land utilization (wandering cattle eating their crops and hogs rooting out the clam banks, for instance). The settlers came to look upon the natural bounty they found as sources of income, not just subsistence. Thus, they provided meat, crops, and wood for the towns and eventually goods for export back to England.

Cronon's critical rendering of the settler behavior and the adverse ecological changes it caused is supported by a number of sources writing at the time. When he casts the blame for all the environmental ills on capitalism, his argumentation is naïve and unresearched. The idea that only capitalism exploits natural resources and damages the ecology ignores reality. His book was written in 1983. In 1972 Marshall Goldman, Wellesley Economics Professor and an associate at the Harvard Russian Research Center, published his book, The Spoils of Progress: Environmental Pollution in the Soviet Union. Marshall says the book "is a prerequisite for anyone who believes it is capitalism and private greed that are the root cause of environmental disruption." That Communism is as environmentally rapacious as ever, Anne-Marie Brady's 2017 book, China as a Polar Great Power, a closely researched work, documents Chinese aims and actions in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

Everyone is entitled to a political opinion; it is unfortunate that Professor Cronon's blights what would otherwise be a useful and informative work.

The Marshall and Brady books are both recommended for those interested in the political realities of environmental exploitation.

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Aug 03, 2019 Benjamin Janssen rated it it was amazing

Beautiful final paragraph of this book “Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England” by William Cronon. He quotes a 1889-1975 geographer who’s writings I will now look into. Carl said that Americans “had not yet learned the difference between yield and loot”. It fed so many curiosities about our culture’s discontentment creating values. Just started “The Divide: Global inequality, from conquest to free markets” which I think carries some the same thread regarding the Beautiful final paragraph of this book “Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England” by William Cronon. He quotes a 1889-1975 geographer who’s writings I will now look into. Carl said that Americans “had not yet learned the difference between yield and loot”. It fed so many curiosities about our culture’s discontentment creating values. Just started “The Divide: Global inequality, from conquest to free markets” which I think carries some the same thread regarding the extractive nature of the global economic amoeba.

The abundance colonists came upon in New England, and its 200 year process of converting it to global markets, set the “cultural scaffolding” (Joe Brewer term?) that has spring boarded us to assume we can terraform Mars once we’re done devouring this planet. They were blind to the moving parts that created the conditions for naturally conceived abundance. We are still blind to the thermodynamically condition specific and relational circumstances that constitute a continual seemingly divine autopoietic (self creating system/organism) gift of life.

This was a time that built up and established the economic dogma that we live in today where the extraction of living moving life on a landscape is converted into static dead imagined and engorged conceptions of material wealth that result in spiritual depletion pervasive throughout our culture. I see our treatment of land as synonymous with our treatment of the wilderness in all of us. I feel that it’s implicated in the growing number of hopeless spiritually depleted souls that commit senseless mass shootings today but that’s a separate chapter to be explored in the future. It involves our cultures assumption that mental health is a problem isolated from our unhealthy cultural values. Conventional mental health inquiry seems to never ask about the conditions that lead someone to feel hopeless about today’s world and the extractive paths and lifestyles they’re steeped in.

I feel hopeful in light of all this, however, because right now cattle and pigs make up more biomass than people on the planet do (Nate Hagan). Learning about New England’s transition from wild game livestock to the more extractive ones (cattle and pigs) that constantly beg for more landscape planted a question in my noodle. It seems like if we are exploiting the planet’s carrying capacity and are also overpopulated that we could transition to repurpose external and internal landscapes (industrial appetites) to feed all life more than they currently feed cattle and pigs #permaculture. ...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Vincent rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-and-maths, native-american-studies, 17th-century-america

William Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England is a landmark in environmental history. When published in 1983 it served to legitimize the interdisciplinary study, weaving history, ecology, anthropology and various other disciplines into an easily accessible narrative the main focus of which was not the human agency so often the subject of historical analysis, but the ecology in which they operated, interacted, and effected. The thesis is simple, yet William Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England is a landmark in environmental history. When published in 1983 it served to legitimize the interdisciplinary study, weaving history, ecology, anthropology and various other disciplines into an easily accessible narrative the main focus of which was not the human agency so often the subject of historical analysis, but the ecology in which they operated, interacted, and effected. The thesis is simple, yet compelling: that the shift from an Indian to European way of life, and the vastly differing ways in which those two communities viewed property, had incredible impacts on the very landscape and ecology of New England. That to view the ecology of pre-colonial New England to that which was present at the dawn of the early republic is to view two very different environments in terms of plants, animals, terrain, and in some parts even climate, nearly all of which can be traced to being the result of the paradigm shift which occurred as European colonists came to dominate the area and brought with them their ideas of fixed property and mercantilism (which the author calls “capitalism,” though this is debatable), facilitated by the destruction of Indian society through disease, conquest, and the shifting environment.

Cronon writes with brevity and clarity as he lays out his narrative. He begins with quoting Thoreau, who had lamented the changes that had occurred to the environment by his own time, and yet unlike Thoreau Cronon succeeds in not falling into the trap of the “myth of fallen humanity” (4) in his own analysis of Indians and the loss of their society and habitat, which can at least partly be attributed to their own actions. He makes a clear effort to present colonists and Indians in an objective, unbiased arena, which is a considerable feat when one takes into account the dearth of Indian documents available to historians as compared to that of colonists, who by virtue of sheer volume tend to dominate as the voices of the past in this era.

Cronon convincingly reveals how the history of a location can be read by the plants, trees and animals present at a given time, providing evidence as to whether the land had been used for grazing, for example, and what types of animals would have been present, what effect they would have had depending upon the elevation of the land or the direction of a hillside, or whether soil erosion might have been a contributing factor. The list goes on. He also gives compelling examples of how markets affected the terrain, such as how the over-hunting of beavers led to the destruction of dams and the drying of ponds, which then became fertile meadows by the time colonists arrived to make their settlement (107).

Though Cronon’s thesis takes into account many factors, it is only nearly comprehensive. While he speaks extensively of the colonists’ and Indians’ views of property and wealth, nothing is said of their religion. Especially when considering a people like the Puritans, no account could be said to be complete without addressing how religion played a role in forming their worldview, particularly as it directly informed how they would have viewed the environment and their relation to it. Cronon himself addresses this omission in the afterward to the twentieth-anniversary edition and concludes that to delve into such a complicated topic would have taken away from the smooth flow of the narrative (184). This is likely so, but the absence remains glaring.

Other more admittedly minor additions to the book would have improved the reader’s experience. Cronon assumes in the reader a fairly intimate knowledge of New England geography, frequently mentioning rivers and towns extending from southern Connecticut to the reaches of Maine. The inclusion of maps would not only be helpful, but may serve visually to reinforce the thesis by further emphasizing changes over time. Likewise, species of trees and plants are listed extensively, though only a botanist or an arborist is likely to be acquainted with the majority of them, and without an internet search engine or a natural history tome readily accessible most readers will not recognize them. Other visuals that would be of service to the lay reader include depictions of Indian and colonial villages, the stark contrasts of which would again reinforce the thesis. Nevertheless, such grievances are minor and do nothing to damage Cronon’s argument; rather, their inclusion would only enrich it.

Perhaps the most dramatic impression of Changes in the Land is the lesson it leaves with today’s readers, that while not explicit, is certainly implied. Humans have profound impacts on ecology, and such impacts can sometimes be devastating, not only to the environment but to people’s own long-term interests. Cronon quotes Benjamin Lincoln who laments that in his own time people’s short-term interests allow cattle to roam and tear up the soil, killing trees and vegetation, on land that would have been better used for crops, thereby preserving more of the soil while also providing more food (146). Similarly, the modern American obsession with meat consumption, and the resources required to fulfill it, have long shown their adverse effects, whether by pollution or the disappearance of fresh water reservoirs. This is but one example.

Another is curiously revealed by strange serendipity, for as I write this Michael Feldman’s “Whad’Ya Know?” is broadcasting in the background on NPR, and his guest is University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife ecologist professor Stanley Temple, a colleague of Cronon, who is discussing the state’s early bloom. In his afterward Cronon credits as an intellectual predecessor Aldo Leopold, also a UW professor, who in 1949 published, posthumously, the influential A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There, which described in straight-forward detail the land around the author’s home. Professor Temple, in his interview with Feldman, is currently describing how Leopold’s descriptions have allowed them know when spring flowers bloomed in his time, and at what temperatures, and how human-influenced climate change has now brought earlier blooms to Wisconsin. The effects of warmer temperatures have had devastating effects on many of the state’s industries, including its cherry harvests and the making of maple syrup. It does not take a great stretch of the imagination to see the analogous relation to colonial New England’s beaver pelt trade or lumber industry, both of which were exhausted and had dramatic consequences on the local ecology. Even after three decades Cronon’s thesis remains potent because it has proved consistently topical and ever more relevant, and we continue to see evidence of its validity everywhere, in our time. ...more

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