Summary Of Changes In The Land By William Cronon

“Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England” was published in 1983 by historian William Cronon. The book focuses on environmentalism and history of New England. Cronon describes the shift from Indian to European dominance, the European’s view of nature through an economic lens, and the anthropogenic changes to the environment that occured. Throughout the book, Cronon argues that the European colonists used various tactics to assert dominance over the Indians. One example can be found on page 56 where it states, “English colonists could use Indian hunting and gathering as a justification for expropriating Indian land.” Cronon believes that the colonists and Indians had different views for the ownership and use of land. The colonists used “their right to land” multiple times to display superiority (57). When the colonists first arrived they believed that a person could obtain land one of two ways: by purchasing it from the Indians or by being granted land from the English Crown, however, by the late 17th

I’ve never before thought of fences as something harmful to the environment. Cronon explains that the Indians traveled as necessary, and this allowed the soil to recover from crop and livestock use. On the other hand, colonists were concerned about land ownership and used fences to distinguish their property (135-136). The repetitive effects from growing crops and grazing livestock did not allow the soil time to recover, and the colonists began to see the effects of their actions. It is written that the ecological effects were “extending even to the climate itself” (122). What the colonists began to see were effects like increasing winds due to lack of windbreaks, loss of root cover from monocropping, and flooding as a result plant