Changes in the Land

A detailed Summary of Changes in the Land


In his book, Changes in the Land, William Cronon explores the relationship between the European and indigenous populations and local ecologies between 1620 and 1800. As he states at the outset of the book:

"My thesis is simple: the shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes -- well known to historians -- in the ways these people organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations -- less well-known to historians -- in the region's plant and animal communities."(vii)

Cronon's approach involves an investigation not only of the role a rapidly changing human population played in the altering of the ecology of New England, but the impact that ecology had on the local populations through time. By augmenting a traditional historical study with tools from anthropology and the biological sciences, Cronon develops a unique and


This impact changed at an accelerating rate upon the arrival of Europeans. To accommodate the greater crop and livestock stores for commerce and safety against harsh winters, the Europeans cleared a large percentage of the local forest and domesticated animals more impactful on the local ecosystems. The new livestock and expanded European population helped to harbor disease epidemics, which ravaged the local population, sometimes eliminating entire villages. (86) The differences in notions of property rights came, with an increasingly powerful European population, to be settled to the exclusion of the native populations, forcing them to work with the European system of social organization which restricted patterns of migratory subsistence to smaller areas with greatly reduced animal and food stock.

Working within these smaller ecosystems, the Indians of precolonial New England

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 595
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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