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

by William Cronon, John Putnam Demos (Foreword)

"Written with an elegant simplicity of style, this pioneering study has become an enduring classic in the fields of American colonial and environmental history." -Howard R. Lamar, Yale University

Changes in the Land is an original and persuasive interpretation of the changing circumstances in New England's plant and animal communities that occurred with the shift from Indian to European dominance. With the tools of both historian and ecologist, William Cronon constructs a brilliant interdisciplinary analysis of how the land and the people influenced one another, and how that complex web of relationships shaped New England's communities.

"[By] appraising evidence that ranges from fossil pollen counts to Puritan court documents, William Cronon explain[s] how the farming practices and commercial instincts of the early English Colonists destroyed the region's flourishing forest habitat - and doomed New England's native Indians with it . . . Cronon's eloquent book has the rigor of first-rate history and the power of tragedy." -Jim Miller, Newsweek

"The book's greatest contribution is bringing together work from so many sources in a wide range of disciplines and in focusing it through the lens of ecological concerns." -Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Journal of American History

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Nature, Environment, Ecology, American History, Science

257 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

William "Bill" Cronon is a noted environmental historian, and the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was president of the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2012.

Reviews

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Richard Reese · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 horrific mortality of imported diseases, and two centuries of senseless warfare on the fish, forests, soils, and wildlife.

The prize at the bottom of the box is a mirror. The patterns of thinking that the colonists brought to America are essentially our modern insanity in its adolescent form. We are the unfortunate inheritors of a dysfunctional culture. It helps to know this. It helps to be able to perceive the glaring defects, things we have been taught to believe are perfectly normal.

Cronon was the son of a history professor, and his father gave him the key for understanding the world. He told his son to carry one question on his journey through life: “How did things get to be this way?” Schoolbook history does a poor job of answering this question, because it often puts haloes on people who caused much harm, folks who faithfully obeyed the expectations of their culture and peers.

In Cronon’s book, alert readers will discover uncomfortable answers to how things got to be this way. We have inherited a dead end way of life. In the coming decades, big challenges like climate change, peak oil, and population growth seem certain to disrupt industrial civilization, as we know it.

We can’t return to hunting and gathering anytime soon, nor can we remain on our sinking ship. To continue our existence on Earth, big changes are needed, new ideas. This presents a fabulous opportunity to learn from our mistakes, to live slower, lighter, and better. Cronon’s book reveals important lessons — what worked well, and what failed.

In the 5,000 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Europe had been transformed from a thriving wilderness to a scarred and battered land, thanks to soil mining, forest mining, fish mining, mineral mining, and a lot of crazy thinking. During the same 5,000 years, the Indians of northern New England kept their numbers low, and didn’t beat the stuffing out of their ecosystem, because it was a sacred place, and they were well adapted to living in it.

In southern New England, the Indians regularly cleared the land by setting fires. This created open, park-like forests, which provided habitat attractive to game. Burning altered the ecosystem. One early settler noted a hill near Boston, from which you could observe thousands of treeless acres below. This was not a pristine ecosystem in its climax state.

In the north, the Indians did not clear the land with fire. The trees in that region were too flammable, so the forests were allowed to live wild and free. Indians travelled more by canoe.

In the south, where the climate was warmer, Indians practiced slash and burn agriculture. Forests were killed and fields were planted with corn, beans, and squash. Corn is a highly productive crop that is also a heavy feeder on soil nutrients. After five to ten seasons, the soil was depleted, and the field was abandoned. The Indians had no livestock to provide manure for fertilizer. Few used fish for fertilizer, because they had no carts for hauling them.

This digging stick agriculture was soil mining, unsustainable. Corn had arrived in New England just a few hundred years earlier, too recently to produce civilization and meltdown, as it did in Cahokia on the Mississippi. Corn spurred population growth, which increased the toll on forests and soils. (Other writers have noted that corn country was not a land of love, peace, and happiness. Most Iroquois villages were surrounded by defensive palisades, because more people led to more stress and more conflict.)

The colonists imported an agricultural system that rocked the ecological boat much harder. Their plows loosened the soil more deeply, encouraging erosion. Their pastures were often overgrazed, which encouraged erosion. They aggressively cut forests to expand pastures, cropland, and settlements, and this encouraged erosion. Harbors were clogged with eroded soil. Their cattle roamed the countryside, so little manure was collected for fertilizer. They planted corn alone, so the soil did not benefit from the nitrogen that beans could add. They burned trees to make ash for fertilizer.

Cronon devotes much attention to the eco-blunders of the settlers. A key factor here is that their objective was not simple subsistence. They had great interest in accumulating wealth and status, and this was achieved by taking commodities to market, like lumber and livestock. The more land they cleared, the more cattle they could raise. It was impossible to be too rich.

This silly hunger for status has a long history of inspiring idiotically reckless behavior. When a colonist gazed on the land, his mind focused on the commodities, the stuff he could loot and sell. He noticed the enormous numbers of fish, the millions of waterfowl, the unbelievable old growth forests, the furbearing animals — all the things that his kinfolk in Europe had nearly wiped out.

Indians hunted for dinner, not for the market. They did not own the deer, elk, and moose that they hunted, so nobody freaked out if a wolf ate one. These wild animals had coevolved with wolves, so a balance was maintained. Colonists introduced domesticated animals that had not coevolved with wolves. The slow, dimwitted livestock were sitting ducks for predators, which boosted wolf populations, which led infuriated settlers to launch wolf extermination programs.

Indians were not chained to private property. When their fields wore out, they cleared new fields. Colonists owned a fixed piece of land, which narrowed their options. In the winter months, Indians moved to hunting camps, selecting sites with adequate firewood available. They had nice fires and stayed warm, while the colonists shivered in their fixed villages, where firewood was scarce.

Colonists suffered from an insatiable hunger for wealth and status, which drove them to spend their lives working like madmen. Instead of belongings, the Indians had a leisurely way of life, and this was their source of wealth. They thought that the workaholic settlers were out of their minds. Indians were mobile, so hoarding stuff made no sense. By having few wants, the path to abundance was a short one. Even the least industrious wanted nothing.

Liebig’s Law says “populations are not limited by the total annual resources available, but by the minimum amount available at the scarcest time of the year.” So, despite the seasonal fish runs and bird migrations, life was not easy in February and March, when the game was lean and hard to hunt. Indians stored little fish and meat. In rough winters, Indians could go ten days without food.

In the south, the Indians were engaged in a high-risk experiment by growing corn, because agriculture is rarely harmless, and it often opens the floodgates to numerous troublesome consequences.

In the north, the Indians were lucky that their home was unsuitable for farming. They didn’t breed like colonists. They adapted to their ecosystem and lived like genuine conservatives, not looters. This was a path with a future, until the looters arrived.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rly a good companion to braiding sweetgrass! Took me forever to get through bc I was reading while annotating/looking up vocab words to help w GRE study but reminds me how much a love a history tome :’)

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written, straightforward and cogent book — really a long essay — on the environmental changes to New England after the pilgrims arrival.

Three years after Plymouth was founded there were no livestock. Ten years later however there were more livestock — cows, horses, oxen, pigs and sheep — than colonists. It became common for the average colonial ship from England to bring more than 50 large animals in its cargo.

5 stars — if you enjoy reading about the environment and history.

[april · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars ! such a good read omg. i also want to take a moment to say i hate colonialsim

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 consider "cutting edge". Cronon cuts across disciplines and primary sources to produce a nuanced model of the interrelationship of humans and the environment. Cronon's work is just as interesting for his (to me, anyway) novel technique of writing a history where the personalities of humans take a back seat to the consequnces of their decisions.

The effect is at once radical and main stream. Radical, in that Cronon strips away traditional justifications for human decisions that reinforce the implicit assumptions that cause those same decisions. Main stream, in that he manages to stay away from the hyperbole and argument that plague revisions of history.

I've also read Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis", which is his book about the development of the city of Chicago. I would recommend that book, as well as this one, to anyone interested in the subjects that Cronon covers. His scholarship is top notch.

[Jonny · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 for them. Read them both if you can (and you can add one star to this review if you do that). Put another way: this book is better in the context of Crosby's.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

“For many years, the only New England known to Europe was near salt water.” John Josselyn wrote of seeing millions of passenger pigeons fly overhead “so thick I could see no Sun.” Wood writes of individual oysters that were a foot long. “Thomas Morton described spruce trees in these cold northern woods that measured as much as twenty feet around.” The tallest trees in the early colonial east were white pine – think 250 feet high. Pitch pine was used to make turpentine and preferred for firewood and it is notable for being one of few conifers that could sprout from their roots. If a pine forest burns, it will regrow. Colonists had more access to wood for winter warmth by fire than did “many Noble men in England can afford to do.” Yes, there were lots of trees in New England back then, but there were also many large open areas and areas without trees.

English fixity sought to replace Indian mobility: Indians exploited seasonal diversity of food through changing their living locale seasonally and “all aspects of Indian life hinged on this mobility. Indians hunted species in different locations when they were most plentiful so that no species was over-used. “Houses, consisting of wooden frames covered by grass mats or bark, which designed to be taken apart and moved in a few hours.” Animals were easily tracked in winter; but without snows in winter, it was easy to starve. February and March were known to be “times of little food.” The white invaders said Natives weren’t rightful owners of the land because Natives were known for inhabiting different places at different times of the year; funny how rich whites historically use seasonally visited summer homes and country retreats but it was considered impossible for Natives to legitimately keep them.

“Liebig’s Law states that 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 the year.” Grain became the number one item that stored well enough to feed you through winter. Non-agricultural Indians lived in a density of 41 per hundred square miles, while crop-raising Indians averaged a much higher density of 287. The crop-raising Indians grew kidney beans with corn so that they interlaced even at five or six feet high. Eaten together, beans and corn provided Natives with the amino acids for a balanced diet. An acre or two could produce 25-60 bushels of corn, enough for a family of five.

Southern New England used decay-resistant chestnut for boats, northern New England used lighter birch for birchbark canoes. In the north, canoes were the preferred mode of transport, so having open forest wasn’t as important. Natives would winter where there was lots of wood for fire and nearby game. Finding winter game took talent. Natives also left summer sites because they had been stripped of fuel needed for the winter months. Natives burned lots of fires instead of using foreign origin blankets and clothing layers. Of Natives it was said, “They are faine to follow the wood.” Natives did lots of controlled burns to keep underbrush away and make hunting grounds more passable. Fires were also used to drive game, clear fields for planting and even to drive the invaders away. Indian burning led to more game (what ecologists call the edge effect – creating more grassland to attract deer) – thus Indians harvested game animals they had helped nourish. When whites got involved in also killing deer, the drastically falling deer population in 1718, led to hunting deer becoming illegal for three years. “The decline in deer population made their (Native) reliance on European fabrics inescapable.” “The second half of the seventeenth century saw Indians in southern New England lose most of their land.”

Woods: White oak was used for ship flooring and barrel staves. Black oak was used for underwater ship timbers. White pine was ideal for ship masts. “No European trees were large enough to serve for masts without several being spliced together.” Pitch pine was used for turpentine, rosin and pitch. Pennsylvania Germans used cast-iron stoves which were 4-5 times more efficient than the open fireplaces which New Englanders used. New England households each averaged cutting more than an acre of forest each year (30-40 cords of wood). 18x more wood was burned by them than used as lumber. The big coastal cities switched to coal in the nineteenth century because of the huge loss of local wood used for heating.

Precolonial Indians planted with hoes and hands, while the pasty-faced crackers had brought oxen, horses, and plowing which destroyed native plants due to the deeper plow depth of soil disturbance. This was written in 1775: “Maize is a very exhausting crop; scarce anything exhausts the land more.” Colonists were negligent in collecting manure to improve crop yield (by not housing animals in barns at night) so land exhaustion was common. Many colonists ended up using fish (alewives, menhaden, etc.) as fertilizer on fields. Three drawbacks were that wild animals would dig up the fish, oiliness would spoil fields, and using fish fertilizer meant you were near the coast. Some used ashes spread on fields, others planted clover for a few years for land fertility to recover. Manufacturing iron used up shitloads of wood that had been turned into charcoal. The iron industry decimated local forests. The Erie Canal brought meat and grain from the west which competed with eastern local farms.

In upstate New York where I live, I see lots of stone walls running through the forest which this book says were once cleared farmlands and pastures. “In the hands of the colonists, New England had become a world of fields and fences.” Very unlike the stacked Native American cairns I see around my place. Clear-cutting much of New England meant that many of the trees today are of the varieties capable of sprouting from stumps. “Ecological abundance and economic prodigality went hand in hand: the people of plenty (the invaders) were a people of waste.”

William does say on page 178 that people in 1763 barely even noticed that the Royal Proclamation of 1763 had been issued. I would disagree; George Washington sure noticed as did the nasty Paxton Boys and other settlers at the Pennsylvania frontier. Those Paxton Boys were militant settlers causing trouble for natives in Pennsylvania during Pontiac’s Rebellion which began in 1763. After the Royal Proclamation, Pennsylvania politics moved from diplomacy to violence. The Paxton Boys massacred peaceful Conestoga Indian villagers in 1763, which Benjamin Franklin condemned. These Paxton scumbags only spared pacifist Quakers if they didn’t interfere and burned down the houses of anyone who hid Native Americans. Ben Franklin asked, what had one-year old Native children done to also deserve being shot or hatcheted? “The foundations of British authority in the interior (thanks to unchecked settlers) were now crumbling. An emergent settler sovereignty had formed.” In January 1764 Benjamin Franklin refers to settlers as “the mad armed mob”. Ned Blackhawk in his 2023 book, The Rediscovery of America attributes the beginning of the fall of British empire in North America to March 5th, 1765 at the Pennsylvania frontier with the Smith raid. In contrast, he notes that in most historical narratives, the American Revolution began in seaports and ignore the significance of Royal Proclamation. Great book on an unusual subject. I learned a lot.

[Taylor Dodge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't let the title put you off; yes, this is a book about the European conquest of New England through agriculture, but it's done well. It's interesting and is full of plenty of myth-busting facts surrounding the colonial days of New England and the interactions between the Europeans and the native peoples. It explains the ecology before the arrival of the Europeans and the cultural differences from the natives that led to the destruction not only of the native populations, but the landscape itself. I'm not doing it justice. Just trust me.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great read in an area I'm not super familiar with. Gonna comb through that bibliographical essay at the back someday and find more good reading. Did a thread of parts I found interesting here.

[William Kerrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 ideas, which were once revolutionary, have been so accepted and proliferated into regular histories that I encountered nothing new.

[RJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone interested in environmental history and the relationships among ecology, culture, and economic systems. This was a paradigm-shifting book when it was first published and a breakthrough for me, personally, when I read it after four years of working internationally on environmental issues. It crystallized and made sense of urgent questions about cross-cultural encounters and differing notions of economic productivity and environmental ethics. It's an in-depth look at a single incident that might have been included in a book like Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," but the research is better and the ideas more subtle.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

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).

[olivia knier · Rating 3 out of 5]

if i have to read a book for a class and it’s on Goodreads i will be counting it.

[JC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bad subtitle, but an excellent book. A landmark work that in many ways established the field of environmental history. This is the first of the three epigraphs that opens the book:

"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their conse­quent relation to the rest of nature. . . . The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modifica­tion in the course of history through the action of men." —Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology

This book engages in a sort of two-line struggle that both confronts the way capitalism transforms environmental landscapes and ecosystems on the one hand, but also challenges colonial mythologies that imagine North American lands as uninhabited wildernesses, but rather rich and complex forest worlds and grasslands that were in many ways built and developed by careful tending of Indigenous nations who used fire and agriculture to dynamically build up these rich and populous lifeworlds before the arrival of European colonialism. A classic that reads fairly quickly and because Cronon is an excellent writer. Nature’s Metropolis is the better out of his two, in my view, but this was also a really great read. I’ll finish with this great excerpt on property:

“Here we must be careful about what we mean by “property,” lest we fall into the traps English colonists have set for us. Although ordinary language seems to suggest that property is generally a simple relationship between an individual person and a thing, it is actually a far more complicated social institution which varies widely between cultures. Saying that A owns B is in fact meaningless until the society in which A lives agrees to allow A a certain bundle of rights over B and to impose sanctions against the violation of those rights by anyone else. The classic definition is that of Huntington Cairns: “the property relation is triadic: ‘A owns B against C,’ where C represents all other individuals.” Unless the people I live with recognize that I own something and so give me certain unique claims over it, I do not possess it in any meaningful sense. Moreover, different groups will permit me different bundles of rights over the same object. To define property is thus to represent boundaries be­ tween people; equally, it is to articulate at least one set of con­scious ecological boundaries between people and things.”

[Brandon Rayas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early America, and particularly New England, has changed drastically since colonial
times. William Cronon presents a groundbreaking analysis of colonial American history that
connects the ecological transformation to economic and cultural change. Cronon puts the land
itself in the forefront and views it as another key player in early American history. Cronon
ultimately argues that colonization not only removed native peoples but physically altered the
land itself. In addition, he explains how Native Americans and the early colonists viewed
property, labor, and nature with a completely different lens that created a profound effect on the
environment. Therefore, Cronon puts the natural world at the center of his argument,
demonstrating how human activity and environmental processes are connected. Something very different than what I’ve read in terms of monographs 🤔

[John Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info

[Max Potthoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 Sterling Library, humbly acknowledging that we all stand on the shoulders of giants.

Changes in the Land rests on the idea that land in New England-well before the industrial revolution-became a form of capital for colonists that fundamentally changed the landscape in ways that we underestimate. The "land-capital equation" created two central ecological contradictions of the colonial economy: the first being the conflict between Indian and colonial land use, and the second being that colonists' ecological relations of production were self-destructive. The colonialists did not discern the difference between "yield and loot", and we live with their legacy today.

[Laurabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

How often do I immediately read a book again after finishing it? Why this one?

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. It's more like a 3.8 stars, but I'll round up.

Despite its initial publication almost 40 years ago, I think there were still important things the book had to say about the change in ecology (and economy) in 17th-century New England.

It's pretty straightforward when you think about it, but what the European settlers did was try to recreate their home, with all the same virtues, biases, and failures. That meant clearing and enclosing land; Cronon's argument that what differentiated colonial settlements from indigenous settlements, and what eventually made the colonists' way if life win out (aside from disease and guns), were livestock and other domesticated animals. Seriously, the parts about who was liable if a cow wandered into a field or garden were fascinating. Plus, Europeans grazing their herds eventually (and accidentally) replaced native grasses with European ones, on account of them grazing/mowing away the native ones (which they didn't like), which then allowed the imported ones (again by accident -- seeds transferred in the dung of the cattle) to proliferate because they had evolved to handle frequent cutting and chomping. Pigs, too, were pretty rampant and detrimental to indigenous life because they rooted out indigenous horticulture and carries infectious diseases.

The cutting of trees forced loads of changes (duh), because it changed the moisture content of the soil and promoted erosion. I was surprised about the amount of flooding. Plus, with forests wholesale cut instead of patchworks intentionally burned by indigenous folk, the soil content was depleted more rapidly (especially with the European penchant for single-field crops which sucked out nutrients faster especially with maize fields, unlike the indigenous practice of three sisters plantings).

I also learned more about wampum (essentially indigenous value-carrying tokens, ie money), and how colonization forced the indigenous peoples to change their way of life, often not for the better.

Overall, a very interesting book. I have a slight preference, though, for Engelbrecht's "Iroquoia," but that focused more on the cultures of more inland Natives, as opposed to the coastal Natives and their initial interactions with Europeans (though some of the Native practices overlap).

[Don Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by Dr. Mary Freeman who is an associate professor at the University of Maine at Orono. I had contacted her a couple of years ago, asking for a list of books that would be a good introduction to the history of Maine. One of the books she recommended was William Cronon's "Changes In The Land".

The book itself was a groundbreaking work on ecological history. As the author states, the book is a combination of many disciplines, including ecology, anthropology, archaeology, economics and political history. Cronon uses all of these to weave together on how the ecosystems were changed, not only when the Europeans arrived, but also changes that occurred in the land by the actions of the Native Americans. Professor Cronon is a master on getting the student to think not about how people drove the environment, but how changes in the environment drove humanity regarding economics and trade, both for the Native American and transplanted European.

While this book is written by an academic, Professor Cronon does not talk over the layman's head. Instead, he talks TO the reader and draws them in. For research geeks, the bibliography is epic. One wonders how one person can go through all of this material. For simpler references, his bibliographical essay is also very helpful and straight forward.

Definitely a book for anyone who wants to add to their knowledge of New England history!

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Widely regarded as a foundational work in the field of environmental history, William Cronon’s Changes in the Land introduced an ecological perspective to the study of colonial New England, demonstrating how European colonization fundamentally altered not just the landscape but ecological systems as well. Cronon challenged the idea that European arrival to New England improved the landscape beyond what Indigenous people were capable of. He showed that Indigenous people had a sophisticated understanding of the land and had been modifying their environments to suit their purposes for thousands of years. In his groundbreaking work, Cronon, who holds a DPhil in history from Oxford, a PhD in American history from Yale, and has served as the president of the American Historical Association, offered a new framework for retelling a familiar story. By focusing on the ecological impacts of colonization, Cronon helped establish environmental history as a legitimate academic field, influencing how historians would think about the relationship between humans and the natural world forever. Cronon’s interdisciplinary approach draws on traditional historical sources, such as travel accounts, naturalist records, and legal documents, as well as modern sources, such as pollen and soil samples and other ecological reports. Through this broad analysis, Cronon revealed that European colonization of New England was as much an ecological phenomenon as a political or cultural one.
In an early section of Cronon’s book, he explores the deep misunderstandings between Europeans and Indigenous groups regarding land use. Cronon argued that these misconceptions ultimately allowed Europeans to claim that Indigenous peoples had failed to improve the land, thereby justifying its seizure. While this may sound like a familiar story, Cronon's application of an ecological perspective adds a unique dimension. In one example, Cronon explained that Europeans believed the Indigenous practice of controlled burns was intended to clear lands to simplify hunting and travel but that most colonists “failed to see its subtler ecological effects.” This is where Cronon’s environmental framework shines. Through modern analysis of soil samples, he showed that these controlled burns were exponentially more beneficial to the land than colonists realized. They accelerated nutrient absorption in the soil, creating ideal conditions for growing gatherable foods. In addition to increasing the availability of foods like strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries, the Indigenous practice also promoted what ecologists call the “edge effect,” creating ideal habitats for wildlife species. By examining this practice through an ecological lens, Cronon demonstrated that Indigenous hunters were not simply taking advantage of the “bounties of nature” but were actually cultivating and harvesting the resources they had created. Since European perceptions of “proper” land use were a key justification for conquering Indigenous lands, Cronon’s innovative analysis has significant implications for later interpretations of this argument. It becomes clear that Europeans did not bring civilization to an untouched wilderness but disrupted sophisticated ecological systems that were already in place.
Another section examines the impact of the European trade market on the New England ecosystem and Indigenous communities. Before the arrival of Europeans, there had been little incentive for Indians to kill more animals than they needed for personal use. Even though trade networks existed long before the arrival of Europeans, there was little reason for them to trade for more than they could wear or eat. Cronon explained that this precolonial trade enforced the “unintentional conservation of animal populations.” However, this changed dramatically with the arrival of Europeans, who created international markets for North American animal products. As these markets incentivized widespread, profit-driven hunting, Indigenous peoples became the “leading assailants” of New England’s fur bearing animals, resulting in a significant decline in many animal populations. While this might be a well-known narrative, one of the unique aspects of Changes in the Land is how it details the ecological impacts of this shift beyond the loss of the animals themselves. For example, Cronon explained how the decline in the beaver population left many dams behind, which often became important sites for colonists. They became preferred mill construction sites, spawning grounds for shad and salmon, and could even be used as crossing points for the construction of roads. However, Cronon suggested that when old dams collapsed, they presented their greatest benefit to colonial settlers. When ponds, often as large as two hundred acres, were drained after the dam was breached, the rich black soil created fertile lands for colonists' use. Cronon explained that the establishment of many colonial settlements would have been impossible without these “natural meadows,” which provided forage for wild moose and deer that colonists could hunt, as well as fertile land for planting crops. Changes in the Land’s emphasis on ecological systems helped shed light on how the death of beaver populations actually paved the way for the colonial settlements that soon arrived.
In a later section, Cronon highlights how European agricultural methods significantly altered the New England landscape, advancing colonization on an ecological level. While often seen as a sign of agricultural progress in land cultivation, Cronon showed that horses, pigs, and cattle actually wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. Grazing animals became the “chief agents” in transmitting weeds across New England while eating and trampling Indigenous crops. The spread of weeds damaged Indigenous crops, leading to food shortages and forcing many to adopt fencing as a farming strategy. Invasive species such as dandelions, chickweeds, bloodworts, stinging nettles, and ragweed became so widespread that, as Cronon explains, modern pollen scientists now use their presence in lake bottoms to date the arrival of Europeans. Indigenous peoples increasingly turned to fences to help protect their lands. Cronon argues that livestock and fences became “pivotal elements in the English rationale for taking Indian lands.” This is an important point because it underscores how the ecological disruption caused by European agriculture facilitated the imposing of European notions of property systems onto indigenous groups. Again, Changes in the Land’s ecological perspective helps illustrate how environmental changes led to the seizure of Indigenous lands.
Despite its groundbreaking work creating a new framework to analyze New England's colonization, Changes in the Land leaves some questions unanswered. Although Cronon does an excellent job of highlighting Indigenous agency through their intentional uses of and modification of the land, he doesn’t seem to address any negative consequences this may have had, but places this blame squarely on the colonists. This omission overlooks the fact that, as other historians have shown, Europeans did not encounter an “untouched wilderness” since Indigenous practices had already contributed to soil depletion and reductions in plant and animal populations before European arrival. Additionally, Cronon’s exclusive focus on environmental factors causes him to overlook other significant events that would have profoundly affected the region’s ecology. For example, incorporating a more thorough discussion of the political and military history of the region would offer a fuller context for the environmental changes he describes. As colonists and Indians engaged in warfare such as the Pequot War, King Philip’s War, or the French and Indian War, the resulting destruction of villages, crops, and forests would have directly impacted the landscape and should have, therefore, been included in Cronon’s discussion. This represents another significant oversight, resulting in unanswered questions.
Overall, Changes in the Land is a groundbreaking work that reshapes our understanding of European colonization of New England by examining it through an ecological lens. Cronon’s synthesis of traditional primary and modern ecological sources sheds light on some of the overlooked impacts of European settlement on the New England landscape, offering new insights into a familiar historical narrative. Though the book has some shortcomings, its innovative approach to telling the history of colonization makes it an essential work for historians interested in reframing how history is written. By shifting the focus away from humans and onto the environment, Cronon showed how new stories can emerge that paint a fuller picture of the past, revealing deep connections between ecological change and human history. Changes in the Land's significance lies, perhaps not just in its impact on environmental history but in that it encourages future historians to uncover new stories by integrating new perspectives into their analysis of the past.

[Jason Chavez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The quote by Carl Sauer on Americans not knowing the difference between yield and loot rang true during the colonial period and still so today. It just turned out the yield in this land with the help of modern technology is bigger than what anyone had foreseen. Unfortunately, that fact does not change that the loot taking place will eventually result in the collapse of this society.

[Sam Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book to revolutionize one’s thinking. Yet it is just a rough sketch, a set of ideas not yet worked into a comprehensive thought. Like too many historians, Cronon allowed the details to dominate without bending them to his will.

[Mr.PBerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating history of the ecology of New England.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Kristen Bookrvws · Rating 4 out of 5]

good starting point for environmental history. Blends materialist and ideological approaches with benefit of showing gaps between English settler expectations of land with actual conditions of land itself. Most important intervention seems to be argument that English settlers did not find an unused, abundant land— rather they settled on land carefully tended by native tribes who interacted with environment in very different ways, often adjusting interaction with land with the seasons leading to appearance that land was untended.

Written in a very accessible way. I think readers of 2024 will still find it very relevant, for better or worse.

You can definitely tell he was an Edmund Morgan student lol. Very labor focused and with the ultimate message being “English settlers exploited stuff for capitalism and now everything kind of sucks.” That’s definitely true although made the argument of the book seem a bit teleological.

Also yeah missing big gender stuff, but I think the historiography has been rectified since.

[Kavanaugh Kohls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loaned to me by a colleague, to whom I am very much indebted.

While Cronon himself might deny that he is responsible for the emergence of Environmental History as a field of study, it is clear that this dense little book paved the way for a new approach to historical analysis.

This is the sort of book that- as laid out in the author's afterword, can only be created out of a unique set of circumstances and passions. From Wisconsin to New England, Cronon's keen appreciation of, as he puts it, "How things came to be" is what marks a good historian. Cronon makes a compelling case for not simply the influence of the landscape on colonial settlements, but the reciprocal influence of colonialism on that landscape.

Dense as any history text can be, but just as engaging, this book is a must read for those interested in the colonial period and/or the American environment.

Recommendations (and patient loans) like this are one of many reasons I love this colleague of mine.