William Cronon Changes In The Land Summary

William Cronon is an environmental historian and currently a professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cronon received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and graduate degrees from Yale (M.A. M.Phil., and Ph.D.) and Oxford University (D.Phil.). Cronon’s book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England was published by Hill and Wang. Founded in 1956, Hill and Wang focuses on American history, world history, and politics. Hill and Wang is a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

In this text, Cronon compares how the early colonists and Indians in New England interacted with their environments. Geographic fixity and mobility are also compared in the chapter. Cronon begins by discussing the exaggerated wealth of New England by colonists, and how seasons impact one’s perspective on a place (or nature). This point is on track with our in-class discussion on how seasons might have impacted the early settlers’ opinions of the northeast. Similar to ideas from Oelschlaeger’s The Idea of
Cronon takes more of an ecological/environmental position in this text. Cronon compares the hunting-gathering methods of Northern Indians in New England to the agricultural methods of the Southern Indians. The author mentions Liebig’s Law: populations are limited by the minimum amount of resources that can be found at the scarcest time of the year. The text states that the low Indian population in the north correlates with this