William Cronon Changes In The Land Summary

“Changes in the Land” is a personal work of William Cronon that generally gives a persuasive and original interpretation of the dynamic conditions in the plant and animal communities in New England that took place when there was a change from Indian authority to European authority. It uses both the ecologist and historian tools to construct an analysis of the way the people and the land influenced each other, and the way the complex network of relationships created the communities of New England. In his book’s thesis, in page xv, he states that, “the change from Indian authority to the European authority in New England resulted in many significant changes that are known well by historians regarding the ways the people lived that time and also led to basic reorganizations of the animal and plant communities in the region.
As Cronon writes, when the settlers arrived in New England, the environment that they first encountered astonished them. The ancient descriptions were based on the shoreline, though different stories agree on the amazing kind of the plant and animal habitats in New England. It was not a norm for the settlers to see the vast untamed land, since the …show more content…
The introduction of trade tied the Indian economies to International markets, and an incentive of producing more amounts of products than the self-sufficient was developed. Hunting was made easier by the introduction of technology. The population of Animals in England was very strained, and they were overhunted in various cases. The Indians had no other choice than giving up their land, the only commodity that remained when the trade goods were over. It was at this point where the Europeans conquered the Indians. William Cronon does a good work in outlining the major events of how Indians were conquered by Europeans and the book is amazingly