William Cronon Changes In New England

William Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England is all about the changing condition of the land, New England in the newly discovered world. It talks about the ecosystem, plants, and animal communities and how they were affected by the new settlers. As the inhabitant of the distant world were introduced to the New England, drastic changes took place and both worlds eventually started to become a like, as William states in his thesis “the shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes—well known to historians—in the ways these peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations—less well known to historians—in the region’s plant and animal …show more content…
The effect that took place were positive and a negative, Europeans seeing the abundance of animals in the new England started to hunt them a lot, and the trade that started between the Indians and the Europeans demanded furs which could only be obtained from furbearers, eventually resulted in excesses hunting of certain species of animals which led to the elimination of those species. Beavers for example, was hunted so much for furs that it was rare to even see one, but these beavers extinctions were helpful, they left artifacts behind, there pounds becoming spawning ground for fishes, their dams when collapsed left the black soil in pounds exposed to sunlight, which on contact led to the rapid growth of grass that attracted deers and moose. Same could not have been said about the plants, Old England was scarce of wood, the Europeans after seeing such abundance of trees in the New England started the great deforestation. There were unique tree species in the land, some were very useful others were not, but all of them were cleared up as Europeans were more interested in saving their labour than using the resources to their fullest, any trees without market value was burned where they fell. Such deforestation …show more content…
The clearing of land eventually led to climatic changes, the cleared land could no longer holded water from rain and snow so all the water would fell down to rivers. Soil got warm and dry, making the surface of the land hotter in summers and colder in winter as also stated by Samuel Williams “ the earth and the air, in the cultivated parts of the country, are heated in consequence of their cultivations, ten or eleven degrees more, than they were in their uncultivated state.”(Cronon,122)
Changes in the land is well cited book with a lot of evidence, I liked the book and the way William Cronon presented it. I would recommend this book for a really informative study to someone. The only thing I did not enjoy about this book was the fact that it does not have any visual art in it. There are a lot of things that might be unknown to most of the readers as I found myself in the same situation, if there were pictures and art to demonstrate some topics this book would be a five star no