William Cronon. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983, 2003.
Cronon's first book--published when he was 28 years old--has become a modern classic as well as a seminal text in what has become known as environmental history.
It is a brief book, one which still is impressive and eye-opening over three decades later, although the fact that environmental history is now far more prevalent means that the book isn't quite the shock now it must have been when first published. Still, it is easy to see why it won the 1984 Francis Parkman Prize. This is an elegantly written monograph which calmly and deliberately makes its point: "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 communities." (From the Preface).
In other words, there was an ecological change as well as economic, political, social, and demographic changes, in the wake of contact between Indians and Europeans, and subsequent settlement by the latter.
The book is marked by the obvious contrast between Indian use of the land versus that pursued by the colonists, but Cronon takes great care to avoid falling in to a lazy dichotomy--as he notes at the beginning of Chapter 7, "A World of Fields and Fences":
"One must not exaggerate the differences between English and Indian agriculture. The two in many ways resembled each other in the annual cycles by which they tracked the seasons of the year."
He also cautions against the tendency to interpret the vast changes wrought by the introduction of European trade goods into Indian societies to the technologies themselves--rather, it was the new mode of economic logic and the new agents tied to larger markets, not the trade goods themselves, which were often used by Indians in ways very different than intended--often as markers of status rather than as utilitarian goods. Also, Indians tended to incorporate these goods into existing patterns of economic use, so assumptions that "improved" European goods necessarily altered economic practices don't add up.
Other contrasts--the distinction between "sovereignty" and "ownership" in regards to land ownership (and differing Indian and English concepts of both)--inform this richly detailed look at the environmental history of the region which was--to paraphrase his comments about history in his afterword to this 20th anniversary edition--going on all around the people in the past although the didn't realize it was happening.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
American Colonies
Alan Taylor. American Colonies: The Settling of North America. New York: Penguin Books, 2001.
Alan Taylor's book was to be the projected first volume of a series, "The Penguin History of the United States." Given this start, and the fact that it was to be edited by Eric Foner, it's a shame that the series seems to have been shelved. We can be grateful that we got this volume, though--Taylor has written an excellent synthesis history of "colonial America" re-imagined in ways which that venerable descriptor fails to signify in the popular imagination.
The first hint to where Taylor takes the reader is in the title--this is a history of multiple colonies, rather than the singular tale of the British North Ameican colonies spreading westward across an empty, formless continent. Taylor tells a more nuanced story--one which is aimed at the general reader, the college undergraduate, and ultimately anyone interested in rethinking old assumptions about the colonial period.
The story begins with the American Indians of North America, and then moves across the Atlantic to consider Western Europe on the verge of the colonial era. In this second chapter, we meet many "colonizers" including of course Christopher Columbus--but from there rather than move quickly to the British story, first the reader gets a chapter each on New Spain and New France.
The point here is to look at the colonies as they were, not as precursors to what the reader knows is coming. The second section of the book is a detailed look at the British colonies in North America, including the West Indies. A consistent theme of this section is the dynamic nature of Indian societies during this period--American Indian societies were constantly adjusting to, and affecting, the rise of Euro-American settlement. This section also gives consideration to the colonies of New Netherlands and even New Sweden.
The final section, "Empires", traces the story of how these different colonial empires collided and contested the North American continent between them--while never losing sight of the Indians who were caught in the crossfire, or the African-American slaves who were compelled to play a role in this story. The book ends far away from the Atlantic seaboard, on the islands of Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest. Taylor spreads a wide net, and the result is a very readable reconsideration of the story of "colonial America."
Alan Taylor's book was to be the projected first volume of a series, "The Penguin History of the United States." Given this start, and the fact that it was to be edited by Eric Foner, it's a shame that the series seems to have been shelved. We can be grateful that we got this volume, though--Taylor has written an excellent synthesis history of "colonial America" re-imagined in ways which that venerable descriptor fails to signify in the popular imagination.
The first hint to where Taylor takes the reader is in the title--this is a history of multiple colonies, rather than the singular tale of the British North Ameican colonies spreading westward across an empty, formless continent. Taylor tells a more nuanced story--one which is aimed at the general reader, the college undergraduate, and ultimately anyone interested in rethinking old assumptions about the colonial period.
The story begins with the American Indians of North America, and then moves across the Atlantic to consider Western Europe on the verge of the colonial era. In this second chapter, we meet many "colonizers" including of course Christopher Columbus--but from there rather than move quickly to the British story, first the reader gets a chapter each on New Spain and New France.
The point here is to look at the colonies as they were, not as precursors to what the reader knows is coming. The second section of the book is a detailed look at the British colonies in North America, including the West Indies. A consistent theme of this section is the dynamic nature of Indian societies during this period--American Indian societies were constantly adjusting to, and affecting, the rise of Euro-American settlement. This section also gives consideration to the colonies of New Netherlands and even New Sweden.
The final section, "Empires", traces the story of how these different colonial empires collided and contested the North American continent between them--while never losing sight of the Indians who were caught in the crossfire, or the African-American slaves who were compelled to play a role in this story. The book ends far away from the Atlantic seaboard, on the islands of Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest. Taylor spreads a wide net, and the result is a very readable reconsideration of the story of "colonial America."
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