Cronon, Transcendentalism, and Environmentalism

Cronon writes a fascinating ecological history that examines the shifts in environment both physically and socioculturally during the colonizing of New England. In setting the stage for discussion, he utilizes excerpts from Thoreau to frame a guiding question, “How did the ‘nature’ of New England change with the coming of the Europeans, and can we reasonably speak of its changes in terms of maiming and imperfection?” It is almost as if Cronon is invoking transcendentalism in that many such as Thoreau and Emerson looked to nature to provide answers to their many questions and now Cronon himself is looking at nature to provide insight to the changes that took place during the colonizing of New England. He believes that by utilizing ecological histories that it provides a larger context in which to examine the sociocultural changes that took place as land dominance shifted from Native American hands to the European settlers.

Prescott and Bloch view the environment as important, but it is not the main character within their historical narratives. Like a typical narrative, the environment is merely the setting that the people they are focusing on act within. Cronon is adamant in even his preface that this history is ecological and extends beyond human institutions such as economies, class and gender systems, political organizations, cultural rituals—to focusing on the natural ecosystems that provide context for these institutions. By examining the colonizing of New England, he looks beyond just the cultural ramifications for both Native Americans and Europeans. He also looks at the ramifications that echo and reflect within the larger ecosystem.

As for our final question regarding the concern of environment history being clear before Cronon, I’m not sure I can say. I feel that the other historians that we have read have not placed such an emphasis on environment and ecosystems as Cronon has. But I feel that given the time that Cronon is writing, he is reflecting his present by writing about the past. He published this in the early 1980s during which environmentalism was solidly gaining ground in academia. This began in the 1960s and through the 1980s (at least in anthropology) that in turn began a shift away from studying cultural ecology—the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments—into a more ecologically scientifically oriented study.