Human Exploitation of the Environment as Agency-Cronon Response

Bloch’s concern for the usage of land and geography is limited and manifests itself chiefly in the realms of trade, transportation, human movement, space and the concept of ownership. While the ownership of land is the cornerstone of feudalism its usage is not of concern to Bloch. It is worth nothing that Bloch’s assertion that feudal trade was limited is worth noting because the commercialization and commercialization of the environment hadn’t yet become a international norm. The European pseudo-autarky in Bloch serves as an interesting juxtaposition to the world Cronon describes.

Similarly, in Prescott the concern for the environment is merely a means to “set the scene” for the human actors of the book. His “View of the Aztec Civilization” chapter is replete with descriptions heat, humidity, crops, topography etc. However, this content seems to merely help the reader envision his characters and the place in which they lived.

William Cronon’s Changes in the Land is vastly different however because it argues that the intersection between the environment, English conceptions of property rights and the desire for commercial profits irrevocably changed New England (p 161). In this way Cronon’s view of environmental history is not merely environmental, but economic and cultural. Indeed Cronon's tone morphs into one which moralizes against the excesses of capitalism (p.710). Perhaps, ironically one can assert that Cronon’s work is more about the human actors than the environment they shape.