If a tree falls in the forest .....

Between the early 1600’s to mid-1800’s, the environment of New England was irrevocably transformed – extinction of animals, deforestation, land overuse and soil erosion, and transfer of ownership of most land to the Europeans from Native Americans.  In Southern New England, the land changed from a densely forested area to a pastoral farming community, complete with fences and domestic farm animals.  In answering the question “how did this happen”, Cronin takes an ecological perspective that is different than a traditional historical view of just the human interactions – his ecosystem includes both human and non-human elements.  In discussing the history of land usage in New England, he looks at the differing cultural view held by the Indians  and the settlers on land ownership, property rights, agricultural methods, hunting, domestic animals (to name a few) and how this contributed to the transformation of the land in New England.  He goes even further, looking at the biological impacts to the land of new or disappearing vegetation, heavy foresting, overharvesting of corn, insects, even weeds.

The concept of ecological history is fairly new, so I doubt that either Prescott or Bloch shared Cronon’s concerns about environmental history.  Both Prescott and Bloch would consider land a resource for food, water, and as a terrain that can help or hurt communities or armies (ease of access, challenging topography, quality of land, natural resources/gold).  Prescott would describe the land as Cortes and the Spaniards see it, but not as part of the change brought about by the Spaniards.  And since he had never been to Mexico, he was totally reliant on the source documents he researched.  Bloch definitely sees the value of land in terms of ownership, and how feudal societies used land ownership to establish fiefdoms and power positions.  But again, I didn’t see any reference in his writing to how land usage impacted historical change. If asked, both would probably see the environmental changes as necessary in “civilizing” the new world. 

I thought this was an amazing book – to interlace the human story of the Indians and the Colonialists with the ecological history of the land provides a totally different perspective on how the environmental changes in New England came to be.  It gives a whole new meaning to the expression “If a tree falls in the forest ….”, because whether someone hears it or not, it is connected to a much larger set of ecological factors that will be heard.