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William Cronon Changes In The Land Summary

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Concerning the colonial times in New England, history learners comprehend that this New World confronted countless modifications after Europeans set foot on this “new” soil, especially contrasting settlements from the way Native Americans fashioned their way of living. The book Changes in the Land by William Cronon discusses not only this, but the view point of the ecology of pre-colonial New England and the fundamental reorganization of not only people, but as well as the flora and fauna transformation in this New World. Cronon’s purpose of this book was to explain why Europeans changed as they did during the colonial period and to use the ecological aspects of the “European invasion” of pre-colonial New England in order to wholly recognize the cultural aspects. …show more content…
For example, part one explains how much evidence historians and ecologists know about pre-colonial America by exploiting the observations of the land in letters and journals of people like Henry David Thoreau and William Wood, who were concerned about the environment and certain animals like the wolf and porcupines becoming absent (4), or the contrasting views of Edward Johnson and Benjamin Rush who believed that these changes were “stages which mark the progress from the savage to civilized life” (5). These different perspectives are not to bring a biased view of whether the change was for the better or worse, but to open the eyes of the reader that various standpoints of the primary sources can be predisposed to a particular view and to bring forth only non-biased evidence of change in the ecology of

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