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William Cronon tried to look at the history of New England in a new way, by comparing the ecological differences in the area, before and after the arrival of the Europeans. Although Cronon admits that the natives changed the land also, however he focus more on how the Indian communities and the environment changed after the Europeans arrived. Cronon think that the new comers initiated important environmental changes. To prove his theory, Cronon used evidences focused on comparing economic and social differences between the colonists and the natives.
The importance of the ecological part in Cronon book was best illustrated in this quote “the replacement of Indians by predominantly European populations in New England was as much an ecological as a cultural revolution, and the human side of that revolution cannot fully understood until it is embedded in ecological one” (Cronon 6). Human lifestyles and views do change the environment. The Europeans saw the land as a way to get rich. Prosperity for colonists requires the use of the maximum possible, especially with the abandoned resources, they saw in the new land. What possibly made the land so rich was before the arrival of the colonists, natives used only what they needed to survive, however as soon as the European arrived, they begin to ship resources to Europe, which the colonists viewed as their homeland, basically the new land was just a sources of resources and richness.
Although Cronon admits that records about the environment in precolonial America are not easily available. A statement like: “the incredible abundance of New England plant and animal life, an abundance which, when compared with Europe, left more than one visitor dumbfounded”, illustrate how strongly Cronon is t...

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...d to more erosion and removal of cover from soil. All this destruction started with the arrival of the Europeans.
Cronon way of looking at the history does prove that not just factories and industries are the only ones to blame our environmental problems, which is common nowadays, but environmental changes started before, with the arrival of the Europeans to America. Moreover Cronon’s book presented that any look at human history should be accompanied with a studies of the environmental history by documenting changes of ecology over time. Saying that Cronon was successful in proving his ideas, after reading his book, was made easier by the way he presented his evidences, when comparing the lifestyles and the economy of natives and colonist. Although it is important that other aspects could have intervened in changing the environment, like natural events and others.

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