8/8/2019 Review-changes in the Land 1

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/review-changes-in-the-land-1 1/3

Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Karen Ordahl KuppermanSource: The Journal of American History, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jun., 1984), pp. 109-110Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1899845

Accessed: 16/10/2010 09:18

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of 

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

The Journal of American History.

http://www.jstor.org

8/8/2019 Review-changes in the Land 1

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/review-changes-in-the-land-1 2/3

Book Reviews 109

Southern ealth roblemswere losely inked osouthern overty. owdreyargues hat the regionhad only mediocre esources o beginwith and thatcultivation bused hose thad. Thedominance f ingle rops uch as tobaccoor cotton xhausted hesoil andexposed he andto harmfuloxins nd para-sites.The Southsankto the nadirofits environmentalistory uring heGildedAge.Tenantfarmingnd sharecroppingightened otton's strangle-hold. Lumbermen ut muchofthe timber.Hunters,n search f food, port,andprofit,laughteredhewildlife.

The twentieth entury roughtmany hanges, omebeneficial, ome harm-ful.Nothingwas more mportanthan hefall fKingCotton, astened ybollweevils,NewDeal farm olicies,machinery,ndtheshift fproduction est-ward.Largeownersbenefited,ut thousands f small farmersnd tenantswere forced ff he and. Southern armers urnedncreasinglyo soybeans,

peanuts, attle, nd poultry. he Progressivesndthe New Dealers initiatedsignificanthanges n policy toward he forests. arge corporations, artic-ularly aper ompanies, egan o grow rees s a renewablerop.TheemergingSouth was, on the whole, a healthier lace. Scientific iscoveries, ublichealth olicies,decreasing overty,ndbetteriving onditionsllcontributedto the control fdisease. Yet Cowdrey eemsfarfrom ertain hatenviron-mentalismhas sufficient olitical muscle to save the South from widevariety fnewecological hreats-strip-mining,il spills,beacherosion,muti-lated stuaries, angerous esticides,ndthedumping f hemicalwastes.

For a survey f such scope, Cowdrey aturally rawsmost of his materialfrom heworkofearlier cholars, ut he has gone to the original ourcesonsuchtopicsas thegame aws andMississippiRiverflood ontrol.He makesalmostno use of censusmaterialbywhich he mighthave quantified if-ferences etween heSouthandother ections.But theabsenceof statisticalanalysisdoes not detract rom he book'soverallmerit. t is characterizedysound cholarshipndwell-reasonedonclusions.Bestof ll, itis a delight oread-serious npurpose utbrightened ithflashes fwry umor.

SYRACUSEUNIVERSITY NELSONM. BLAKE

Changesn theLand: ndians,Colonists, nd theEcology fNew England.ByWilliamCronon. NewYork:Hill and Wang,1983. xiii + 241 pp. Notes,bib-liographicalssay, nd ndex.Cloth, 15.95; paper, 6.95.)

Changes n the Land refutes he old notionthat Europeans, rrivingn theseventeenthentury ith superiorechnology, eveloped nd mproved heNew England andscapefarbeyondwhat the ndianscould everhave accom-plished.WilliamCronon rings ogetherhe workofmany cholarsn a very

wide range f fields o argue hatthe mportationf European armingech-niques,particularlyhen pplied o ndian rops uch asmaize, destroyedotonlythe resources f NewEngland ut also the anditself.The impoverish-mentoftheAmerican nvironmenthrough he cutting own of forests, hekilling fmammals, he strippingf the and's nutrientsnd topsoil, nd thechangesnwaterwaysndrunoffatterns orm hecoreofCronon's ook.

Indian daptation o theenvironmentnvolved onsiderable ophisticationand hardwork; seasonal mobilitywas crucial to it. Cronon's discussionofIndian ubsistence nd the ecologicalunderstandingn which t was based s

8/8/2019 Review-changes in the Land 1

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/review-changes-in-the-land-1 3/3

110 The Journal f AmericanHistory

excellent. roducts f theirhuntingnd farming erevaluableto Indiansfortheir sefulness; ccumulation or tatuswasnotacceptable o them.There-fore, hemostfundamentalontrastwhen nativesmetEuropeansay in thelatter'sconception f land and animals as commodities o be ownedand

exchanged.As commodities,heybecameseparated romheir irect seful-ness in the ocal economy nd wereruthlesslynd heedlessly xploited ndsquandered.Old World nimals, ike theirhumancounterparts,ook morethanthey eturnedo the and.The detaileddescriptionf how thefertilitynurturedy ndianmethodswas squandered orms sinistermirrormage othe arlier escriptionf ndian elationshipsothe and.

Cronon s somewhat oo credulousn treating iscolonial ources,many fwhom recomparingheir wnexperiencesoa poorly ememberednd possi-blyhighly omanticizedast.He treats ll those ources s equallyuseful nd

reliable.Moreover, e imputes ll change o human gency. ronon resentsfascinating iscussion fhowmicroclimatesan be changed ydeforestation,but without nysenseofthedrastic limate hanges aking lacethroughouttheNorthern emisphere.

Changesn theLand s a synthesis,ndthereinies tsstrength. uch of hebook will be familiar o readers, nd those who know the sourceswillrecognize specially hework fNeal Salisburynd Peter homas.The book'sgreat ontributions inbringingogether ork romomany ourcesna widerange fdisciplinesnd n focusingtthroughhe ens of cological oncerns.

UNIVERSITYOF CONNECTICUT KARENORDAHLKUPPERMAN

ColonialAmerica.ByJerome.Reich. Englewood liffs: rentice-Hall,984.x + 307 pp. Maps, illustrations,able,notes,bibliography,nd ndex.Paper,$15.95.)

This is a basic textbook, ota novelapproach uchas GaryB. Nash's Red,White nd Black (1974)or a personal verview uch as DarrettB. Rutman'sTheMoming fAmerica 1971). ts only ecent ival s R. C. Simmons's ome-what similarbut much larger nd more expensiveThe AmericanColonies(1976). Colonial America s a judiciousmixture fold and new. The formerfollows a familiarpath-the European background nd colonization,theIndians butno traditional eparate hapter n geography)-then roceeds oEnglandnd thesettlement f tsvarious olonies, olonialgovernment,eli-gion, mmigration,he economy, he warswithFrance, ndso on. The latter,reflecting ore recent nterests,ntersperseshapters r sectionson socialstatus, the family,demography,nd so on. Generally here s a relativeemphasison blacks, ordinary olk,women (rather verdone t times),andchildren.

Twenty-sevenithy, mpressivelyull, hapters f aboutten pages toeachofwhich s appended bibliographyfwell-chosen ooksbutnoarticles) overtheclassic "Colonial America"course. n viewofthe usual division fthecourse,the unsatisfactoryrammingf the period1763-1789intothe lastthree haptersthough like theconservativenterpretation) ay discourageadoptions.However,the book mightwell be teamed with, say, E. JamesFerguson's heAmecan Revolution1974).

The perils ftextbookwritingreusuallyhandledwell: thetricky alancebetweennarrative nd interpretation;he difficultiesf simplificationnd