Customer Reviews

Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England

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Ecological Revolutions is an absolutely fundamental text in the fields of Colonial and Environmental American history. This book, along with William Cronon's Changes in the Land, transformed historians' understandings of Native American relationships to the land, as well as the ecological, economic, and reproductive changes brought by European colonists. Changes in the Land is more entertaining to read, but Ecological Revolutions is more advanced methodologically. I recommend both books heartily.

This book studies Native Americans' and European settlers' relationship with nature in the colonial era. It discusses how Europeans' relationship to nature differed from that of the Native Americans. Native Americans lived off the land to survive, then upon European trade contacts, Native Americans created a dependency upon capitalistic trade with the Europeans which had grave consequences for the environment. The concept of an Ecological Revolution is the shift in relationship between a society and nature. Here it traces how Natives respected nature,then to how they grew to exploit nature.

Carolyn Merchant's book speaks of the relationships between human and non-human nature that have evolved over the last three centuries. The book is a sympathetic approach to non-human nature and also the reasoning(s) behind the causes of its abuse. A very interesting read that gives a clear picture as to the destructive role that capitalism.