Changes

[[File:Changes_in_the_Land.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|<i>Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England</i> by William Cronon]]

Since the mid-1980s, William Cronon’s contributions to environmental history remain pivotal. ''Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West'' (1992) combined environmental, ecological, and economic histories to explore the effects of the Midwest’s largest city on the region and surrounding lands. Likewise, Cronon’s earlier effort, ''Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England'' (1983) attempts to extend historical boundaries past “human institutions – economies, class, and gender systems, political organizations, cultural rituals – to the natural ecosystems which provide the context for these institutions.” Cronon cautions readers to not draw the wrong conclusions from his work. Though European and Native American ideas about property and land use differed, neither proved “purer” rather each illustrated ways humans altered the environment, “the reader must be very clear that the Indians were no more static than the colonists in their activities and organization. When I describe pre-colonial Indian ways of life, I intend no suggestion that they were somehow “purer” or more “Indian” than the ways of life Indians chose (or were forced into) following their contact with colonists.” (viii)