Reviews of the following books:  Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New Englandby William Cronon; The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s by Ronald P. Formisan

Pease, William H.

Schriver, Edward

English

University of Maine

Maine History Volume 25 Number 2 Rural Maine Article 4 9-1-1985 Book Reviews Edward Schriver University of Maine Orono William H. Pease University of Maine Orono Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal  Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Schriver, Edward, and William H. Pease. "Book Reviews." Maine History 25, 2 (1985): 114-119. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol25/iss2/4 This Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact um.library.technical.services@maine.edu. BOOK REVIEWSChanges in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology ofNew England. By W illiam Cronon. (New York: H ill andWang, 1983. Pp. 241. Cloth. $15.95. Paper $6.95.)T his is a remarkable book. W illiam Cronon, a Yale profes­sor, has achieved a high standard and has added as well a significant study to a small but growing list of early American environm ental histories.T he author is aware of the pitfalls involved in his endeavor and has discussed several of them in the introductory pages. It is clear that there are dangers in using evidence gleaned from the subjective accounts of early travelers, naturalists, and ob­servers. Colonial town, court, and legislative records also must be studied w ith care. Perhaps even more hazardous is the neces­sity to cross disciplinary lines to locate evidence. Also poten­tially troubling is the realization that there may be certain situations in which ecological change has left no discernible evidence.Fuzzy nom enclature looms as still another difficulty. European names applied to American species renders the iden­tification process that m uch more uncertain. T he Post Hoc  Ergo Propter Hoc  argum ent (attributing changes in the land to certain activities which came earlier) is another pitfall. The heart of the historian 's dilemma appears “when one asks how m uch an ecosystem has been changed by hum an influence and then probes further to find out how it has changed in relation to what?”Despite these problems, the author deserves high marks for his work. His thesis is not completely new, but it is buttressed w ith unprecidented sophistication: the shift from Indian to European dom inance in New England certainly entailed im portant changes in the way these peoples organized their lives. But it also involved fundam ental reorganizations in the region's p lan t and anim al communities.114T his thesis is carefully illustrated. After the first Euro­peans settled on the New England coast, they sought the avail­able “m erchantable com modities.” James Rosier, who accom­panied George W aymouth to the coast of Maine inl605, noted that there were “profits and fruits which are naturally on these lands.” Viewing the landscape in terms of commodities to a large extent fueled the process that forced changes in the use of the land. There was indeed an abundance of resources for taking: fowl, fish, timber, and animals.The diversity of these resources had been taken into account by the Indians who had used them carefully. The Indians had been mobile; their villages often were near the shore. Maine Indians, for instance, had access to the coast, and many of their supplies came from river and seashore. T he area around their villages was humanized, to be sure, but they made m inim um  demands on ecosystems.Different perceptions of the environment generated some significant cultural and economic conflicts. T he Indians viewed property rights as functions of the way the land was used. Different claims could be made on the same tract of land. H un ting  rights, for example, were separated from p lan ting  rights. On the other hand, the English believed in perm anent settlement, and New England towns employed the concept of land as a private commodity, rather than a public commons.Trade between settlers and Indians also m irrored their conflicting cultural understandings of their relationship to the landscape. The exchanges between the two cultures were often profound. O ld W orld diseases were transm itted to the Indians who had little defense against them. Smallpox was am ong the most lethal of these ravages. To make matters worse for the Indians, their land was taken from them as well.T he colonists pressed their advantage relentlessly. Trees were vigorously harvested: white oak for timbers, black oak for underpinnings, and white pine for masts. Forests were cut as if the stands of trees would last forever. Interestingly enough, Cronon demonstrates that the farmers, bringing to the New World European settlement and land-use patterns, were the115chief agents in reducing the New England forests. Deforesta­tion was one of the most sweeping and destructive consequen­ces of the European migration.The belief that “wilderness should turn a M art” powered the assault on the landscape. The shift from Indian to English dom inance in New England included the replacement of an earlier village system of shifting agriculture and hunter- gatherer activities by an agriculture characterized by household production, fixed property boundaries, and strong links to outside commercial markets. The process carried on by the colonists was to a great degree ecologically self-destructive.Some readers will no doubt quarrel w ith the author s m ethod and w ill reject his conclusions. W hile it is true that the net has a wide cast, the result is a salutary one. T he bibliogra­phical essay reveals that the author has thought it im portant enough to discuss prim ary documents and material on the New England Indians and colonists, but he has also included bibli­ographical data on ecological literature and ecological and economic anthropology.Changes in the Land  is not the last word on New England ecological history, but it is a very significant contribution to a new ecological perspective on our colonial roots.Edward Schriver University of Maine at OronoThe Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s. By Ronald P. Form isano. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. xiii + 496. Cloth. $35.00.)Just what is “political culture”? And exactly what is meant by “ transform ation”? T o both questions Ronald Formisano provides answ ers edify ing  in the ir directness yet over­w helm ing in their inclusiveness. W hat does one make of a political culture which — perhaps tautologically — means “all those parts of a culture w hich are po litical,” especially those116which are “obvious and universal” (p. 4), or of a transform a­tion which, rather than being revolutionary, is merely devel­opm ental, innovative yet at the same time traditional? One naturally thinks of M orton H orwitz’s Transformation of American Law  — narrowly about law but really about a sea- change in socio-cultural values and perceptions — about “m odernization” as R ichard D. Brown has had it. But Formi- sano’s canvas is larger in a way. He really doesn’t lim it himself to things political as his vehicle for unravelling the skein of his transform ation process — unless of course one includes (as he does) religion, socio-economic status, wealth, class, notions of power and sovereignty, and a battalion of sim ilar broadly- defined “cu ltu ra l” factors in his definition of political. And having thus made his definition, he has his work cut out for him  to keep the thread of transformation w ithin the bounds of a clear case study which focuses upon American politics (in the more usual sense of parties, factions, cliques, and their interac­tions) as played out in Massachusetts between 1790 and 1850.His analysis of process is clear enough. Antiparty senti­ment, a child of the Revolution, dom inated political structure and action (political life, that is) un til the 1840s. It was encour­aged by fears of faction, absence of efficient mass com m unica­tion, low levels of electioneering, patterns of traditional defer­ence, coelescence around crisis issues prim arily, and a lack of perm anent follow-through. Only as each of these issues gave way to its opposite could party become perm anent — in theory at least, if not in practice.And that sets us off on Form isano’s second theme: the persistence of an essentially antiparty sentiment even into the 1840s. A lthough W hig and Democrat battled head-on, two seemingly clear-cut parties, in the struggle of Whigs to m ain­tain power in Massachusetts. Democrats to gain it, or in the m aneuvering of coalition politics, antiparty sentim ent still persisted. But why such persistence? Because, Form isano avers, there was in America an essential democratic thrust, a spirit (defined at least for the 1830s as a sort of middle-class, M iddling Interest, non-revolutionary populism ) grounded in the ideals of the Fathers. By the middle 1830s, the mechanisms of modern117party structure and practice threatened rigidity, which in Mas­sachusetts translated largely into Whig, urban, monied, upper class, entrepreneurial dominance. Nevertheless a counter­movement, including am ong others the W orkingmen, A nti­slavery, and later in the 1850s the Know-Nothing forces, both fed a latent antipartyism  and helped m aintain  a political flexi­bility otherwise perhaps lost.And that pattern identifies for us Form isano’s third theme: the contest between Center and Periphery — between country and city; wealth and poverty; agriculture and commerce or m anufacturing; class and mass; aristocracy and plebians; Bos­ton and the hinterland; or indeed W ashington and M assachu­setts. W hat is perhaps most interesting about this model is not its novelty but Form isano’s sense that it may provide a working model for national political culture as well (a po in t made elsewhere, although not so much in the present book).So brief a summary hardly does justice to a story told with verve, fullness, sensitivity, and good sense. And it is good because complexity is not reduced to simplicity; m ultiple themes are not buried in a dem and for ideological purity (nor even just for a “single cause” strategy). Yet the telling creates problems in explicating a process of political development the broad outlines of which are common property am ong today’s historians. Does the insistence that the “first party system” is a m isnom er really matter? Is there really a “ transform ation?” Certainly in structural terms it would seem so, but if the central po in t of his study falls about 1830-1840 — as it seems to — then the “p o p u lis t” dissent argues as much for continuity as for basic change. After all, Formisano himself allows that the process was “developm ental” — a com bining of traditional forms and practices w ith innovative departures. And one wonders whether a M iddling Interest populism  doesn’t do damage to both sides of that term. Are we not really talking about a fairly traditional sense of unease, dissatisfaction — about a hoary third party tradition?But no matter. A lthough it rarely m entions Maine, de jure before 1820 and de facto thereafter a sturdy part of that periphery — geographically isolated, solidly Republican, and118standing politically against the W higgish center in Boston, this book will serve historians of the most northerly of the New England states well. For in the internal history of the state, where is its center? Where is its periphery? W hat means Port­land, Augusta, or the County? What means a forest economy or a fishing one? Like all other politics, M aine’s, Formisano would surely agree, is part of the process of political culture transform ation which informs this book.T his is a book to ponder: first-rate in  breadth, clarity, and intelligence. T h at the author is a democrat — may one even hazard a sort of populist — gives vitality to his analysis, preference to his emphases. But he is too good a historian not to step back and balance his judgm ents and temper his conclu­sions. In the end, we all understand better the process of change, the complexities of structure, the intricate interlacings of a significant segment of American society in the early national period. And we do so because of Form isano’s w illing­ness to venture largely.W illiam H. Pease University of Maine at O ronoJUST RELEASED: revised edition of John  E. Frost’sM AINE G ENEALOGY: A B IBLIO G RAPH ICAL GUIDEpublished by the Maine Historical Society 485 Congress Street, Portland, Maine 04111T his new (1985) edition of Frost’s 1977 bibliographical guide contains m ajor additions gathered at the end of each section. T he updates enable the reader to review efficiently the most im portant advances in the field since 1977.119

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