The Enduring Commons: Ecology, Politics, and Economic Life in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1691 - 1815 by John Benjamin Cronin A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2016 Doctoral Committee: Emeritus Professor J. Mills Thornton III, Chair Professor Arun Agrawal Professor Philip Deloria Professor Martin Hershock Professor Maris Vinovskis Assistant Professor Michael Witgen To Mum, Dad, Luke, and Billy. ii Acknowledgments In writing this dissertation, I have been fortunate, to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, to stand on the shoulders of giants. This list is necessarily incomplete, for it could become its own book. Any omissions are my fault alone and are much regretted. First of all, I wish to acknowledge the deep love, affection, and support of my family. My mother, Judith Palmer Cronin, and my father, Robert Emmett Cronin, and my brothers Luke Cronin and Billy Cronin have been constant, loving, and full of patience. It has been a long road for the whole family, this project, and it is to them first and foremost that I owe its completion. I love them with all my heart, and I owe them my deepest thanks. I also wish to say a few words about the Chair of my Dissertation Committee, Prof. J. Mills Thornton III of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His patience has been nearly incredible, his understanding legendary, and his kind wisdom deeply appreciated. Ever since I took his course on Jacksonian America in my second year of graduate studies at Michigan, I have been lucky enough to call Mills my advisor. He exposed his students, including me, to a rigorous and wonderfully exciting study of antebellum American historiography, and beyond. Nor has he hesitated, when necessary, to give me a firm nudge towards finishing, something I very much needed. He has been instrumental to the completion of this project, and for that I shall always remain grateful. iii My Dissertation Committee at the University of Michigan, under the guidance of Prof. Thornton, has been kind and thoughtful. Prof. Maris Vinovskis, who may have been the kindest boss I’ve yet had, shares my love of early New England, and may know the most of any American living about the demographics of early Massachusetts. Prof. Michael Witgen gently showed me as a first year graduate student what a genuinely informative, exciting, and fun seminar looked like, and, through his reading list, to the idea of peasant societies in the borderlands of North America. I first became aware of Prof. Philip Deloria as an undergraduate, when we read some of his work, and I was thoroughly pleased to discover, via his reading group on environmental history, what a decent and good-humored man he is. He also provided the best “presidential debate prep”-style session to prepare me for my Preliminary Exams. Prof. Martin J. Hershock, a fellow student of Prof. Thornton at Michigan, and now an historian in his own right of early America’s often fraught encounter with market capitalism, has provided cameraderie from an historiographical perspective. And Prof. Arun Agrawal, of the School of Natural Resources and Environment, has been generous enough to read this dissertation and offer a perspective from outside the historical profession -- something for which I am very thankful. There have been others in the History Department at Michigan whom I must acknowledge. Foremost among them is Kathleen King, the Graduate Coordinator of the department, and a personal friend who has offered warmth, intelligence, decency, and caring sympathy in some very dark moments. She is an unrivalled navigator of UMich bureaucracy, the sine qua non of my graduate experience, a “mother-in-the-Midwest” to generations of homesick and lost graduate students in Ann Arbor. I could never have done it without her. Likewise, I wish to thank Lorna Altstetter, who for three decades served in a number of capacities in the History Department’s Office. Whether it was figuring out a grant or making sure the Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) received their paychecks, Lorna labored tirelessly for years for all of us. She is iv still correct that I ought to get a dog, and now that this is finished, I may do just that. I should also say a few words of thanks to Dawn Kapalla, who was kind in tough times, and to Prof. Juan Cole, who was one of the reasons I applied to Michigan in the first place. Getting to teach as one of the GSIs for his course on America and the modern Middle East was one of my most valued experiences at Michigan. The Center for the Education of Women came through in a number of tight spots. In addition, I wish to thank all of my undergraduate students, who remind us what we are doing in the first place. I have been lucky, at the University of Michigan, to meet a number of extraordinary people who have honored me with their friendship, in the History Department and beyond. The members of the 07 Cohort of historians in general are wonderful people, but a number need special remark. Edgardo Perez-Morales, the most brilliant historical thinker I know, is an indefatigable explorer of the human condition, and a man blessed with an Encyclopedist’s knowledge of Seinfeld; I am proud to call him and his wife, Carly Steinberger, friends. Likewise, Anthony Ross, along with his dog Raymond, has been quite literally a life-saver on certain occasions, and the reasonable, good-humored friend who has put up with my mad-cap ideas for camping expeditions to the Upper Peninsula for the better part of a decade. David M. Schlitt has been a gentle, kind-hearted friend, an incisive and witty observer of the culture, and also a bit of a mad-hatter as well. This latter especially is true of his dog Artie. Eric Schewe and Valentine Edgar, in addition to a deep and abiding knowledge of the Middle East, honored me with an invitation to their wedding, which gave me the opportunity to see the wonders of Lake Owasco, New York, a piece of Tuscany in North America. Michael Leese and Amy Warhaft have kept me on my toes as far as my rusty Latin skills go, and dozens of wonderful hikes around the glacial lakes of Pinckney, Michigan. Katie Rosenblatt has been a wise and brilliant interlocutor, a fellow enthusiast of American folk music and the Great Lakes, and a support in difficult times. It is rare v that a graduate student community is this warm and broad-minded, and it is another thing for which I shall always be grateful. At Williams College, an extraordinary social and intellectual constellation guided my wanderings. Prof. Shanti M. Singham, my thesis advisor, remains the most exciting professor I’ve ever had, a constant reminder of the power and the lasting responsibilities bequeathed by the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. James B. Wood, through his Oxford-style tutorials on World War I and World War II, taught me what the graduate study of history would look like. Guillaume Aubert, in addition to being a path-breaking scholar in his own right, introduced me to the very idea of the Atlantic World. Karen Merrill took a young freshman, not knowing what to think in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11th (his 10th day of college), and gently introduced him to the study of history at the level of tertiary education. James McAllister, in large part, taught me how to argue, while Darel Paul introduced me to authors like Giovanni Arrighi or J.A. Hobson, while encouraging my investigation of Reinhold Niebuhr. William Darrow, in addition to his fascinating introduction to Central Asia, helped me in his avuncular fashion in a winter of discontent, and remains a model for true humanism in the Academy. In addition to excellent faculty, Williams surrounded me with extraordinary peers. Ryan Gordon, Jiwoo Han, and Jim Irving were brothers (minus the blood) in those years and since then. Amy Shelton, Chloe Turner, Peter Holland, Meg Giuliano, Ari Crystal-Ornellas, Evan C. Miklos, Amy Miklos, Kalona Foster, Andrew G. Brown, Nathan Kolar, Tenaya Plowman, and Rafael A. Cruz were friends and fellow voyagers. Before that, at Duxbury High School, I was privileged with what, in retrospect, seems a prep school education in the clothes of a public school. Dr. John Sullivan taught a beautiful and extensive humanism, not only from books, but through deeds, while Dr. Judith Page Heitzman encouraged my love of the written word in an environment that could often be hostile to those vi feelings. Carole Sutherland nurtured my taste for satire, while James Vinci taught me music and opened up new world of expression and deep human feeling. Linda Gunderson put up with my antics for some unknown reason, and helped me along as a writer while doing it. Mr. William B. Bristol, and Mrs. Melissa Bristol, in addition to putting up what can only be described as my over-eager adolescent self on an epic school trip, taught me Western History and early American History and Introductory Latin, respectively. They remain like members of my extended family in my mind’s eye. Catherine Hart, in addition to Cicero and Catullus, gave quiet but steady nourishment for my love of Voltaire and the Enlightenment as a very lonely 9th-grader. Iris Brough, always caring, taught me that it is a grave error to see science and humanism at odds, and encouraged my interest in the natural world. In “the field”, as it were, I have been very glad to study my “home and native land” of Plymouth County.