Georgina H Endfield

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico

A Study in Vulnerability

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The relationship between climate and society is complex. Time and again history has shown that responses to climatic changes and extreme weather events vary greatly between different social groups. A variety of factors - demographic, social, political and economic - influence how a society perceives, responds to, and copes with extreme weather events. With its series of floods and frosts, droughts and hurricanes, few societies have had their resilience and resourcefulness tested like Mexico's in her colonial era. Within this historical framework, Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerability provides a timely examination of the human impact of climate change and its contemporary implications. By considering three broadly differentiated case study regions - Chihuahua's arid Conchos Basin, the lush Oaxaca Valley, and Guanajuato in the Bajío of Mexico - the text offers valuable insights into how different societies articulate knowledge about climate and the environment and how they respond to climatic variability. Capitalizing on Mexico's rich colonial archives - many published here for the first time - the study provides a unique historical perspective into the complex interrelationships between climate and vulnerable societies. By examining the past, Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico offers valuable insights into contemporary climatic changes, environmental impacts, the vulnerability of societies, and our increasing concerns for the future of our planet.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. Februar 2008
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 227mm x 158mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 367g
• ISBN-13: 9781405145824
• ISBN-10: 140514582X
• Artikelnr.: 23431701

Autorenporträt

Georgina H. Endfield is a Reader in Environmental History in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham. She has published papers in a wide variety of journals, including the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and is winner of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. She is editor of the journal Environment and History.

Inhaltsangabe

List of Tables and Figures.

Series Editors' Preface.

Acknowledgements.

1 A Vulnerable Society.

Introduction.

Changing Vulnerabilities.

Climate Change and the 'Double-Sided' Structure of Vulnerability5

Exploring Climate and Society in Mexico.

Climate History and Vulnerability in Mexico.

Case Studies and Approach.

2 Climate, Culture and Conquest: North, South and CentralMexico in the Pre-European and Contact Period.

Environmental Marginality and Society in the Conchos Basin,Chihuahua.

Guanajuato and the Chichimec Territory.

Power and Political Growth in the Central Valley of Oaxaca.

3 Exploring the Anatomy of Vulnerability in ColonialMexico.

Introduction.

The Tools of Conquest and Colonization.

The Emergence of Regional Colonial Political Economies.

Climatic Variability and Vulnerability in Colonial Mexico: APreview.

4 Responding to Crisis: Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacityin Colonial Mexico.

Introduction.

Moral Economic and Institutional Responses to Climate and Crisisin Colonial Mexico.

Speculation and Scarcity: Capitalizing on Climate Knowledge.

Trade in Grains: Providing for the 'Engines' of the ColonialPolitical Economy.

Tribute, Food Aid and the Supernatural: Appealing to a CommonSense of Loss.

'Compadrazgo', Community Engagement and Public Works.

'Most sensitive and saddening events': Flood Risk and SocialCapital Response in Colonial Guanajuato.

'Great floods' and 'Strong winds': Damaging Events, Adaptationand 'Non-Adaptation' in Colonial Oaxaca.

Responding Strategically: Climate, Consciousness andExperimentation.

5 Dearth, Deluge and Disputes: Negotiating and LitigatingWater and Climate in Colonial Mexico.

Introduction.

Water and Local 'Everyday Conflicts' in the Country andCity.

Regional Resistance: Drought, Disease and Rebellion in NorthernMexico.

Vulnerability, Riots and Rebellions: Rare Events or 'TippingPoints'?

6 Illusory Prosperity: Economic Growth and Subsistence Crisisin the Disastrous Eighteenth Century.

Introduction.

Decline and Depression in Seventeenth-Century Mexico.

Economic Boom and Bust: Absolutism and Globalization in LateColonial Mexico.

'A time of calamity': A Synthesis of Climate and Crises in LateColonial Mexico.

From Crisis to Insurrection: Vulnerability and Popular Unrest inthe Early Nineteenth Century.

7 Regional, National and Global Dimensions of Vulnerabilityand Crisis in Colonial Mexico.

Introduction.

Prolonged Drought and the Conditions of Crisis in Late ColonialChihuahua.

Drought, Risk and the Social Construction of Flooding in theBajío.

Resilience and the Rare Event: Climate, Society and Human Choicein the Indigenous South.

Crises in Context and Historical 'Double Exposure'.

Closing Comments.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

Rezensionen

Mexico is well known for its vulnerability to a variety of disasters, ranging from droughts and floods to devastating epidemics. Using extensive archival resources in Mexico and Spain, environmental historian Endfield (Univ. of Nottingham) focuses on three regions with their diverse environments--the Rio Conchos Basin in the state of Chihuahua, Guanajuato and the Chichimec territory, and the Valley of Oaxaca--to compare and contrast the impact of climate crises on the economic and social-political systems of the agrarian Indian and Spanish societies of colonial Mexico from 1521 to 1820. The author discusses climate disasters of the late pre-Hispanic period, as well as the prehistory of the three study regions. Repeated climate events resulted in societal disruption, demographic changes, and conflict. Endfield shows how the societies in these three regions coped with and adapted to the risks and hazards of extreme weather over the centuries. This impressive archival study on Mexico provides a historical perspective on environmental change and the cultural response in such detail and depth that it will be used by many disciplines as global warming produces more frequent and devastating climate events in Mesoamerica and elsewhere. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- J. B. Richardson III, University of Pittsburgh (Choice, February 2009)"This book provides a fascinating and empirically rich account ofhow vulnerabilities to variations in climate, especially to droughtand flood, were created and experienced over several centuries.Based on meticulous work in the historical archives, Georgina H.Endfield gives a distinctive long term perspective on theinteractions between nature and political economy that producedfood crises, water conflicts and devastating flood losses incolonial Mexico, and which echo down the years to illuminate ourunderstanding of the new crises of vulnerability and adaptation ina warming world."
-Diana Liverman, University of Oxford

"With a deft and informed pen, Endfield carries the readerrapidly through the escalating crises of colonial Mexico. Based onrich documentation Endfield sketches environmental disasters andepidemics, the looming problem of population growth and subsistenceshortfalls, and the illusion of economic growth. She illustrates,in a responsible and fascinating way, how vulnerability and humanresponse can serve as an empirical and conceptual approach to studycausality."
-Karl Butzer, The University of Texas at Austin