Georgina H Endfield

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico

• Gebundenes 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.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Februar 2008
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 240mm x 161mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 542g
• ISBN-13: 9781405145831
• ISBN-10: 1405145838
• Artikelnr.: 23837387

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 Vulnerability 5
Exploring Climate and Society in Mexico.
Climate History and Vulnerability in Mexico.
Case Studies and Approach.
2 Climate, Culture and Conquest: North, South and Central Mexico 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 Colonial Mexico.
Introduction.
The Tools of Conquest and Colonization.
The Emergence of Regional Colonial Political Economies.
Climatic Variability and Vulnerability in Colonial Mexico: A Preview.
4 Responding to Crisis: Vulnerability and Adaptive Capacity in Colonial
Mexico.
Introduction.
Moral Economic and Institutional Responses to Climate and Crisis in
Colonial Mexico.
Speculation and Scarcity: Capitalizing on Climate Knowledge.
Trade in Grains: Providing for the 'Engines' of the Colonial Political
Economy.
Tribute, Food Aid and the Supernatural: Appealing to a Common Sense of
Loss.
'Compadrazgo', Community Engagement and Public Works.
'Most sensitive and saddening events': Flood Risk and Social Capital
Response in Colonial Guanajuato.
'Great floods' and 'Strong winds': Damaging Events, Adaptation and
'Non-Adaptation' in Colonial Oaxaca.
Responding Strategically: Climate, Consciousness and Experimentation.
5 Dearth, Deluge and Disputes: Negotiating and Litigating Water and Climate
in Colonial Mexico.
Introduction.
Water and Local 'Everyday Conflicts' in the Country and City.
Regional Resistance: Drought, Disease and Rebellion in Northern Mexico.
Vulnerability, Riots and Rebellions: Rare Events or 'Tipping Points'?
6 Illusory Prosperity: Economic Growth and Subsistence Crisis in the
Disastrous Eighteenth Century.
Introduction.
Decline and Depression in Seventeenth-Century Mexico.
Economic Boom and Bust: Absolutism and Globalization in Late Colonial
Mexico.
'A time of calamity': A Synthesis of Climate and Crises in Late Colonial
Mexico.
From Crisis to Insurrection: Vulnerability and Popular Unrest in the Early
Nineteenth Century.
7 Regional, National and Global Dimensions of Vulnerability and Crisis in
Colonial Mexico.
Introduction.
Prolonged Drought and the Conditions of Crisis in Late Colonial Chihuahua.
Drought, Risk and the Social Construction of Flooding in the Bajío.
Resilience and the Rare Event: Climate, Society and Human Choice in the
Indigenous South.
Crises in Context and Historical 'Double Exposure'.
Closing Comments.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Index.

Rezensionen

"This impressive archival study on Mexico provides ahistorical perspective on environmental change and the culturalresponse in such detail and depth that it will be used by manydisciplines as global warming produces more frequent anddevastating climate events in Mesoamerica and elsewhere. SummingUp: Highly recommended." (CHOICE, February 2009)

"Mexico is well known for its vulnerability to a variety ofdisasters, ranging from droughts and floods to devastatingepidemics. Using extensive archival resources in Mexico and Spain,environmental historian Endfield (Univ. of Nottingham) focuses onthree regions with their diverse environments--the Rio ConchosBasin in the state of Chihuahua, Guanajuato and the Chichimecterritory, and the Valley of Oaxaca--to compare and contrast theimpact of climate crises on the economic and social-politicalsystems of the agrarian Indian and Spanish societies of colonialMexico from 1521 to 1820. The author discusses climate disasters ofthe late pre-Hispanic period, as well as the prehistory of thethree study regions. Repeated climate events resulted in societaldisruption, demographic changes, and conflict. Endfield shows howthe societies in these three regions coped with and adapted to therisks and hazards of extreme weather over the centuries. Thisimpressive archival study on Mexico provides a historicalperspective on environmental change and the cultural response insuch detail and depth that it will be used by many disciplines asglobal warming produces more frequent and devastating climateevents in Mesoamerica and elsewhere." (J. B. RichardsonIII, University of Pittsburgh, Choice, February2009) "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