Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerability

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.

Spis treści:
List of Tables, Figures and Illustrations.
Series Editors’ Preface.
Acknowledgments.
1. A Vulnerable Society.
Introduction.
Changing Vulnerabilities.
Climate Change and the ′Double Sided′ Structure of Vulnerability.
Exploring Climate and Society in Mexico.
Climate History and Vulnerability in Mexico.
Case Studies and Approach.
< b>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 Colonisation.
The Emergence of Regional Colonial Political Economies.
Climate 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: Capitalising 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, Response and ‘Non–Adaptation’ in Colonial Oaxaca.
Responding strategically: climate, consciousness and experimentation.
5. Negotiating and Litigating Water 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 Globalisation in Late Colonia l 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.
Bibliography.
Index

Nota biograficzna:
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.

Okładka tylna:
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 R 11; 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.