Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerability

“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.” (CHOICE, February 2009)

"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." (J. B. Richardson III, University of Pittsburgh, Choice, February 2009) 

"This book provides a fascinating and empirically rich account of how vulnerabilities to variations in climate, especially to drought and 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 the interactions between nature and political economy that produced food crises, water conflicts and devastating flood losses in colonial Mexico, and which echo down the years to illuminate our understanding of the new crises of vulnerability and adaptation in a warming world."
–Diana Liverman, University of Oxford

"With a deft and informed pen, Endfield carries the reader rapidly through the escalating crises of colonial Mexico. Based on rich documentation Endfield sketches environmental disasters and epidemics, the looming problem of population growth and subsistence shortfalls, and the illusion of economic growth. She illustrates, in a responsible and fascinating way, how vulnerability and human response can serve as an empirical and conceptual approach to study causality."
–Karl Butzer, The University of Texas at Austin