777Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 771–790

unprepared for what I had supposed would be a con-

cluding overview, under the title of ‘Emerging themes.’Instead I found a posthistorical and triumphant ‘fourthmovement’. It was a summa of ideas and opinions that

had already been begun without fanfare in the introduc-tion. Just a few of these thoughts would include thedistinction of morality and ethics; the persistent mythof a Golden Age when humans and nature were in

harmony; dominion, authority and social control; socialjustice as equitable distribution; balance, contingencyand sustainability in the limits of growth; or the liability

of climate, economies, and social systems to non-linearchange against a backdrop of complexity and chaos.These two parts of the volume would provide the

menu for a provocative seminar: thoughts rather thanblatant advocacy, experience and wisdom rather thanbrassy and inconvenient ‘truths.’

At a conference in Sweden, shortly after Ian Sim-

mons had retired from Durham University, I askedhim what he was working on. In his modest, self-depre-cating way he smiled and responded with something like

‘Nothing much.’ But he actually was completing GlobalEnvironmental History. Nothing much, indeed!

Karl W. Butzer

University of Texas at Austin, USA

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2009.06.011

Georgina H. Endfield, Climate and Society in ColonialMexico: a Study in Vulnerability, Malden and Oxford,

Blackwell Publishing, 2008, xi þ 235 pages, US$39.95paperback.

Georgina H. Endfield masterfully demonstrates that

Mexico’s national and regional archives, despite decadesof analysis by historical geographers and other scholarsin allied fields, remain an invaluable and still largely

unexplored resource for understanding the complexchanging relationship between colonial Mexican societyand the natural environment. The opening sentence of

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico well capturesthe book’s narrative tone: ‘28 June 1692 was a verywet day in Celaya, Guanajuato’ (p. 1). Endfield thenrecounts how late in the evening the nearby River Laja

leapt its banks, smashed through Celaya, and leftaround 3000 families homeless. Laced throughout thebook are other similar examples that Endfield draws

upon to construct a penetrating analysis of the changing

social contexts of vulnerability to climatic variability

and extreme meteorological events in colonial Mexico(1521–1821).

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico focuses on

the agricultural sectors of three case study regions,each with different pre-Hispanic, colonial, and environ-mental characteristics that together do well to representthe country. In order of increasing precipitation and

from north to south, these are Chihuahua’s ConchosBasin, Guanajuato and the wider Bajı́o, and the Valleyof Oaxaca. An early chapter provides high-level over-

views of each case study region’s social and biophysicalcontexts. These serve well to frame subsequent discus-sions of climatic events as well as make the work acces-

sible to non-specialists. Endfield then details how newlyconquered lands became Crown possessions and weresubsequently compartmentalized and awarded as landgrants, primarily for livestock grazing and agriculture.

The Crown awarded most of the land grants toSpaniards but through the granting process native com-munities also secured rights to their traditional lands.

However, the patterns of land ownership within thecase study regions were not the same and here Endfieldbegins to fulfill her book’s intent. In Oaxaca, natives

retained much of their land as communal holdings,whereas in Guanajuato and Chihuahua landed estatesof livestock and staple crops dominated as some Span-

iards grew increasingly wealthy through commerce andmining. This resulted in a massively unequal distributionof land and wealth within those two regions. In turn, thepoorest sectors became more vulnerable to climatic

events as they became increasingly reliant upon goodyears of precipitation in order to afford food and avoidfamine.

Endfield then examines how colonial society devel-oped adaptive strategies to buffer against the conse-quences of climatic events. A particularly interesting

and well-crafted discussion centers on the building ofdams in Guanajuato. By the eighteenth century dam-ming had become fairly commonplace in the region asa strategy to prevent flooding. Because all community

members were vulnerable to a flood event, it was notunusual for a dam to be built with Spanish funds andnative labor. Although the dams usually reduced the

risk of flooding from heavy rains, communities some-times failed to sufficiently maintain their dams or dredgethe sediments behind them, which then increased the

flood vulnerability over time.Subsequent chapters explore how climatic variability

influenced societal relations, such as the litigation that

arose during droughts in response to greater competition

778 Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009) 771–790

for irrigation water. Endfield’s complex discussion of

societal relations draws connections among droughts,epidemics, and periods of social unrest. Although forChihuahua Endfield finds that these phenomena often

appear to be closely linked, she soberly remarks that,‘it would be foolhardy to draw direct relationships be-tween drought, dearth and epidemic disease, [although]there do appear to be periods when circumstances coin-

cided to render some sectors of society less able to copeand more likely to resort to violence’ (p. 129). A singlechapter breaks from the thematic orientation of other

chapters and instead focuses on a particular time period,the eighteenth century. Endfield postulates that duringthis century a doubling of the colony’s population and

continued economic growth increased the vulnerabilityof some sectors of society to a string of anomalousclimatic events. Within this chapter is a lengthy and fas-cinating table that displays climatic events Endfield

found in the historical record for her three case studyregions for the period 1690–1816. Many of the table’sentries are paired with events that occurred in the

same year, such as epidemics, famines, and social unrest.The short final chapter recapitulates the book’s previouspoints and outlines how climatic events negatively

affected some European societies of the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries. The book ends rather abruptlywith a ‘closing comments’ section one page in length.

In an otherwise superb treatment of historical vulner-ability to climatic change, the only criticism I have arisesfrom how Endfield seems to be of a mixed mind con-cerning her study’s relevance for contemporary Mexican

society in the face of expected climate change. Althoughthe study’s stated purpose does not mention suchrelevance, Endfield notes that in this century current

climate models predict that central America will becomewarmer and drier. This leads her to suggest that pastinteraction between people and climate changes ‘pro-

vides another invaluable guide to where the most criticalvulnerabilities to possible future climate changes maylie’ (p. 3). But regarding what is recorded in the colonialarchives she cautions that, ‘Problems of chronological

resolution, insufficient data and oversimplification canhamper the value of using such historical examples asanalogues to glean insights about the potential implica-

tions of contemporary or predicted climate changescenarios’ (p. 19).

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico adds consid-

erable insight into related streams of scholarship in Mex-ican historical geography. These include studies on theland granting process, demographic upheavals, social

unrest, and the characteristics of the colonial livestock

industry and the causes of rangeland deterioration. By

conducting an archival investigation to identifydroughts, this work also complements recent dendro-chronological research conducted in northern and cen-

tral Mexico. In sum, Climate and Society in ColonialMexico is a significant achievement, rich in local detail,and offers much to recommend it as a textbook or refer-ence book.

Richard Hunter

Louisiana State University, USA

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2009.06.010

Richard A. Minnich, California’s Fading Wildflowers:Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions, Berkeley,

University of California Press, 2008, xiv þ 344 pages,US$49.95 hardback.

California’s Fading Wildflowers is about a conservation-related controversy. Reading it raises questions aboutthe practice of historical geography when it entails scien-tific understanding of the environment.

Annual plants from the Mediterranean and adjacentEurope dominate California’s low-elevation grasslandtoday. Once spectacular spring wildflower displays are

greatly diminished, and many native flowers are becom-ing rare. Replacement of the vegetation was so rapidthat its aboriginal composition is uncertain. Ecologists

have reasoned from succession theory that perennialbunchgrasses formerly dominated. Range ecologistLevi Burcham promulgated this hypothesis in a historicalgeography dissertation at Berkeley in 1956; though his

work was slipshod and lacked supporting evidence, itwas favorably received in ecological circles. Conse-quently, much conservation focused on ‘re-establishing’

bunchgrasses – creating a landscape, rather than on pre-serving the great number of flowering species known tobe declining towards extinction. Meanwhile, several

Sauerian biogeographers examined the historical recordand concluded that annual and some perennial wild-flowers, not bunchgrasses, were dominant over much

of the grassland when the Spanish arrived. Minnich’sbook is the latest salvo in this critique, a passionate de-fense of the wildflower thesis, which carries the anti-bunchgrass argument to an extreme. This is not out of

character, because while Minnich is one of our best bio-geographers, he is given to strong opinions that generatecontroversy.