DREAMING OF DRY LAND by Vera S. Candiani ( 9780804788052 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

DREAMING OF DRY LAND
ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSFORMATION IN COLONIAL MEXICO CITY

By:

Vera S. Candiani

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£65.00

Our price:

£58.50

Discount:

10% off

You save:

£6.50

ISBN 10:

0804788057

ISBN 13:

9780804788052

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Publisher:

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

30 May, 2014

Pages:

408

Description:

The book shows why and how the lakes that used to surround the City of Mexico disappeared, initiating the present environmental crisis of this megacity.

Synopsis:

Not long after the conquest, the City of Mexico's rise to become the crown jewel in the Spanish empire was compromised by the lakes that surrounded it. Their increasing propensity to overflow destroyed wealth and alarmed urban elites, who responded with what would become the most transformative and protracted drainage project in the early modern America-the Desague de Huehuetoca. Hundreds of technicians, thousands of indigenous workers, and millions of pesos were marshaled to realize a complex system of canals, tunnels, dams, floodgates, and reservoirs. Vera S. Candiani's Dreaming of Dry Land weaves a narrative that describes what colonization was and looked like on the ground, and how it affected land, water, biota, humans, and the relationship among them, to explain the origins of our built and unbuilt landscapes. Connecting multiple historiographical traditions-history of science and technology, environmental history, social history, and Atlantic history-Candiani proposes that colonization was a class, not an ethnic or nation-based phenomenon, occurring simultaneously on both sides of an Atlantic, where state-building and empire-building were intertwined.

Publication:

Imprint:

Stanford University Press

Returns:

Returnable