Papers by Georgina Endfield
The SAGE Handbook of Historical Geography
Westminster Bridge, London, UK. Organised by Extinction Rebellion, a protest is underway to 'rebe... more Westminster Bridge, London, UK. Organised by Extinction Rebellion, a protest is underway to 'rebel against the British Government for criminal inaction in the face of climate change catastrophe and ecological collapse'. Protesters are blocking the Thames bridges of Westminster, Waterloo, Southwark, Blackfriars and Lambeth, thereby disrupting traffic
Futures
This chapter draws on empirical research from an AHRC-funded project entitled Spaces of Experienc... more This chapter draws on empirical research from an AHRC-funded project entitled Spaces of Experience and Horizons of Expectation: Extreme Weather in the UK, Past, Present and Future, to illustrate the complex historical geographies and politics of ‘weather wising’ and different forms of weather prognostications. Endfield considers the different ways in which particular historical subjects imagined and articulated knowledge about weather futures and examines the different temporalities implicated within such practices: from anxieties over immediate weather futures expressed in daily agricultural diaries to longer-term annual forecasting associated with annual almanacs. Uncovering a range of tools and technologies involved in weather forecasting—including both human and non-human methods of forecasting, phenological observations, and prognostications associated with animal behaviours—Endfield explores questions of credibility, authority, and status in terms of knowing and articulating u...
Geopolitics
This paper is concerned with the complex subterranean politics of lead mining in the Derbyshire P... more This paper is concerned with the complex subterranean politics of lead mining in the Derbyshire Peak District. We focus specifically on the implications of lead mining 'soughs'underground channels driven to drain water out of mines to allow for mineral extraction. Built during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, soughs were substantial, capital and labour intensive projects which served a key function in the refashioning of subterranean and surface hydrological landscapes. They were 'driven' at a time when water was both a major hindrance to mining endeavour and the primary energy source for industrial expansion, such that historical disputes surrounding sough drainage were common. Here, we draw on unpublished historical legal records to explore the ways in which vertical conceptualisations of space were central to the legal discourse over soughs and extend the so called 'vertical turn' in geography to include subterranean proto-historical landscapes. Drawing on a high profile conflict between English entrepreneur Richard Arkwright and Conservative politician Francis Hurt, we go some way to addressing recent claims for more ethnographic detail in studies of verticality by considering the people who legally and physically negotiated sough development below as well as above ground. We also illustrate the range of temporalities which framed sough developments and highlight the cross-generational nature of the legal disputes over soughs and the productive landscapes they drained.
It is with great pleasure that I introduce Volume 2.3 of The Anthropocene Review, my first having... more It is with great pleasure that I introduce Volume 2.3 of The Anthropocene Review, my first having taken over as Editor from Professor Frank Oldfield earlier this year. I first wish to thank Frank. Together with the support of the Associate Editors, and the journal team more broadly, he has invested a significant amount of time and energy, and substantial intellectual capital, in order to position the journal in centre stage for some of the strongest scholarship on a wide range of issues concerned with the Anthropocene. The journal has published an impressive array of papers to date, produced by authors drawn from the earth and environmental and social sciences, and from the arts and humanities and addressing a breadth of interdisciplinary and often controversial themes. I am fortunate to be taking on the Editorial role, at an obviously exciting time in Anthropocene thinking, and with the journal in such a strong position. I very much look forward to working with our broad audience in order to continue the good work that has been achieved so far. Like those preceding it, this issue includes a welcome mix of papers that focus on a range of approaches to and perspectives on the Anthropocene. We begin with a review paper produced by Mark Williams and colleagues in which the authors encourage reflection on the different stages of biospheric evolution: microbial, metazoan and the modern. With respect to the latter stage, the authors question whether the earth has evolved a new 'Anthropocene biosphere', on the basis of four key parameters: global homogenisiation of flora and fauna; human expropriation of a significant proportion of net primary production and also the production of energy through fossil fuel burning; human directed evolution of plants and animals; and finally, increasing interaction between the biosphere and the technosphere. Providing a series of sustained arguments focused around these four parameters, the authors highlight a potential 'new trajectory for the biosphere that could last hundreds of millions of years'. John Dearing and colleagues confront the challenge of understanding change in complex socioecological systems. Drawing on a series of empirically rich case studies from Australia, China, Europe, and North America, the paper makes a strong case for conducting long term (multi-decadal) investigations based on an array of different types of records, be they instrumental, archival, archaeological, cartographic or administrative. The authors demonstrate the value of combining such records to chart ecological, socioeconomic and demographic change in particular places-information which could be fundamental to the developmental of appropriate environmental management strategies therein.
Weather, 2014
Crossfell is the highest point along the 268-mile route of the Pennine Way, at 893 metres (Figure... more Crossfell is the highest point along the 268-mile route of the Pennine Way, at 893 metres (Figure 1). The climate of the North Pennines is temperate, with a small area classified as subarctic (Manley, 1936). The hills generally receive more precipitation, stronger winds, and colder temperatures than the surrounding areas. They are also home to the Helm, England’s only named wind.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All... more Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Regional Environmental Change
Perceptions of climate change, the impacts of and responses to climatic variability and extreme w... more Perceptions of climate change, the impacts of and responses to climatic variability and extreme weather are explored in three communities in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, in relation to livelihood resilience. These communities provide examples of the most common livelihood strategies across the region: small-scale fisheries (San Felipe) and semi-subsistence small-holder farming (Tzucacab and Calakmul). Although the perception that annual rainfall is reducing is not supported by instrumental records, changes in the timing of vital summer rainfall and an intensification of the mid-summer drought (canicula) are confirmed. The impact of both droughts and hurricanes on livelihoods and crop yields was reported across all communities, although the severity varied. Changes in traditional milpa cultivation were seen to be driven by less reliable rainfall but also by changes in Mexico’s agricultural and wider economic policies. Diversification was a common adaptation response across all comm...
Estudios de Historia Novohispana
El resultado del proceso colonizador sobre la propiedad y el uso del agua en el valle central de ... more El resultado del proceso colonizador sobre la propiedad y el uso del agua en el valle central de Oaxaca culminó, como en otros sitios de México, en el acaparamiento de los beneficios del líquido vital por parte de los colonos españoles. Si las prerrogativas emanadas de la conquista permitieron que la mitad de la tierra quedara en manos de los antiguos cacicazgos y del marqués del Valle, restringiendo la ocupación de la tierra a los colonos y encomenderos, la propiedad y el uso del agua siguió otro derrotero. A través del sistema de distribución de mercedes de agua y aplicando los mecanismos legales de la economía colonial —renta, venta y empréstito—, los nuevos pobladores fueron acaparando, lentamente pero de forma inequívoca, los principales recursos acuíferos del valle. Las estrategias para el control del agua permitieron la emergencia de numerosos ranchos y labores con derechos a uso de agua, en donde se concentró el verdadero dominio español de la propiedad. El usufructo del agu...
Climatic Change
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Environment and History
The American War of Independence (1775-1783) spelled crisis for the British West Indies. Trade em... more The American War of Independence (1775-1783) spelled crisis for the British West Indies. Trade embargos between rebelling and loyal territories, losses to American pirates and hostilities with other European states left the Crown's tropical Atlantic colonies short of the imported supplies that normally sustained their populations and commerce. Historians have studied the dynamics and consequences of these developments in considerable detail, at both regional and local scales, but have tended to focus on economic, social and political dimensions of the subject matter. Although some investigations have highlighted that climate variability compounded agricultural and subsistence problems in certain locations, the role of climate has rarely been subject to the same level of scrutiny. The present paper addresses this theme by focusing on the Lesser Antillean island of Antigua and the severe drought which gripped the colony during the war period. Through extensive analysis of original, largely unpublished archival sources, the implications of deficient rainfall for human livelihoods, fiscal stability and governmental crisis management are examined. By supplementing findings with evidence from other episodes of warfare which coincided with extreme climate phenomena in the late 1700s and early 1800s, it is argued that successive years of drought were pivotal in defining the severe human and economic losses sustained in Antigua during the American independence conflict. The critical agency of this weather event must, however, be understood as the product of its dynamic interaction with the precarious backdrop of a colonial regime under profound socioeconomic and geopolitical stress.
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
Recent years have seen a growth in scholarship on the intertwined histories of climate, science a... more Recent years have seen a growth in scholarship on the intertwined histories of climate, science and European imperialism. Scholarship has focused both on how the material realities of climate shaped colonial enterprises, and on how ideas about climate informed imperial ideologies. Historians have shown how European expansion was justified by its protagonists with theories of racial superiority, which were often closely tied to ideas of climatic determinism. Meanwhile, the colonial spaces established by European powers offered novel 'laboratories' where ideas about acclimatisation and climatic improvement could be tested on the ground. While historical scholarship has focused on how powerful ideas of climate informed imperial projects, emerging scholarship in environmental history, history of science and historical geography focuses instead on the material and cognitive practices by which the climates of colonial spaces were made known and dealt with in fields such as forestry, agriculture and human health. These heretofore rather disparate areas of historical research carry great contemporary relevance of studies of how climates and their changes have been understood, debated and adapted to in the past.
Geo: Geography and Environment
People have long been interested in the history of weather, particularly extremes, and chronologi... more People have long been interested in the history of weather, particularly extremes, and chronologies of past events drawing on information from written records have been compiled and published throughout history. In recent years, concern over current and future weather and climate has triggered a new level of interest in past weather events and their impacts. This interest, alongside the development of digital humanities research methods, has resulted in a rapid growth in the number of online databases relating to historic weather and climate around the world. This paper documents the design, creation and content of one such database, TEMPEST, an online repository for extreme weather history in the UK. TEMPEST has been created as the major output of the AHRC funded project 'Spaces of Experience and Horizons of Expectation: The Implications of Extreme Weather in the UK, Past, Present and Future' (2013-2017). Unlike the majority of existing databases that rely on published materials, TEMPEST's records are drawn from primary research into original documentary sources held in archives around the UK. The c. 18,000 records that TEMPEST currently contains offer personalised and geo-referenced insights into the relationship between society and extreme weather in the UK spanning a period of over 400 years. In this paper we outline potential applications for TEMPEST and suggest directions for future research and resources in historical weather. We also consider broader issues for the digital humanities relating to the storage, archiving, ownership, and usage of data and the need to ensure connectivity between complementary datasets.
Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico, 2000
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Papers by Georgina Endfield