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By considering three case study regions in Mexico during the Colonial era, Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico: A Study in Vulnerabilityexamines the complex interrelationship between climate and society and its contemporary implications.Provides unique insights on climate and society by capitalizing on Mexico's rich colonial archivesOffers a unique approach by combining geographical and historic perspectives in order to comprehend contemporary concerns over climate changeConsiders three case study regions in Mexico with very different cultural, economic, and environmental characteristics Georgina H. Endfieldis 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 Geographersand the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and is winner of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. She is editor of the journalEnvironment and History.

Climate, culture and weather / Georgina H. Endfield and Lucy Veale -- Learning to say Phew instead of Brrr: social and cultural change during the British summer of 1976 / Ian Waites -- On the home front: Australians and the 1914 drought / Ruth A. Morgan -- Extreme weather and the growth of charity: insights from the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society, 1839-1860 / Cathryn Pearce -- The temporal memory of major hurricanes / Cary J. Mock -- May God place a bridge over the River Tywi: interrogating flood perceptions and memories in Welsh medieval poetry / Hywel M. Griffiths, Eurig Salisbury and Stephen Tooth -- Remembering in God's name: the role of the church and community institutions in the aftermath and commemoration of floods / Alexander Hall -- The ice shards are gone: traditional ecological knowledge of climate and culture among the Cree of the Eastern James Bay, Canada / Marie-Jeanne S. Royer -- Post-scripting extreme weather: textuality, eventhood, resilience / Vladimi Janković and James R. Fleming.

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 socio-economic and geopolitical stress.

Historical collapse of ancient states or civilizations has raised new awareness about its possible relevance to current issues of sustainability, in the context of global change. This Special Feature examines 12 case studies of societies under stress, of which seven suffered severe transformation. Outcomes were complex and unpredictable. Five others overcame breakdown through environmental, political, or socio-cultural resilience, which deserves as much attention as the identification of stressors. Response to environmental crises of the last millennium varied greatly according to place and time but drew from traditional knowledge to evaluate new information or experiment with increasing flexibility, even if modernization or intensification were decentralized and protracted. Longer-term diachronic experience offers insight into how societies have dealt with acute stress, a more instructive perspective for the future than is offered by apocalyptic scenarios.