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A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Studies in Environment and History)

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This too-short book ably expands on the achievements of the Berkeley School of historical demography, while integrating Mexico with the concerns of US environmental history. The (UCal) Berkeley School---Woodrow Borah, Sherburne Cook, Lesley Simpson, and Carl Sauer---pioneered the systematic study of Indian population decline, and also explored patterns of land exploitation in New Spain. Melville extends this work with in-depth use of Mexican and Spanish archives, focusing on the Valle del Mezquital north of Mexico City. She shows how Spaniards used depopulated Indian lands for sheep raising, leading to overgrazing, degradation and vegetation change. Formerly fertile lands were colonized by mesquite scrub (thus Valle del Mezquital), making the region largely unproductive until irrigation in the 20th century. Thorough documentation makes this the most concrete study of Mexican land use history, and while the writing is not exciting, it is quite readable. An interesting chapter compares Australia with the Valle, but it distracts readers from the too-brief core of the book and ultimately seems misplaced. Since this book appeared, Melville has taken up the larger issue of capitalism's impact on Latin American environments with a chapter in T. Griffith & L. Robin eds, "Ecology and Empire." There is now a very solid study of struggles over water use in colonial Puebla, S. Lipsett-Rivera, "To Defend Our Water With the Blood of Our Veins."