The article by Sam White focuses on how the Little Ice Age affected the Spanish conquest of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on how the below average temperatures and drought combined with many other factors to led to conflict with the Pueblos. The climate was completely different than that the Spanish were familiar with, so it took several generations for the Spanish to be able to settle in the area. They even had a couple of false starts, as they could not effective grow food in a climate so vastly different from Spain’s Mediterranean climate. It also, interestingly enough, forced the Spanish to put the climate into their own religious context, leading them to think that this harsh weather as punishment from God. Meanwhile, the Pueblos were well adjusted to the area, after hundreds of years of living there. However, once the Spanish had claimed the area as their own and …show more content…
The article by Geaorgina Endfield discusses how pre- Hispanic Mexico responded to climate change. It states many different crisis in explicit detail and explains how the socioeconomic impact of them. One notable detail was that there were actually law suits between neighbors over access to water, and most of the time law suits are nearly exclusively associated with democracies, and especially not with civilizations pre dating the 1800s. It goes on to speculate on how the crisis impacted the spread of disease and of how the affected communities responded. Bankoff’s article explains how weather patterns occur in the Pacific and how wind in particular had a strong hand in trade and how society developed due to trade.
The Sam White article exclusively a historical piece, as opposed to many of the articles we have previously read, which tend to use some blend of scientific evidence and history to make a point. White’s article stronger resembled a textbook chapter, as it was a straight account of history. It did not seem to be