Title: Technological exchange, modes of production and water utilisation in Europe and Latin America (from ancient times to XXth century)

Contact Information: Thomas F. Glick, Director Institute for Medieval History, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215. Ph: (617) 353-8314. Fax: (617) 353-2556. Email: tglick@bu.edu

Other Organizers: Professor Alejandro Tortolero (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, México); Professor Vicente Pinilla (Departamento de Estructura e Historia Económica, Facultad de Ciencias Economicas y Empresariales, Zaragoza, España); Salvatore Ciriacono, Department of History, Padova University (Italy)

Description: The situation in America is a complex one. It is true that pre-Columbian civilizations of the Chimu, Incas, Maya and Aztecs, which developed water channel systems, revealing high levels of engineering skill, are much more studied, but also in the North American continent and in the states of the south-west, would now seem to have been already active, between 500 and 700 A.D., early active forms of hydro-agriculture. The fact is that in Mesoamerica, Mexico Valley and the pre-Columbian civilizations of Latin America, research tends to highlight the problems of development and the impact of European colonialism. As K. Wittfogel emphasized the transplantation into Latin America of contemporary tendencies in Spanish agriculture (large-scale farms, increase in livestock breeding, neglect of much of the hydraulic engineering left by the Arabs) could not but lead to a similar decline in any existent works of hydraulic engineering in the New World. Nevertheless, if we look at the following centuries of rule by the Spanish Vice Regent, we see that the period was not one of complete stasis. Mexico Valley has a good system of lake-supplied irrigation, but due to problems inherited from the Aztec period it was a rather fragile area from the hydro-geological point of view. Digging the Desague, long subterranean tunnels had been one attempt to find a technological answer to the periodic flooding that afflicted the capital. Land drainage improved agricultural ressources. Transfer of techniques (Dutch, Italian) surely had no less impact. We would like to go deeper into this direction, gathering as historians from Europe as well from Latin America, trying to estblish some ties and to develope a common discourse with anthropology, sociology and ethnology.

Participants:
Alain Musset (EHESS, France), "Two Water-Based Agricultures in an Urban Environment: The Chiampas of Xochimilco and the ‘Hortillonages’ of Amiens”

Teresa Rojas Rabiela (CIESAS, Mexico), “Mesoamerican Hydraulic Works in the Colonial Mexican Transition”

Jacinta Palerm (Colegio de Posgraduados, Mexico) and Martín Sánchez (El Colegio de Michoacán, Mexico), “Technological Transfers between the Old and New Worlds: Water Boxes”

Juan Carlos Garavaglia (EHESS, France), “Distribution and Uses of Water in the Agriculture of Colonial Atlixco”

José Rivera (University of New Mexico, USA) and Thomas F. Glick (Boston University, USA) “Spanish Origins of the Community Acequias of New Mexico”

María Concepción Martínez “Perceptions of Water Use, Practices, and Representations. The Case of Valle de Bravo, Mexico”

Ann Kendall (Cusuchaca Trust, UK) and Abelardo Rodríguez (Centro Internacional de Investigación Agrícola en Zonas Aridas, Perú), “Agricultural Restoration in the Andes: Adapting Traditional Systems of Irrigated Terraces in the Modern Context”

Salvatore Ciriacono (University of Padua, Italy) “The Venetian State as a Knowledge Network for Water Control, XVth-XVth Centuries”

Franco Cazzola (Faculty of Economics, Bologna, Italy), “Jesuit Science and the Transmission of Italian Hydraulic Culture in the Modern Period”

Rolando García Blanco (Museo Nacional de Historia de las Ciencias, Cuba), “An Engineering Masterpiece: The Albear Aqueduct of La Habana”

Eddy Stols (Leuven University, Belgium), “Water Mills in Brazilian Sugar Production, 16th-18th Centuries”

Humberto Morales (Centro de Investigaciones de Historia Economica y Social, Puebla, Mexico), “The hydraulic regime of the Mexican textile industry in the 19th century”

Manuel González de Molina (University of Granada), “Water and Agriculture in Granada, 19th and 20th Centuries”

Calvo Creaco, Giulio Querini, Silvana Cassar, and Vittorio Ruggiero (University of Catania, Italy), “Water Resources Planning: The Italian Experience”

Rosalva Loreto (Universidad de las Américas, Mexico), “Technology Transfer, Modes of Production and Uses of Water in Europe and Latin America”

Daniel Murillo, (dmurillo@cenca.imta.mx), “A dialogue of the deaf: technology transfer in Mexico”

Michele Cariño, (Universidad Autonoma de Baja California), “Water Utilization and Cultural Heritage in Baja California: Rational Resource Utilization by Rancheros”

Alejandro Tortolero (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico), “European Models for the Utilization of Agricultural Landscape in Mexico? The Utilization of Lakes”

José Miguel Martínez Carrión and Salvador Calatayud (University of Murcia, Spain), “Technological Change in Ground and Surface Water Utilization in Contemporary Spain”

Vicente Pinilla (University of Zaragoza, Spain), “Irrigation and Agrarian Development in the Ebro Valley, 1900-1986)

Ramon Garrabou (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain), “Water Management in Dry-Farmed Crops in Arid and Semi-Arid Zones of Spain, Italy, France, and the United States”