- Email: [email protected]
Research guide to andean history: Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru
102
REVIEWS
The reader is presented at first with the conceptual surface and its categories and he may feel that he is constrained to espouse them in order to appreciate what follows. Even though the author presents some elements of his realist stance, the reader needs much more discussion of it as well as a precise account of the thinking leading to the modelling of the conceptual surface. There surely are other views of scientific endeavour and the choice of positivism, amended by realism, needs more justification. The initial conceptual framework is not discussed enough, especially when one notes that phenomenologicallyinspired works or findings are used later on. The lack of a fully convincing argument in favour of the realist view of the concepts and typologies which are used weakens the reader’s appreciation of the book. It is also not clear why Sack chooses to use such a narrow definition of language that the latter is denied any importance in art or dreamsconsequently ignoring much of semiological research. Geographers have paradoxically given little attention to space as a component of all modes of thought. By embracing the scientific as well as the non-scientific views, at the individual as well as societal level, Sack had managed to provide us with a remarkably fresh perspective on the history of thought and, above all, on the transformation of the earth’s surface-thus skillfully weaving epistemology with historical geography. University of Ottawa
VINCENTBERDOULAY
Shorter notices ALAN F. J. ARTIBISEand GILBERTA. STELTECR, Canada’s
Urban Past. A Bibliography to 1980 (Vancouver and London: University of British Columbia Press, 1981. Pp. xxxiif 396. $42.00)
The most astonishing thing about this book is that its compilers have found over 7,000 references on Canada’s urban past. This quantity becomes more understandable when we note that stacked away among standard topics like economic development, municipal incorporation, boosterism, transportation, and Thomas Adams, are a history of the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, a volume on Urban Futures for Central Canada, a list of British Columbia place-names, and at least seven references to factorial ecologies of post-war Canadian cities, three of which are to the same M.A. thesis. This most comprehensive and valuable compilation is being updated annually by Elizabeth Bloomfield in the Urban History Review; it will become an essential starting point for almost any research on the urban historical geography of Canada. Following an introduction, which need not be read to use the book, and which contributes little to our understanding of urban historiography, the references are organized geographically after an initial “general” section. Major regions (Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada) are broken down into provinces, within which each town or city has a section. The list of references is followed by a useful guide to Canadian urban studies, and then by comprehensive author and subject indexes. Scholars whose continuing interest in Canada’s urban past would do well to purchase this book; all others should make sure that their library has a copy. University of Toronto
PETERW. MOORE
JOHN H. TEPASKE(Ed.), Research Guide to Andean History: Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1981. Pp. xiii+346. $1875)
This book aims to serve as a guide to the archives of Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru, but it achieves much more than this. It summarizes the historiography of most of the
103
REVIEWS
countries, identifies the main historical issues and gaps in our knowledge, and suggests directions for future research. With 50 chapters and 45 different contributors, the coverage and quality vary considerably, but there is useful information in every chapter. The four country editors each had a different approach to the material. The authors on Bolivia concentrate on concise, descriptions of the archives and their contents; for Peru the coverage is much wider, often with summaries of existing approaches to Peruvian history. Peru and Chile are better researched than Ecuador or Bolivia, so that these differences also reflect the interest of previous researchers. The discussion of the principal sources available for research on individual topics in Chile and Peru is especially useful. Although the information may be somewhat dated, the details of procedures, hours of opening, copying facilities, as well as an inventory of documents, will save those contemplating research in these countries many frustrations. The obstacles of research are also touched upon and anyone who has worked in the Third World will recognize the tragi-comedy of the ceremonial canon which twice a year fired thousands of “useless” documents into oblivion. Escap, Bangkok
ANDREW
RONALD~ICELDON
GOUDIE, The Human Impact: Man’s Role in Environmental Change (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. x+316. S15XrOand E6.50 softback) In the preface to this ambitious synthesis the author’s debt to his colleagues and former students at Oxford is fully acknowledged. The many illustrations are clear and apt, a useful bibliography is given, and typographical errors are few; the book should, therefore, prove a helpful guide to the research published in English on a politically and socially sensitive theme, valuable for both students and teachers. The dilemma of the twentieth century is placed in the historical and social context of past philosophical and scientific discussions of man’s place in the natural world. The human need to control the environment, to produce food for a rapidly increasing world population, to provide raw materials for modern technology is shewn not only to emphasize problems already existing in earlier societies, but also to create others; increasing salinity and disease resulting from irrigation are two of many discussed. Dr Goudie is more at ease with geomorphological themes; some biological aspects receive summary treatment (the domestication of animals merits only one page) and some research is uncritically quoted. Is it really possible to state categorically that the cereal crop yield in Mesopotamia was 2,537 litres per hectare (p. 113)?
RICHARD GOUGH, The History of Myddle, edited and with an introduction
(Harmondsworth:
by David Hey
Penguin Books, 1981. Pp. 334. E2.50)
The publishers are to be congratulated on making the full text of this remarkable and unique local history available at a reasonable cost, and in their choice of editor. Dr Hey’s own study of Myddle was published in 1974 (the year before the French edition of Ladurie’s MontaiIZou, with which the publishers bracket Gough’s book) and his knowledge and scholarship are made available in the excellent introduction and helpful footnotes. The book leaves many impressions: familiarity with the qualities and frailties of the seventeenth-century inhabitants of Myddle, which differ little from our own twentieth-century experience; a sense of greater mobility than might have been expected; a picture of piecemeal enclosure, of building and re-building. But behind all the stories, scandalous or informative, one glimpses the author himself: a raconteur, a keen observer of human foibles, appreciative of beauty in both men and women, a master of the pungent phrase, who, with the experience and compassion of age, describes and com-
REVIEWS
The reader is presented at first with the conceptual surface and its categories and he may feel that he is constrained to espouse them in order to appreciate what follows. Even though the author presents some elements of his realist stance, the reader needs much more discussion of it as well as a precise account of the thinking leading to the modelling of the conceptual surface. There surely are other views of scientific endeavour and the choice of positivism, amended by realism, needs more justification. The initial conceptual framework is not discussed enough, especially when one notes that phenomenologicallyinspired works or findings are used later on. The lack of a fully convincing argument in favour of the realist view of the concepts and typologies which are used weakens the reader’s appreciation of the book. It is also not clear why Sack chooses to use such a narrow definition of language that the latter is denied any importance in art or dreamsconsequently ignoring much of semiological research. Geographers have paradoxically given little attention to space as a component of all modes of thought. By embracing the scientific as well as the non-scientific views, at the individual as well as societal level, Sack had managed to provide us with a remarkably fresh perspective on the history of thought and, above all, on the transformation of the earth’s surface-thus skillfully weaving epistemology with historical geography. University of Ottawa
VINCENTBERDOULAY
Shorter notices ALAN F. J. ARTIBISEand GILBERTA. STELTECR, Canada’s
Urban Past. A Bibliography to 1980 (Vancouver and London: University of British Columbia Press, 1981. Pp. xxxiif 396. $42.00)
The most astonishing thing about this book is that its compilers have found over 7,000 references on Canada’s urban past. This quantity becomes more understandable when we note that stacked away among standard topics like economic development, municipal incorporation, boosterism, transportation, and Thomas Adams, are a history of the Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club, a volume on Urban Futures for Central Canada, a list of British Columbia place-names, and at least seven references to factorial ecologies of post-war Canadian cities, three of which are to the same M.A. thesis. This most comprehensive and valuable compilation is being updated annually by Elizabeth Bloomfield in the Urban History Review; it will become an essential starting point for almost any research on the urban historical geography of Canada. Following an introduction, which need not be read to use the book, and which contributes little to our understanding of urban historiography, the references are organized geographically after an initial “general” section. Major regions (Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada) are broken down into provinces, within which each town or city has a section. The list of references is followed by a useful guide to Canadian urban studies, and then by comprehensive author and subject indexes. Scholars whose continuing interest in Canada’s urban past would do well to purchase this book; all others should make sure that their library has a copy. University of Toronto
PETERW. MOORE
JOHN H. TEPASKE(Ed.), Research Guide to Andean History: Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1981. Pp. xiii+346. $1875)
This book aims to serve as a guide to the archives of Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru, but it achieves much more than this. It summarizes the historiography of most of the
103
REVIEWS
countries, identifies the main historical issues and gaps in our knowledge, and suggests directions for future research. With 50 chapters and 45 different contributors, the coverage and quality vary considerably, but there is useful information in every chapter. The four country editors each had a different approach to the material. The authors on Bolivia concentrate on concise, descriptions of the archives and their contents; for Peru the coverage is much wider, often with summaries of existing approaches to Peruvian history. Peru and Chile are better researched than Ecuador or Bolivia, so that these differences also reflect the interest of previous researchers. The discussion of the principal sources available for research on individual topics in Chile and Peru is especially useful. Although the information may be somewhat dated, the details of procedures, hours of opening, copying facilities, as well as an inventory of documents, will save those contemplating research in these countries many frustrations. The obstacles of research are also touched upon and anyone who has worked in the Third World will recognize the tragi-comedy of the ceremonial canon which twice a year fired thousands of “useless” documents into oblivion. Escap, Bangkok
ANDREW
RONALD~ICELDON
GOUDIE, The Human Impact: Man’s Role in Environmental Change (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. x+316. S15XrOand E6.50 softback) In the preface to this ambitious synthesis the author’s debt to his colleagues and former students at Oxford is fully acknowledged. The many illustrations are clear and apt, a useful bibliography is given, and typographical errors are few; the book should, therefore, prove a helpful guide to the research published in English on a politically and socially sensitive theme, valuable for both students and teachers. The dilemma of the twentieth century is placed in the historical and social context of past philosophical and scientific discussions of man’s place in the natural world. The human need to control the environment, to produce food for a rapidly increasing world population, to provide raw materials for modern technology is shewn not only to emphasize problems already existing in earlier societies, but also to create others; increasing salinity and disease resulting from irrigation are two of many discussed. Dr Goudie is more at ease with geomorphological themes; some biological aspects receive summary treatment (the domestication of animals merits only one page) and some research is uncritically quoted. Is it really possible to state categorically that the cereal crop yield in Mesopotamia was 2,537 litres per hectare (p. 113)?
RICHARD GOUGH, The History of Myddle, edited and with an introduction
(Harmondsworth:
by David Hey
Penguin Books, 1981. Pp. 334. E2.50)
The publishers are to be congratulated on making the full text of this remarkable and unique local history available at a reasonable cost, and in their choice of editor. Dr Hey’s own study of Myddle was published in 1974 (the year before the French edition of Ladurie’s MontaiIZou, with which the publishers bracket Gough’s book) and his knowledge and scholarship are made available in the excellent introduction and helpful footnotes. The book leaves many impressions: familiarity with the qualities and frailties of the seventeenth-century inhabitants of Myddle, which differ little from our own twentieth-century experience; a sense of greater mobility than might have been expected; a picture of piecemeal enclosure, of building and re-building. But behind all the stories, scandalous or informative, one glimpses the author himself: a raconteur, a keen observer of human foibles, appreciative of beauty in both men and women, a master of the pungent phrase, who, with the experience and compassion of age, describes and com-