Responses to Freshwater Scarcity on the Canary Islands with Global Comparisons, 1500⎼1800

• Applicant: Dr. Laura Dierksmeier
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 570926335

This project investigates how early modern island societies responded to freshwater scarcity. Combining environmental history, island studies, and colonial history, the study examines how ecological constraints shaped social hierarchies, religious practices, labor regimes, sanitation systems, and environmental knowledge. While today’s global water crises have generated growing interest in low-cost, low-tech water practices, historical case studies—especially from island contexts—are few. This project addresses that gap by focusing on the Canary Islands, one of the driest regions in Europe, to research community-based strategies between circa 1500 and 1800. Islands present distinctive challenges for water access, including limited aquifers, saline groundwater, geographic isolation, and an absence of perennial rivers. Volcanic islands like the Canaries face further pressures: steep slopes accelerate runoff, volcanic activity contaminates freshwater, and thin soils limit retention. Anthropogenic factors historically intensified the Canary Islands’ environmental challenges. Water-intensive monoculture crops (sugarcane, wine) introduced by foreign investors irreversibly transformed the landscape. This strain was compounded by extreme inequality in water ownership: by the mid-16th century, four men—known as señores de agua (water lords)—controlled 80% of Tenerife’s supply. With access so tightly restricted, local communities were compelled to devise alternative solutions. As a result, the Canary Islands have a long and well-documentable history of innovative responses, adaptations, and attempted remedies to water shortages. The project makes five key contributions. First, it highlights how water scarcity intensified exploitative and uneven labor burdens, particularly for women, children, and enslaved people tasked with water collection. Second, it reconstructs how water-related knowledge was produced, transmitted, and contested. Third, it examines how religious practices functioned as both spiritual responses to drought and social mechanisms for managing environmental stress. Fourth, it analyzes the impact of water scarcity on sanitation and nutrition, especially in marginalized communities. Finally, the project identifies which responses were locally specific and which appear across other island or arid mainland regions, offering a comparative framework for understanding adaptation to environmental constraints. The study adopts a global microhistory approach, comparing the Canaries with other Atlantic islands (Madeira, Cape Verde, Azores, Caribbean) and arid mainland regions (Iberia, North Africa). Based on extensive archival work, the project will result in a scholarly monograph entitled “Responses to Freshwater Scarcity on the Canary Islands with Global Comparisons, 1500–1800.” This project will also support current initiatives such as the UNESCO “Community of Practice for Ancestral Hydrotechnologies.”

• DFG Programme: Research Grants