The Domesday book, surviving now in the National Archives in London, was the great land survey of 1086 instigated by William the Conqueror to enable him to tax the land correctly. It summarises in a largely formulaic format in Latin the holdings of each of the royal tenants and the population and property across most of the country. The huge work contains amazing detail about named individuals. Here short excerpts are also included from Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English and from the work called the Dialogue of the Exchequer which describes the DOmesday book and its inception.

Chapter 2 examines how Q’eqchi’ patriarchs addressed the challenges posed by popular pressures from below and new state efforts to modernize by privatizing property, institutionalizing coerced wage labor, and expanding state authority after the 1871 Liberal revolution. Q’eqchi’ patriarchs’ efforts included culturally translating communal properties into coffee plantations, engaging in the scientific cartography, and converting the spatial markers of mountain spirits into boundary markers. Ultimately, however, the efforts of Q’eqchi’ patriarchs to forge coffee plantations was limited because of internal pressures within indigenous communities, predatory capitalists, and state officials unwilling to recognize their plantations and grant labor exceptions to their workers.