Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World (37 page)

7
. H. H. Lamb and A. I. Johnson,
Secular Variations of the Atmospheric Circulation since 1750
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966), 117–21. See also Drew Shindell et al., “Dynamic Winter Climate Response to Large Tropical Volcanic Eruptions since 1600,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
109 (2004): D05104.

8
. David P. Schneider et al., “Climate Response to Large, High-Latitude and Low-Latitude Volcanic Eruptions in the Community Climate System Model,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
114 (2009): D15101; E. M. Fischer et al., “European Climate Response to Tropical Volcanic Eruptions over the Last Half Millennium,”
Geophysical Research Letters
34 (2007): L05707.

9
. Alastair G. Dawson et al., “A 200-Year Record of Gale Frequency, Edinburgh, Scotland: Possible Link with High-Magnitude Volcanic Eruptions,”
The Holocene
7.3 (1997): 337–41.

10
.
The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816: Relating to Byron, Shelley, etc.
, ed. William Michael Rossetti (London, 1911), 127–8.

11
.
The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, ed. E. B. Murray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 1:284.

12
. For an excellent account of the impact of the Genevan weather on the Shelley Circle in 1816, and on the writing of
Frankenstein
, see John Clubbe, “The Tempest-toss’d Summer of 1816: Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
,” in
Literature in Context
, ed. Joachim Schwend et al. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992), 219–36. For another reading of weather in
Frankenstein
(that makes allusion to the Tambora eruption), see Bill Phillips, “
Frankenstein
and Mary Shelley’s ‘Wet, Ungenial Summer,’ ”
Atlantis
28.2 (December 2006): 59–68.

13
.
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, ed. Jones, 1:483–84;
Byron’s Letters and Journals
, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 5:82.

14
. Shelley,
Frankenstein
, 40.

15
. Jeff Masters, “2010–2011: Earth’s Most Extreme Weather since 1816?”
Weather Underground
, June 24, 2011,
www.wunderground.com
.

16
. Thomas Forster,
Researches into Atmospheric Phaenomena
(London, 1813), vii [my emphasis].

17
. For an accessible modern account of Howard’s career, the essay on clouds, and its influence, see Richard Hamblyn,
The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001).

18
. Howard,
Climate of London
, 2:112.

19
. Quotes in this section are drawn from ibid., vol. 1, tables 120–26, n.p.

20
. Ibid., 2:109.

21
. Karl Schneider-Carius,
Weather Science, Weather Research: A History of Their Problems and Findings from Documents during Three Thousand Years
, trans. from German (New Delhi, 1975), 179.

22
. Heinrich Brandes,
Beiträgen zur Witterungskunde
(Leipzig, 1820).

23
. Howard,
Climate of London
, 2:46–47.

24
. Ibid., 2:55, 58, 62, 73.

25
. Carl von Clausewitz,
Politische Schriften und Briefe
, ed. Hans Rothfels (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1992), 190 [my translation].

26
.
The Times
, January 1, 1817.

27
. See A. J. Peacock,
Bread or Blood: A Study of the Agrarian Riots in East Anglia in 1816
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1965).

28
.
The Times
, March 4, 1817.

29
. Post,
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis
, 94.

30
. Marc Henrioud, “L’Année de la Misère en Suisse et plus particulièrement dans le Canton de Vaud,”
Revue Historique Vaudoise
25 (1917): 137–38, 120.

31
. Post,
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis
, 39.

32
. Thomas Raffles,
Letters during a Tour through Some Parts of France, Savoy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, in the Summer of 1817
(London, 1818), 145, 156.

33
. Henrioud, “L’Année de la Misère en Suisse,” 139, 117.

34
. Post,
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis
, 51, 128.

35
. Quoted in ibid., 80.

36
. Henchoz, “L’Année de la Misère,” 81.

37
. William J. Bromwell,
History of Immigration to the United States [1819–55] … with an Introductory Review of the Progress and Extent of Immigration to the United States prior to 1819
(New York, 1856), 15.

38
. Henrioud, “L’Année de la Misère en Suisse,” 142; Post,
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis
, 165.

39
.
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, 1:480–81.

40
. Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein
, ed. Maurice Hindle (New York: Penguin, 1992), 9.

41
. Henry Matthews,
Diary of an Invalid
(London, 1824), 192–93.

42
. Ibid., 103.

43
.
Byron’s Letters and Journals
, ed. Marchand, 5:86.

44
.
His Very Self and Voice: Collected Conversations of Lord Byron
, ed. Ernest J. Lovell (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 299.

45
.
London Chronicle
, July 23, 1816.

46
. Post,
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis
, 25.

47
. See Jeffrey Vail’s rich account in “ ‘The bright sun was extinguish’d’: The Bologna Prophecy and Byron’s ‘Darkness,’ ”
Wordsworth Circle
28.3 (Summer 1997): 183–92.

48
.
London Chronicle
, July 23, 1816;
Morning Chronicle
, June 21, 1816.

49
.
Quarterly Journal of Science and the Arts
2 (1817): 420.

50
.
London Chronicle
, July 23, 1816; Henrioud, “L’Année de la Misère en Suisse,” 119.

51
. Henchoz, “L’Année de la Misère,” 74.

52
.
Morning Chronicle
, July 18, 1816;
The Examiner
, July 21, 1816.

53
. Henchoz, “L’Année de la Misère,” 75.

54
. Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Collected Letters
, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 4:660.

CHAPTER FOUR
BLUE DEATH IN BENGAL

1
. Homer,
The Iliad
, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1:44–52.

2
. Frederick Corbyn,
A Treatise on the Epidemic Cholera, as it has Prevailed in India
(Calcutta, 1832); see also James Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus, As It Visited the Territories Subject to the Presidency of Bengal in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819
(Calcutta, 1820), 12–19.

3
. David Arnold,
Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 171.

4
. Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus
, 17; Marquess of Hastings,
Private Journal
, ed. Marchioness of Bute (London, 1858), 2:241.

5
. Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus
, 18.

6
. Thomas Medwin,
The Angler in Wales; or, Days and Nights of Sportsmen
(London, 1834), 2:346.

7
. See Ernest J. Lovell’s biography of Medwin,
Captain Medwin: Friend of Byron and Shelley
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962). As the subtitle suggests, Medwin’s own literary fame rests on his role as chronicler of the lives and opinion of his more gifted contemporaries, in particular his authorship of the instantly notorious, best-selling
Conversations of Lord Byron
(1824).

8
. Lovell,
Captain Medwin
, 74.

9
. J. J. Higginbotham, ed.,
Selections from the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register
(Madras, 1875), 14.

10
. Ulrich von Rad et al., “A 5000-yr Record of Climate Change in Varved Sediments from the Oxygen Minimum Zone off Pakistan, Northeastern Arabian Sea,”
Quaternary Research
51.1 (1999): 43.

11
. Alan Robock, “Volcanic Eruptions and Climate,”
Reviews of Geophysics
38.2 (May 2000): 191–219.

12
. See Bin Wang, ed.,
The Asian Monsoon
(Berlin: Springer, 2006); and P. K. Das,
The Monsoons: A Perspective
(New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1984).

13
. Descriptions of the weather in Bengal in the Tambora period are drawn from Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus
.

14
. Schneider et al., “Climate Response to Large, High-Latitude and Low-Latitude Volcanic Eruptions in the Community Climate System Model,” D15101.

15
. Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus
, xliii.

16
. Ram R. Yadav, “Basin Specificity of Climate Change in Western Himalaya, India: Tree-Ring Evidences,”
Current Science
92.10 (May 2007): 1424–29.

17
. Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus
, xlviii.

18
. For a description of the religious practices surrounding Ola Bibi, see Sunder Lal Hora, “Worship of the Deities,
Olā
,
Jholū
, and
Bŏn Bībī
in Lower Bengal,”
Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal
29 (1933): 1–4.

19
. Jameson,
Report on the Epidemick Cholera Morbus
, lvi.

20
. Emma Roberts,
Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan
(London, 1835), 1:270.

21
. James Statham,
Indian Recollections
(London, 1832), 214.

22
. Quotations from documents housed in the India Office Records collection, British Library: “Proceedings Relative to the Measures which were Successfully Adopted with the View of Counteracting the Fatal Epidemic Denominated Cholera Morbus which Raged in the Town and Suburbs of Calcutta” [R. Leny, Secretary to the Medical Board, September 29, 1817]; “Papers of George Green Spilsbury,” September 25, 1819; “Proceedings Relative…” [Robert Tytler, Assistant Surgeon at Jessore, October 1, 1817]; “Judicial Letters: Measures Adopted for Affording Medical Aid to the Persons Attacked with the Epidemic Disorder at Bewar, Banda and Cawpore” [Secretary to the Medical Board to W. B. Bayley, September 22, 1817]; James Jameson to Military Department, October 9, 1818; Board of Revenue to Fort George, November 28, 1818.

23
. A. Moreau de Jonnés,
Rapport au Conseil Supérieur de Santé sur le cholera-morbus pestilentiel
(Paris, 1831).

24
. For recent histories and cultural analysis of the 1817 cholera in India, see Arnold,
Colonizing the Body
, and Mark Harrison,
Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, 1600–1850
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). For a global perspective on cholera, on which I have significantly relied in this chapter, see Christopher Hamlin,
Cholera: The Biography
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

25
. A selective bibliography of recent cholera research, on which my discussion is based, includes the following key publications: Luigi Vezzulli et al., “Environmental Reservoirs of
Vibrio cholerae
and Their Role in Cholera,”
Environmental Microbiology Reports
2.1 (2010): 27–33; Timothy E. Ford et al., “Using Satellite Images of Environmental Changes to Predict Infectious Disease Outbreaks,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
15.9 (September 2009): 1341–46; Jane N. Zuckerman et al., “The True Burden and Risk of Cholera: Implications for Prevention and Control,”
Lancet: Infectious Diseases
7 (2007): 521–30; Mercedes Pascual et al., “Hyperinfectivity in Cholera: A New Mechanism for an Old Epidemiological Model?”
Public Library of Science
3.6 (June 2006): 931–32; Katia Koelle et al., “Refractory Periods and Climate Forcing in Cholera Dynamics,”
Nature
436 (August 4, 2005): 696–700; Mercedes Pascual and Katia Koelle, “Disentangling Extrinsic from Intrinsic Factors in Disease Dynamics: A Nonlinear Time Series Approach with an Application to Cholera,”
American Naturalist
163.6 (June 2004): 901–13; Rita R. Colwell, “Infectious Disease and Environment: Cholera as a Paradigm for Waterborne Disease,”
Perspectives: International Microbiology
7 (2004): 285–89; G. Uma et al., “Recent Advances in Cholera Genetics,”
Current Science
85.11 (December 10, 2003): 1538–45; Kathryn L. Cottingham et al., “Environmental Microbe and Human Pathogen: The Ecology and Microbiology of
Vibrio Cholerae
,”
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
1.2 (2003): 80–86; Andrew E. Collins, “Vulnerability to Coastal Cholera Ecology,”
Social Science and Medicine
57 (2003): 1397–1407; Mercedes Pascual et al., “Cholera and Climate: Revisiting the Quantitative Evidence,”
Microbes and Infection
4 (2002): 237–45; Joachim Reidl and Karl E. Klose, “
Vibrio cholerae
and Cholera: Out of the Water and into the Host,”
FEMS Microbiology Reviews
26 (2002): 125–39; Xavier Rodó et al., “ENSO and Cholera: A Nonstationary Link Related to Climate Change?”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
99.20 (October 1, 2002): 12901–6; Rita R. Colwell and Anwar Huq, “Marine Ecosystems and Cholera,”
Hydrobiologia
460 (2001): 141–45, 1341–46; Paul Shears, “Recent Developments in Cholera,”
Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases
14 (2001): 553–58; Mercedes Pascual and Menno Jan Bouma, “Seasonal and Interannual Cycles of Endemic Cholera in Bengal 1891–1940 in Relation to Climate and Geography,”
Hydrobiologia
460 (2001): 147–56; Mercedes Pascual et al., “Cholera Dynamics and El Niño-Southern Oscillation,”
Science
289 (September 8, 2000): 1766–69; Brad Lobitz et al., “Climate and Infectious Disease: Use of Remote Sensing for Detection of
Vibrio cholerae
by Indirect Measurement,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
97.4 (February 15, 2000): 1438–43; and Rita R. Colwell, “Global Climate and Infectious Disease: The Cholera Paradigm,”
Science
274.5295 (December 20, 1996): 2025–31.