The Atmosphere in Spatial History: Digital Evidence and Visual Argument

Abstract

Taking its cue from the weather wars that unfolded around the Alps in the eighteenth century — conflicts between neighbouring towns and polities attempting to divert storms by firing cannons at clouds — this article studies the representation of an environment rarely seen in spatial history: earth’s atmosphere. A survey of maps in different historiographical traditions, climate history foremost, reveals a visual repertoire that is effective for determining the physical properties of weather and climate but detaches the atmosphere from its human and non-human environments. A more recent genre of historical maps employs algorithmic methods of layering data to represent the atmosphere at local scales and in close connection with the human environment yet remains committed to a physicalist vision of weather and society. Returning to the Alpine weather wars, the article introduces a sequence of maps that attempt to represent past storms as they were understood and confronted by the armed farmers at the foot of the Alps: steerable entities trapped in an atmo-terrestrial force field where physical, political and religious influences collided to determine the ways of weather. The wider proposition is for historians of atmospheric environment to craft cartographic arguments that complement the range and ambition of their prose.