Pub Date : 2018-09-10DOI: 10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.03
Rebecca C. Jones
Drought is the most ubiquitous climatic phenomenon in Australia, and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were decades of particularly frequent and persistent drought in south-eastern Australia. While the financial and environmental cost of drought has been well documented by historians, less attention has been paid to the emotional landscape of drought. These effects share much with other types of environmental adversity; however, droughts are slow catastrophes that generate a particularly profound level of uncertainty. This paper explores emotional responses to drought from the 1890s to the 1940s as well as some of the ways in which people coped with and attempted to ameliorate these emotions. I argue that drought elicits a wide range of emotions, but that the dominant experience of drought and the source of many of these emotions was uncertainty, provoked by the particularly ambivalent, incremental character of drought. Farmers are, arguably, the group whose well-being depends most directly on climate extremes and are therefore the group upon which I will focus this paper. Personal sources such as diaries and correspondence provide a window into the lived experience of drought and a rich picture of the emotional landscape of settler-colonisers in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Pub Date : 2018-09-10DOI: 10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.04
J. Warren
In this paper, I explore why so many people have starved in the Philippines when typhoons, floods and droughts have occurred since the seventeenth century and governments of the day have been unable to provide relief. Why, in the twenty-first century, are millions of Filipinos still living in the shadow of hunger? I draw attention to the causes and consequences of food shortages and famine and the relationship between climatic and weather factors, especially storms, floods and drought, and food supply (ownership and exchange), regional characteristics and social structure. In examining famines over time, I stress the structural links between food shortages, the nature of Filipino peasant societies and the weather factor. In addition, I explore the developing historical relationship between economic and political changes and societal group inequality, involving the loss of entitlements that become more explicit in times of famine. I also examine the lingering impacts of climate variability and extreme weather—typhoons, floods and drought—linked to past and present famines. Filipino farmers have not vanquished famine. Destitution and death from disasters and famine were all continual and familiar experiences under both Spanish and American rule, and remain so to the present day.
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Pub Date : 2018-09-10DOI: 10.22459/ireh.04.02.2018.05
Fiona Williamson
In 1948, a chilling statement from British Malaya’s Director of Agriculture, F. Burnett, made headline news. According to Burnett, unchecked soil erosion across hillside Malaya would soon render the country’s precious agricultural land infertile. Erosion had worsened considerably after the 1880s due to widespread, indiscriminate agricultural and industrial clearing. By the 1920s, it had become a sizeable socioeconomic and environmental issue, thought also to contribute to the scale and intensity of flooding and the likelihood of dangerous landslips. The British Government raised a series of empire-wide inquiries across the first half of the twentieth century, tied to an emerging global scientific interest in, and concern about, soil degradation, food security and economic productivity. The colonial British Government of Malaya—whilst acknowledging the part played by commercial agriculture—also tended to place blame on traditional shifting cultivators and farmers, especially the Chinese. This article discusses the problem of soil erosion in British Malaya as a primarily slow-onset disaster while also acknowledging erosion’s contributing role in more sudden hazards, such as landslips. It also explores how erosion was linked with an evolving blame culture in Malaya, involving discrimination against different social groups at different times. The narratives surrounding soil erosion thus offer a lens into the interplay of environment, colonialism and politics in British Malaya.
{"title":"Malaya’s greatest menace? Slow-onset disaster and the muddy politics of British Malaya, c. 1900–50","authors":"Fiona Williamson","doi":"10.22459/ireh.04.02.2018.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ireh.04.02.2018.05","url":null,"abstract":"In 1948, a chilling statement from British Malaya’s Director of Agriculture, F. Burnett, made headline news. According to Burnett, unchecked soil erosion across hillside Malaya would soon render the country’s precious agricultural land infertile. Erosion had worsened considerably after the 1880s due to widespread, indiscriminate agricultural and industrial clearing. By the 1920s, it had become a sizeable socioeconomic and environmental issue, thought also to contribute to the scale and intensity of flooding and the likelihood of dangerous landslips. The British Government raised a series of empire-wide inquiries across the first half of the twentieth century, tied to an emerging global scientific interest in, and concern about, soil degradation, food security and economic productivity. The colonial British Government of Malaya—whilst acknowledging the part played by commercial agriculture—also tended to place blame on traditional shifting cultivators and farmers, especially the Chinese. This article discusses the problem of soil erosion in British Malaya as a primarily slow-onset disaster while also acknowledging erosion’s contributing role in more sudden hazards, such as landslips. It also explores how erosion was linked with an evolving blame culture in Malaya, involving discrimination against different social groups at different times. The narratives surrounding soil erosion thus offer a lens into the interplay of environment, colonialism and politics in British Malaya.","PeriodicalId":34502,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44554727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-10DOI: 10.22459/ireh.04.02.2018.06
Chris Courtney
One winter evening in 1849 the Yangzi River caught fire. The conflagration broke out on a sampan moored between Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang, the three sister cities known today as Wuhan.3 Here, the harbours were so crowded that observers often described how a ‘forest of masts’ seemed to stretch out to the horizon.4 This forest was now ablaze. The poet Ye Diaoyuan immortalised the disastrous scenes, describing a cacophony of gongs beaten to warn of the oncoming inferno, ash floating into the air, and water turning red in the flickering light of the flames. The fire consumed all vessels in its path, from humble cargo sampans to ornate flower boats (huachuan)—a euphemism for floating brothels. Those aboard were trapped ‘like fish swimming in a cauldron’, yet if they jumped into the river they faced the very probable risk of drowning. So many chose this latter option that Ye remarked
{"title":"The tinderbox city: The industrialisation of fire disasters in Hankou, China, 1849–1944","authors":"Chris Courtney","doi":"10.22459/ireh.04.02.2018.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ireh.04.02.2018.06","url":null,"abstract":"One winter evening in 1849 the Yangzi River caught fire. The conflagration broke out on a sampan moored between Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang, the three sister cities known today as Wuhan.3 Here, the harbours were so crowded that observers often described how a ‘forest of masts’ seemed to stretch out to the horizon.4 This forest was now ablaze. The poet Ye Diaoyuan immortalised the disastrous scenes, describing a cacophony of gongs beaten to warn of the oncoming inferno, ash floating into the air, and water turning red in the flickering light of the flames. The fire consumed all vessels in its path, from humble cargo sampans to ornate flower boats (huachuan)—a euphemism for floating brothels. Those aboard were trapped ‘like fish swimming in a cauldron’, yet if they jumped into the river they faced the very probable risk of drowning. So many chose this latter option that Ye remarked","PeriodicalId":34502,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42535456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-10DOI: 10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.07
Mark B. Baker
This article argues that famines have rapid as well as slow temporalities. Using newspapers, contemporary eyewitness accounts and subsequent memoirs, it uncovers the mixed temporalities of causation and experience in the 1942–43 famine in Henan Province, north-central China. It begins by exploring how the slow elements of famine played out in Henan: endemic poverty and malnutrition, years of war in the province, and the drawn-out experience of drought and starvation in 1942–43. More importantly, though, it then demonstrates that it was rapid processes that tipped much of Henan into what one observer called a ‘blitz famine’: hailstorms, price spikes and the violence of military requisitioning. The experience of famine, too, had fast temporalities, including snap decisions about flight, individual or collective acts of violence, and the sudden bodily collapse that often followed the slow process of starvation. But if all famines have mixed temporalities, this article closes by showing that these elements of time are not politically neutral. Comparing 1942–43 with Henan’s other major twentieth-century famines (1920–21, 1928–30 and 1958–61), I argue that the growing role of the state in causing famine led to faster temporalities
{"title":"The slow, the quick and the dead: Environment, politics and temporality in the Henan famine, 1942–43","authors":"Mark B. Baker","doi":"10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.07","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that famines have rapid as well as slow temporalities. Using newspapers, contemporary eyewitness accounts and subsequent memoirs, it uncovers the mixed temporalities of causation and experience in the 1942–43 famine in Henan Province, north-central China. It begins by exploring how the slow elements of famine played out in Henan: endemic poverty and malnutrition, years of war in the province, and the drawn-out experience of drought and starvation in 1942–43. More importantly, though, it then demonstrates that it was rapid processes that tipped much of Henan into what one observer called a ‘blitz famine’: hailstorms, price spikes and the violence of military requisitioning. The experience of famine, too, had fast temporalities, including snap decisions about flight, individual or collective acts of violence, and the sudden bodily collapse that often followed the slow process of starvation. But if all famines have mixed temporalities, this article closes by showing that these elements of time are not politically neutral. Comparing 1942–43 with Henan’s other major twentieth-century famines (1920–21, 1928–30 and 1958–61), I argue that the growing role of the state in causing famine led to faster temporalities","PeriodicalId":34502,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42346677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-10DOI: 10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.02
Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney
{"title":"Disasters fast and slow: The temporality of hazards in environmental history","authors":"Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney","doi":"10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/IREH.04.02.2018.02","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34502,"journal":{"name":"International Review of Environmental History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49024019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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