Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution (review)

Most of what passes for history with respect to natural disasters has tended to focus on individual events. This kind of study seems to do well in the publishing world, but at a price. Telling the story of a single natural disaster tends to reinforce the understanding of these phenomena as chance, freak occurrences removed from the social and environmental context of “normal” life. Hewitt made precisely this point a generation ago, but despite his call for a form of analysis that tries to place natural disasters in their proper sociopolitical context, most of the work in history that emerges still concentrates on discrete, individual disasters.¹

Given this background, it is refreshing to read a book about natural disasters in which the author has a keen sense for the big picture. Most historians are well aware of the revolutionary ferment that spilled across the Atlantic world during the half-century after 1750. What they are likely unaware of is the fact that this was a period of tremendous environmental dislocation. The source of this disruption was climate-based. Although the period under study in this book is normally considered part of the Little Ice Age, the years from 1750 to 1800 were, in fact, known for their droughts and hurricanes. The source of this climate stress was the severe weather caused by the El Niño and La Niña cycles. Recently, climatologists using proxy data—ice and sediment cores— have traced the history of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation cycle from the sixteenth through the early twenty-first century. Johnson has made excellent use of this science to supplement her historical study. In the process, she offers a fuller version of the contingency of past events.

Johnson points out, to take one example, that the British occupation of Havana beginning in 1762 was made possible by Spanish military unpreparedness. Although recent literature disagrees with this interpretation, Johnson establishes that the events in Havana unfolded after more than a decade of drought and hurricanes that compromised the food supply and led to disease. The strained social structure, in other words, figured in the city’s fall.

One of the most interesting sections of the book discusses the hurricane of Santa Teresa of 1768. Two years prior to the storm, the Caribbean basin experienced an especially active hurricane season. Drawing on post-disaster theory, Johnson shows how the unstable climate opened up opportunities for insurrection to take place. In Jamaica, slaves rebelled, killing a number of whites; social conditions were tumultuous, to say the least, during the years leading up to the 1768 disaster. The storm was ferocious, particularly in the western part of Cuba. But what is most intriguing about it was its aftermath. Those working for Charles III responded in a novel way to the disaster. To this point, there was no formal, deliberate structure in place to deal with such disasters. But the reaction to this hurricane represented a break with the past; the government carved out a role for itself in helping the populace recover from the calamity. For example, in those areas unaffected by the storm, governors were put on notice to contribute food for the recovery. Price gouging and speculation were censured, and prices controls were implemented. As Johnson writes, “The mitigation efforts after the hurricane of 1768 are almost a textbook model of the way to respond to a potential catastrophe” (89).

This book is exemplary of the best in interdisciplinary scholarship and an important contribution to the field of natural-disaster history.