Climate & Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution by Sherry Johnson (review)

Book Reviews technocratic walls of the state” (174). The bureaucracy is so inefficient and clientelistic, Hetherington argues, that without guerrilla auditors, it would not function. The author attributes new democrats’ multiple attempts to eliminate the IBR to campesinos’ political inclusion in the bureaucracy. One minor critique of this book is also a comment on one of its strengths. Several scholars have used the notion of “authoritarian culture” to explain Paraguayans’ supposed penchant for strongmen. This theory holds that Paraguay’s long history of authoritarians (beginning with Jesuit priests!) explains why many Paraguayans would prefer a dictator to impose control and progress. Hetherington challenges this ahistorical argument by showing that while some campesinos look back fondly on the Stroessner years, their politics shift and slide depending on immediate goals involving land and community. Placing his argument within this historiographic context would strengthen its significance. Guerrilla Auditors is theoretically sophisticated and brilliantly original in conceptualizing state-peasant relations. Given the book’s engagement with comparative theory and other regional cases, it will interest a broad disciplinary audience. It is also profoundly insightful for readers interested in Paraguay and the political legacies of an authoritarian regime that does not fit nicely into regional narratives of Cold War dictatorship. Hetherington’s arguments about campesinos’ readings of documents and government could be applied to other regional and social contexts, like, for example how the urban poor engage with documents and development projects. Shawn Austin Department of History University of New Mexico CLIMATE & CATASTROPHE IN CUBA AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION. By Sherry Johnson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011, p. 328, $39.95 Climate, a phrase that dominates contemporary life, rarely becomes the focal point of historical studies. Sherry Johnson aims to change that. In her study of the Caribbean basin from 1748–1804, Johnson argues that weather-related disasters propelled political and economic change. By using environmental crises as a conceptual framework, Johnson enriches and challenges traditional interpretations that explain revolutionary change as the product of changing intellectual or economic trends. Instead, she demonstrates that five decades of prolonged droughts and heavy hurricane activity, now identified as El Niño Southern Oscillation, triggered political and economic developments in the region ranging from the replacement of mercantile restrictions with free trade to the emergence of independence movements in the United States and Latin America. 145 The Latin Americanist, June 2013 Severe weather led to food scarcity, forcing many Caribbean residents to engage in illicit trade and contraband activity for survival. In response, local officials urged the Spanish government to abandon trade restrictions and monopolies, and to seek out provisions from neighboring French and British colonies. Surprisingly, Spanish officials listened to the concerns of locals and adjusted economic policy accordingly. When authorities in Spain loosened trade restrictions to alleviate stresses in post-disaster moments , they unknowingly overhauled the imperial commercial system. At first these episodes of free trade functioned as survival mechanisms, but later, Spanish colonists became accustomed to having a steady supply of high-quality goods. The effects extended beyond the Spanish colonies. Residents of the Thirteen Colonies also benefited from changing trade relations and found lucrative opportunities in Cuba. By removing these obstacles to free trade, North Americans added trade partners, thereby reducing Great Britain’s singular presence. Johnson navigates her readers through the tumultuous experiences of those living among ravaged environments, detailing the tragic stories of death, starvation, and illness to show the palpable fears that residents experienced when faced with constant threats of hurricanes and droughts. Alongside these powerful accounts, Johnson presents evidence based on historical climatology to confirm the presence of El Niño and La Niña in this period. Her innovative methodological approach pairs archival data from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, and Florida with studies in dendrochronology , paleoclimatology, and marine geology. To further verify her claims that fifty years of severe weather spurred political change, Johnson includes an appendix that chronologically lists the presence of hurricanes and droughts alongside major historical events such as the Seven Years War, the occupation of Havana, and the American Revolution. In every case, the Caribbean endured a series of natural disasters before each uprising or major political...