Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World (38 page)

26
. J. F. Heidelberg, “DNA Sequence of Both Chromosomes of the Cholera Pathogen Vibrio Cholerae,”
Nature
406.6795 (August 3, 2000): 477–83.

27
. Pascual et al., “Cholera and Climate,” 237.

28
. Mark Harrison,
Disease and the Modern World: 1500 to the Present Day
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 105.

29
. Hamlin,
Cholera: The Biography
, 97.

30
. Ibid., 4.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE SEVEN SORROWS OF YUNNAN

1
. Clarke Abel,
Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China … in the Years 1816 and 1817
(London, 1818), 11–12.

2
. Peiyuan Zhang, “Extraction of Climate Information from Chinese Historical Writings,”
Late Imperial China
14.2 (December 1993): 96–106.

3
. The inspiration for this chapter lies with the original research of Yang Yuda of the University of Fudan in Shanghai, in particular his lengthy article coauthored with Man Zhmin and Zheng Jinyun, “The Great Yunnan Famine of the Jiaqing Period (1815–17) and the Eruption of the Volcano Mount Tambora,”
Fudan Journal: Social Sciences
(2005): 79–85 (unpublished translation by Nicholas Brown). Two other recent Chinese sources provided supplementary information: Shuji Cao, “The Tambora Eruption and Chinese Social History,”
Academics in China
5 (September 2009): 37–41 (unpublished translation by Fang Wan); and Bantian Chen, “The Serious Famine in Yunnan during the Jiaqing Period (1796–1820),”
Shi Jie Bo Lan
[
Global Vision
] 8 (2010): 76–79 (unpublished translation by Fang Wan).

4
. Bin Yang,
Between Wind and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

5
. Bao Chenglan, ed.,
Synoptic Meteorology in China
(Beijing: China Ocean Press, 1987); Jiacheng Zhang and Zhiguang Lin,
Climate of China
, trans. Ding Tan (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1992).

6
. C. Patterson Giersch,
The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); see also Mark Elvin and Liu Ts’uijung,
Sediments of Time: Environment and Society in Chinese History
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

7
. Giersch,
The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier
, 145.

8
.
Weather and Rice
(Laguna, Philippines: International Rice Research Institute, 1987).

9
. Luigi Mariani et al., “Space and Time Behavior of Climatic Hazard of Low Temperature for Single Rice Crop in the Mid Latitude,”
International Journal of Climatology
29 (2009): 1863;
Science of the Rice Plant
(Tokyo: Food and Agriculture Policy Research Center, 1993–96).

10
. Thomas H. C. Lee,
Education in Traditional China
(Boston: Brill, 2000).

11
. A brief official biography of Li Yuyang is found in Ma Yao,
Yunnan Jian Shi
[A Short History of Yunnan] (Kunming: Yunnan ren min chu ban she, 1983), 404–6. A far richer portrait is available in his highly personal poetry.

12
. Translation of select poems of Li Yuyang represents a collaborative effort over several years. My co-translator, Professor Rong Guangqi of Wuhan University, undertook the first literal translation of the texts. Shuyong Jiang, of the East Asian Library at the University of Illinois, identified the relevant poems while Fang Wan, Lingling Yao, Jing Chen, and Nicholas Brown assisted and/or translated contextual documents. The poems are translated from the original Chinese texts collected and reprinted as “Ji yuan shi chao,” in
Cong Shu Ji Cheng
, vol. 178 (Xinwenfeng chu ban gong si, 1989), 1–103.

13
. Robert Marks,
Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

14
. Quoted in Mark Elvin, “Who Was Responsible for the Weather? Moral Meteorology in Late Imperial China,”
Osiris
13 (1998): 229.

15
. Pierre-Etienne Will,
Bureaucracy and Famine in Eighteenth-Century China
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).

16
. James Lee, “The Southwest: Yunnan and Guizhou,” in
Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China
, ed. Pierre-Etienne Will and R. Bin Wong (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 465; James Lee, “Food Supply and Population Growth in Southwest China, 1250–1850,”
Journal of Asian Studies
41.4 (August 1982): 741.

17
. Will,
Bureaucracy and Famine
, 276.

18
. D. Zhang et al., “Volcanic and ENSO Effects in China Simulations and Reconstructions: Tambora Eruption, 1815,”
Climate of the Past: Discussions
7 (2011): 2071–72.

19
. A tree-ring study on the Tibetan plateau found “an abnormal cold period from 1816 to 1822”: Eryuan Liang et al., “Tree-Ring Based Summer Temperature Reconstruction for the Source Region of the Yangtze River on the Tibetan Plateau,”
Global and Planetary Change
61 (2008): 318. A dendrochronological study in Nepal produced similar results: Edward R. Cook et al., “Dendroclimatic Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies from the Himalayas of Nepal,”
International Journal of Climatology
23 (2003): 707–32.

20
. Ma Yao,
Yunnan Jian Shi
, 404.

21
. Angus Maddison,
Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run
(Paris: Development Centre of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1998).

22
. Giersch,
The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier
, 111.

23
. Quoted in Jonathan Marshall, “Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism in Nationalist China, 1927–45,”
Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
8.3 (1976): 19.

24
. Francis Nichols,
Through Hidden Shensi
(New York: Scribner’s, 1902), 56–57.

CHAPTER SIX
THE POLAR GARDEN

1
. Royal Society,
Minutes of Council
8 (November 20, 1817): 149–53.

2
. “The Top of the World: Is the North Pole Turning to Water?”
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
; “Historic Variation in Arctic Ice,” June 20, 2009,
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice
.

3
.
Hamlet
V.ii.379–84.

4
. John Barrow, “Lord Selkirk and the North-West Company,”
Quarterly Review
(October 1816): 153, 168.

5
. William Scoresby,
Arctic Whaling Journals, 1817–20
, ed. C. Ian Jackson (London: Hakluyt Society, 2008–9), 2:45–46.

6
. Quoted in Tom Stamp and Cordelia Stamp,
William Scoresby: Arctic Scientist
(Whitby: Caedmon Press, 1976), 65.

7
. Stommel and Stommel,
Volcano Weather
, 43.

8
. Stamp and Stamp,
William Scoresby: Arctic Scientist
, 66.

9
. Otto von Kotzebue,
A Voyage of Discovery into the South Seas and Beering’s
[
sic
]
Straits for the Purpose of Exploring a North-East Passage in the Years 1815–18
(London, 1821), 1:212–13.

10
. Quoted in Fergus Fleming,
Barrow’s Boys
(London: Granta, 1998), 35.

11
. John Barrow, “On the Polar Ice and Northern Passage into the Pacific,”
Quarterly Review
(October 1817): 199–200.

12
. Ibid., 206.

13
.
Queen Mab
, 8:58–69.

14
. Barrow, “On the Polar Ice,” 204.

15
. Bernard O’Reilly,
Greenland, the Adjacent Seas, and the North-West Passage to the Pacific Ocean, Illustrated in a Voyage to Davis’s Strait, during the Summer of 1817
(London, 1818), iii.

16
. Ibid., v–vi, 176.

17
. Ibid., 129–30.

18
. John Barrow, “O’Reilly’s Voyage to Davis’s Strait,”
Quarterly Review
(April 1818): 208–9.

19
. O’Reilly,
Greenland
, 207.

20
. Barrow, “O’Reilly’s Voyage,” 213.

21
. For the most thorough attempt to reconstruct O’Reilly’s career, see Adriana Craciun, “What Is an Explorer?”
Eighteenth-Century Studies
45.1 (Fall 2011): 29–51. See also J. P. O’Connor, “Bernard O’Reilly—Genius or Rogue?”
Irish Naturalists’ Journal
21.9 (1985): 379–84.

22
. William Scoresby,
Arctic Whaling Journals, 1814–16
, ed. C. Ian Jackson (London: Hakluyt Society, 2008–9), 231.

23
. Michael Chenoweth, “Ships’ Logbooks and ‘The Year without a Summer,’ ”
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
(1996): 2089.

24
. Kevin E. Trenberth and Aiguo Dai, “Effects of the Mount Pinatubo Volcanic Eruption on the Hydrological Cycle as an Analog of Geoengineering,”
Geophysical Research Letters
34 (2007): L15702; Eliseev and Mokhov, “Influence of Volcanic Activity on Climate Change in the Past Several Centuries.”

25
. On the impact of major volcanic eruptions on the AMOC, see Georgiy Stenchikov et al., “Volcanic Signals in Oceans,”
Journal of Geophysical Research
114 (2009): D16104; for the impact of an enhanced AMOC on Arctic sea ice, see Salil Mahajan et al., “Impact of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) on Arctic Surface Air
Temperature and Sea Ice Variability,”
Journal of Climate
24 (December 2011): 6573–81, and Christophe Kinnard et al., “Reconstructed Changes in Arctic Sea Ice over the Past 1,450 Years,”
Nature
479 (November 24, 2011): 10581. For a geoclimatological overview, see Kevin E. Trenberth and David P. Stepaniak, “The Flow of Energy through the Earth’s Climate System,”
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society
130 (October 2004): 2677–2701.

26
. A.J.W. Catchpole and Marci-Anne Faurer, “Summer Sea Ice Severity in Hudson Strait, 1751–1870,”
Climatic Change
5 (1983): 115–39; and “Ships’ Log-Books, Sea Ice and the Cold Summer of 1816 in Hudson Bay and Its Approaches,”
Arctic
38.2 (June 1985): 121–28.

27
. Eleanor Porden, “The Arctic Expeditions: A Poem” (London, 1818), ll. 186–87.

28
. More than a century and a half since his death, additions to the vast library on Franklin are made on a nearly annual basis. Recent titles include Martin Sandler,
Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen’s Ghostship
(New York: Sterling, 2006); Anthony Brandt,
The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
(New York: Knopf, 2010); and Andrew Lambert,
The Gates of Hell: Sir John Franklin’s Tragic Quest for the Northwest Passage
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

29
. Dorothy Harley Eber,
Encounters on the Passage: Inuit Meet the Explorers
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 21.

30
. On dating Shelley’s addition of a polar frame narrative to the
Frankenstein
text, see Charles E. Robinson,
The Frankenstein Notebooks
(New York: Garland, 1996), xxv–vi.

31
. Barrow, “Lord Selkirk,” 164; for analyses of
Frankenstein
in the context of renewed polar exploration in the late 1810s, and the accompanying explosion in publishing on polar themes, see Jessica Richard, “ ‘A Paradise of My Own Creation’:
Frankenstein
and the Improbable Romance of Polar Exploration,”
Nineteenth-Century Contexts
25.4 (2003): 295–314; Jen Hill,
White Horizon: The Arctic in the Nineteenth-Century British Imagination
(Albany: SUNY Press, 2008); and Adriana Craciun, “Writing the Disaster: Franklin and
Frankenstein
,”
Nineteenth-Century Literature
65.4 (2011): 433–80.

32
. Shelley,
Frankenstein
, 13, 208; Barrow, “Lord Selkirk,” 166.

33
. Shelley,
Frankenstein
, 207, 206.

34
.
Don Juan
(Canto 1:132).

CHAPTER SEVEN
ICE TSUNAMI IN THE ALPS

1
.
Morning Chronicle, London, October 4,
1817.

2
. C. R. Harington, ed.,
The Year without a Summer? World Climate in 1816
(Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1992), 416.

3
.
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, ed. Jones, 1:497.

4
. Douglas I. Benn and David J. A. Evans,
Glaciers and Glaciation
(London: Arnold, 1998), 4; Roy M. Koerner, “Mass Balance of Glaciers in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Nunavut, Canada,”
Annals of Glaciology
42 (2005): 417–23.

5
.
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, ed. Jones, 1:497–98.

6
. Louis Simond,
Switzerland; or, a Journal of a Tour and Residence in that Country, in the Years 1817, 1818, and 1819
(London, 1821), 1:259.

7
. Christian Pfister, “Little Ice Age–Type Impacts and the Mitigation of Social Vulnerability to Climate in the Swiss Canton of Bern Prior to 1800,” in
Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth
, ed. Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich, and Will Steffen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 196.

8
. Jean Grove,
The Little Ice Age
(London: Methuen, 1988), 122.

9
.
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, ed. Jones, 1:499.

10
. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,
Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000
, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 207–10.

11
.
Journals of Mary Shelley
, ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 117.