Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World (40 page)

27
. Buffon, “Des époques,” 248.

28
. Constantin-François Volney,
View of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America
(London, 1804), 215–16.

29
. Samuel Williams,
Natural and Civil History of Vermont
, 2nd ed. (Burlington, 1809), 70–71.

30
. Hoyt, “The Cold Summer of 1816,” 126.

31
. Quoted in Post,
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World
, 106.

32
. Thomas Jefferson,
Writings
, ed. Andrew Lipscomb (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903–4), 15:141.

33
. See P. D. Jones et al., “Tree-Ring Evidence of the Widespread Effects of Explosive Volcanic Eruptions,”
Geophysical Research Letters
22.11 (June 1995): 1333–36; and K. R. Briffa et al., “Tree-Ring Reconstructions of Summer Temperature Patterns across Western North America since 1600,”
Journal of Climate
5 (1992): 735–54.

34
. Leland D. Baldwin,
The River Boat on Western Waters
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1941), 181;
Niles’ Weekly Register
, July 11, 1818.

35
. I owe a great debt to the Illinois historian David M. Brady for wide-ranging conversations and research assistance exploring the teleconnections between the Tamboran volcanic weather of 1816–18 in the United States and the subsequent financial crisis. His essay “The Panic of 1819: Its Cause and Effects in Illinois History,” (Springfield: Sangamon County Historical Society, 2006), and his unpublished text, “Geological and Economic Influences on Society: The Tambora Eruption of 1815 and the Panic of 1819, a Case Study in Illinois History,” were important sources for this chapter. John Post, in the final pages of
The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World
, was the first to speculate on the relationship between the post-Tambora agricultural recovery of 1818 in Europe and the Panic of 1819 in the United States.

36
. Quoted in Hoyt, “The Cold Summer of 1816,” 126.

37
. Clarence Albert Day,
A History of Maine Agriculture, 1604–1860
(Orono: Maine University Press, 1954), 111–13.

38
. Morris Birkbeck,
Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois, with Proposals for the Establishment of a Colony of English
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 30; quoted in Malcolm J. Rohrbough,
The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1857
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 108; Jefferson,
Writings
, ed. Ford, 10:115.

39
. Day,
A History of Maine Agriculture
, 111.

40
. Henry Fearon,
Sketches of America: A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles through the Eastern and Western States of America
(London, 1818), vii.

41
. Adam Seybert,
Statistical Annals of the United States, 1789–1818
(Philadelphia, 1818), 28–29.

42
. H.J.M. Johnston,
British Emigration Policy, 1815–1830: “Shovelling Out Paupers”
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 29.

43
. Quoted in R. Carlyle Buley,
The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815–40
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1950), 12, 6; Rohrbough,
The Land Office Business
, 109.

44
. Henry Schoolcraft,
Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers, with Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, AD 1812 to AD 1842
(Philadelphia, 1851), 19.

45
. Scott Derks and Tony Smith, eds.,
The Value of a Dollar, 1600–1865
(Milberton, NY: Grey House Publishers, 2005), 232; quoted in Daniel S. Dupre, “The Panic of 1819 and the Political Economy of Sectionalism,” in
The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions
, ed. Cathy Matson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 277.

46
. Dumas Malone,
Jefferson and His Time
, 6 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948–81), 6:310.

47
. Clyde Haulman,
Virginia and the Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression and the Commonwealth
(London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), 11; William Darby,
The Emigrant’s Guide to the Western and Southwestern States and Territories
(New York, 1818), 46.

48
. Derks and Smith,
Value of a Dollar
, 245, 262.

49
. Malone,
Jefferson and His Time
, 6:309.

50
. Jefferson,
Writings
, ed. Ford, 10:134.

51
. Jefferson,
Writings
, ed. Lipscomb, 15:279.

52
. Jefferson,
Writings
, ed. Ford, 10:157.

53
. Daniel S. Dupre,
Transforming the Cotton Frontier: Madison County, Alabama, 1800–40
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 58.

54
. Haulman,
Virginia and the Panic of 1819
, 32; Hattie M. Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems in Missouri, 1815–28,”
Missouri Historical Review
34.1 (1939): 38–70; Dorothy D. Dorsey, “The Panic of 1819 in Missouri,”
Missouri Historical Review
29.2 (1935): 79–91.

55
. Quoted in Samuel Rezneck, “The Depression of 1819–22: A Social History,”
American Historical Review
39.1 (1933): 30; Dupre,
Transforming the Cotton Frontier
, 55; Haulman,
Virginia and the Panic of 1819
, 25.

56
. James Flint,
Letters from America, Containing Observations on the Climate and Agriculture of the Western States, etc.
(Edinburgh, 1822), 200; quoted in Andrew R. L. Cayton, “The Fragmentation of ‘A Great Family’: The Panic of 1819 and the Rise of the Middling Interest in Boston, 1818–22,”
Journal of the Early Republic
2 (Summer 1982): 146.

57
. Haulman,
Virginia and the Panic of 1819
, 50; Leon Schur, “The Second Bank of the United States and the Inflation after the War of 1812,”
Journal of Political Economy
68.2 (April 1960): 132.

58
. Dupre, “The Panic of 1819,” 277.

59
. See Robert V. Remini,
Andrew Jackson and the Bank War: A Study in the Growth of Presidential Power
(New York: Norton, 1967).

60
. David Hackett Fischer,
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 155.

61
. Edgar E. Hume, “The Foundation of American Meteorology by the United States Army Medical Department,”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
8 (1940): 205–8.

62
. Edward J. Hopkins and Joseph M. Moran, “Monitoring the Climate of the Old Northwest, 1820–95,” in
Historical Climate Variability and Impacts
, 174, 180, 186.

63
. The Dustbowl of the 1930s figures as an exception that proves the rule, hence its notoriety.

EPILOGUE:
ET IN EXTREMIS EGO

1
. Hans-Erhard Lessing, “What Led to the Invention of the Early Bicycle?”
Cycle History
11 (2001): 28–36.

2
. Paul Crutzen, “Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?”
Climatic Change
77 (2006): 211–19: for other significant contributions to the debate, see Alan Robock et al., “The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Stratospheric Engineering,”
Geophysical Research Letters
(2009): L19703; and J. C. Moore et al., “Efficacy of Geoengineering to Limit 21st Century Sea-Level Rise,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
107.36 (September 2010): 15699–703. For a history of twentieth-century geo-engineering research and politics, see James R. Fleming,
Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

3
. See J.-P. Vernier et al., “Major Influence of Tropical Volcanic Eruptions on the Stratospheric Aerosol Layer during the Last Decade,”
Geophysical Research Letters
38 (June 2011): L12807; and R. R Neely et al., “Recent Anthropogenic Increases in SO
₂
from Asia Have Minimal Impact on Stratospheric Aerosol,”
Geophysical Research Letters
(published online, March 2013).

4
. Biologist Eugene Stoermer first coined the term “Anthropocene” in the 1980s. See the
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Newsletter
41 (2000) for its first published definition.

5
. The scientific documentation of current Arctic sea-ice decline is vast and demoralizing. One recent study, based on analysis of marine sediments west of the island of Svalbard (Arctic waters well-known to William Scoresby), concluded the current high polar ocean temperatures to be unique in at least the last two thousand years and thus “linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming”: Robert F. Spielhagen et al., “Enhanced Modern Heat Transfer to the Arctic by Warm Atlantic Water,”
Science
331 (January 2011): 450–53. Current warming of the Arctic thus relates to the same proximate physical causes as those described in
chapter 6
, only greatly enhanced.

6
. Shelley,
Frankenstein
, 96.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

I have relied on two standard references texts on volcanology and climate, respectively: Peter Francis and Clive Oppenheimer,
Volcanoes
, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Dennis L. Hartmann, 
Global Physical Climatology
(San Diego: Academic Press, 1994). Where scientific information is not otherwise cited, I have drawn it from these sources.

MOUNT TAMBORA, VOLCANISM, AND CLIMATE (WORKS CONSULTED BUT NOT CITED)

Anchukaitis, K. J., et al. “Influence of Volcanic Eruptions on the Climate of the Asian Monsoon Region.”
Geophysical Research Letters
37 (2010): L22703.

Crowley, Thomas J. “Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years.”
Science
289 (July 2000): 270–77.

De Angelis, M., et al. “Volcanic Eruptions Recorded in the Illimani Ice Core (Bolivia): 1918–1998 and Tambora Periods.”
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
3 (2003): 1725–41.

De Boer, Jelle Zelinga, and Donald T. Sanders.
Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Gao, Chaochao, et al. “Atmospheric Volcanic Loading Derived from Bipolar Ice Cores: Accounting for the Spatial Distribution of Volcanic Deposition.”
Journal of Geophysical Research
112 (2007): D09109.

Haigh, Joanna D., et al. “The Response of Tropospheric Circulation to Perturbations in Lower-Stratospheric Temperature.”
Journal of Climate
18 (2005): 3672–85.

Hameed, Sultan, et al. “Climate in China after the Tambora Eruption.”
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) Communications
(1989): 6–8.

Klingaman, William K., and Nicholas P. Klingaman.
The Year without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History
. New York: St. Martin’s, 2013.

Lamb, Hubert H.
Climate: Present, Past, and Future
. 2 vols. London: Metheun, 1972–77.

———.
Weather, Climate, and Human Affairs
. London: Routledge, 1988.

Jones, P. D., et al., eds.
History and Climate: Memories of the Future?
New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001.

McCormick, M. Patrick, et al. “Atmospheric Effects of the Mt. Pinatubo Eruption.”
Nature
373 (February 2, 1995): 399–404.

Pisek, Jan, and Rudolf Brazdil. “Responses of Large Volcanic Eruptions in the Instrumental and Documentary Climatic Data over Central Europe.”
International Journal of Climatology
26 (2006): 439–59.

Rampino, Michael R. “Distant Effects of the Tambora Eruption of April, 1815.”
Eos
70.51 (December 1989): 1559–60.

———. “Historic Eruptions of Tambora (1815), Krakatau (1883), and Agung (1963), Their Stratospheric Aerosols, and Climatic Impact.”
Quaternary Research
18 (1982): 127–43.

Robertson, A., et al. “Hypothesized Climate Forcing Time Series for the Last 500 Years.”
Journal of Geophysical Research
106 (July 2001): 14,783–803.

Rotbert, Robert I., and Theodore K. Rabb, eds.
Climate and History
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Self, S. “The Effects and Consequences of Very Large Explosive Volcanic Eruptions.”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
364 (2006): 2073–97.

Shindell, Drew T., and Gavin Schmidt. “Volcanic and Solar Forcing of Climate Change during the Preindustrial Era.”
Journal of Climate
16 (2003): 4094–4107.

Sigurdsson, Haraldur. “Evidence of Volcanic Loading of the Atmosphere and Climate Response.”
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
89 (1990): 277–89.

Stommel, Henry, and Elizabeth Stommel.
Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, the Year without a Summer
. Newport, RI: Seven Seas Press, 1983.

Trigo, Ricardo M., et al. “Iberia in 1816, the Year without a Summer.”
International Journal of Climatology
29 (2009): 99–115.

Vupputuri, R.K.R. “The Tambora Eruption in 1815 Provides a Test on Possible Global Climatic and Chemical Perturbations in the Past.”
Natural Hazards
5 (1992): 1–16.

Weeckstee, O., and G. Weeckstee. “L’Eruption du Volcan Tambora en 1815: A-t-Elle Eu des Repercussions Climatiques en France?”
Lave
83 (February 2000): 19–25.

Wigley, T.M.L., M. J. Ingram, and G. Farmer, eds.
Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle, and Donald Theodore Sanders.
Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.