Dreadful visitations : confronting natural catastrophe in the age of enlightenment

225 Pages·1999·10.741 MB·English

by  Alessa Johns (ed.)

PRAISE FOR DREADFUL VISITATIONS
"The authors of Dreadful Visitatiom skillfully analyze disasters, their pre
conditions, their impacts, and how people interpret them to reveal funda
mental social, ideological, and material features of society. From the analy
sis of literary texts to architectural history to reconstruction narratives, the
book is filled with information and insights for advancing theory.
Dreadful Visitatiom should prove extremely valuable for both social scien
tists and historians concerned with the impact disasters have on society."
-Anthony Oliver-Smith, author of The Martyred City: Death
and Rebirth in the Andes and editor of Natural Disasters
and Cultural Respomes, University of Florida
''As this volume makes clear, natural disasters are rarely wholly 'natural,'
but are the products of human agency as well. The essays in this marvelous
collection emphasize the cultural response of Europeans-at home and
abroad-to disaster in an age when events formerly seen as the handiwork
of an angry God were being questioned. Anyone interested in topics from
social history to environmental studies will find much of value here."
-Stuart Schwartz, author of Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels:
Recomidering Brazilian Slavery, Yale University
Alessa Johns is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of
California, Davis.
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7Jreac(!uIVisi!a!ions
CONFRONTING NATURAL CATASTROPHE
IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
0chled by
!7llessa Yalms
i
~ ~~o~:~;n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1999 by
Routledge
Published 2013 by Routledge
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Copyright © 1999 by Routledge
All rights reserved, No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Dreadful visitations: confronting natural catastrophe in the age of enlighten
ment / edited by Alessa Johns.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Natutal disasters-History-18th century. I. Johns, Alessa.
GB5014.074 1999
363.34' 09' 033-dc21 98-45499
CIP
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-92175-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-92176-3 (pbk)
Interior designed by Cynthia Dunne
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction
Alessa Johm xi
Part I: European Responses to Catastrophe
1. Confrontations with the Plague in
Eighteenth-Century France
Daniel Gordon 3
2. Defoe and Disasters
G. A. Starr 31
3. Safety and Reconstruction of Noto after the Sicilian
Earthquake of 1693-The Eighteenth-Century Context
Stephen Tobriner 49
Part II: Colonial Perspectives and New World Calamities
4. Hunger in the Garden of Plenty: The Bengal Famine of 1770
David Arnold 81
5. Shaking the Unstable Empire: The Lima, Quito, and
Arequipa Earthquakes, 1746, 1783, and 1797
Charles E Walker 113
•• v
CONTENTS ••
6. "The Hungry Year": 1789 on the Northern Border of
Revolutionary America
Alan Taylor 145
Afterword
Carla Hesse 183
Contributors 191
Index 193
VI • •
List ofI llustrations
FIGURE 1. Plan of Avola (Y. Amico, Lexicon Topographicum Siculum, vol.
II, Palermo and Catania: P. Bentivenga, 1757-60)
FIGURE 2. Air View of Noto, 1972 (Author)
FIGURE 3. Modern Model of Gaiola Construction G.-A. Fran~, A
Recomtrufiio de Lisboa e a aquitectura pombalina, 2d ed., Biblioteca Breve,
vol. 12, Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura e Lingua, Portuguesa Ministerio da
Educa<rao e Ciencia, 1981)
FIGURE 4. The Casa Baraccata (G. Vivenzio, Istoria de' Tremuoti avvenuti
nella provincia di Calabria Ulteriore e nella cittll di Messina nell'anno 1783,
e di quanto nella Calabrie fo Jatto per to suo risorgimento fino al 1787.
Preceduta da una teo ria, ed istoria generale de' tremuoti, Naples: Stamperia
Regale, 1788)
FIGURE 5. Project for the City ofFiladelfia (E. Serrao, De'tremuoti e della
nuova Filadelfia in Calabria, Naples: Raimondi, 1785)
FIGURE 6. The Veduta of Noto Drawn by Paolo Labisi in the 1760s and
Redated 1783 (Formerly in the Biblioteca Comunale di Noto, Now Lost
[Author])
•• Vll
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Acknowledgments
This volume grew out of a conference I organized at the University of
California, Berkeley, held in February 1995 and entitled Disaster in the
Eighteenth Century: Cultural Respomes to Natural Catastrophe. I would like
to thank all those who made the meeting such a success and thereby
inspired this book: the conference participants; the members of the Bay
Area Eighteenth-Century Studies Group; and Eric Chandler, for whose
energetic and capable leadership I am especially grateful. My assistant
Sharon O'Toole Dubois assiduously researched material for my introduc
tory essay. I am also indebted to Brendan O'Malley, of Routledge, for his
fine editorial work and his unflagging interest in the project, and to
Daniel Gordon, George Starr, and Alan Taylor for their helpful sugges
tions and much appreciated support. My parents, Jorun and Donald
Johns, and my mother-in-law, Mary Lee Reynolds, helped me through a
period of challenges and changes: one of these, my son Gabriel, arrived
right in the middle of the project. He and my husband, Christopher
Reynolds, have sustained me with their humor, their patience, and their
loving companionship.
• • IX