Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina (The Lawrence Stone Lectures) - Softcover

Schwartz, Stuart B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691173605 ISBN 13: 9780691173603

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2016

Synopsis

A panoramic social history of hurricanes in the Caribbean

The diverse cultures of the Caribbean have been shaped as much by hurricanes as they have by diplomacy, commerce, or the legacy of colonial rule. In this panoramic work of social history, Stuart Schwartz examines how Caribbean societies have responded to the dangers of hurricanes, and how these destructive storms have influenced the region's history, from the rise of plantations, to slavery and its abolition, to migrations, racial conflict, and war.

Taking readers from the voyages of Columbus to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Schwartz looks at the ethical, political, and economic challenges that hurricanes posed to the Caribbean’s indigenous populations and the different European peoples who ventured to the New World to exploit its riches. He describes how the United States provided the model for responding to environmental threats when it emerged as a major power and began to exert its influence over the Caribbean in the nineteenth century, and how the region’s governments came to assume greater responsibilities for prevention and relief, efforts that by the end of the twentieth century were being questioned by free-market neoliberals. Schwartz sheds light on catastrophes like Katrina by framing them within a long and contentious history of human interaction with the natural world.

Spanning more than five centuries and drawing on extensive archival research in Europe and the Americas, Sea of Storms emphasizes the continuing role of race, social inequality, and economic ideology in the shaping of our responses to natural disaster.

About this title

About the Author

Stuart B. Schwartz is the George Burton Adams Professor of History and chair of the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale University. His many books include All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World.

From the Back Cover

"In this magisterial study, the histories of colonization, state formation, empire, slavery, and emancipation come into sharp relief when viewed through the eye of the hurricane. Sea of Storms is a tightly focused study that delivers perspectives as sweeping as the history of the Caribbean itself."--Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas at Austin

"A five-century history of wind, race, and revolution, Sea of Storms is a remarkable achievement. Schwartz manages to combine rigorous social analysis that calls to mind Fernand Braudel's longue durée with a sense of humanity equal to that of Eduardo Galeano. Timely and urgent, Sea of Storms is history at its best, revealing the past while helping us make sense of our present."--Greg Grandin, author of The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

"Stuart Schwartz has a vivid eye for evidence, a deft way with detail, and a knack for peopling vast historical landscapes with real lives. Sea of Storms is exemplary: a work of environmental history that's sensitive to culture, and of cultural history driven, but not determined, by the wind."--Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States

"This is a magnificent book. In a breathtaking narrative spanning five centuries of hurricanes and their consequences, Schwartz accomplishes what no one has done before: a transnational history of the Caribbean region through the optic of one of the most widely shared of its historical experiences."--Francisco A. Scarano, coeditor of The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691173605
• ISBN 13: 9780691173603
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 472