Mulcahy, Matthew. Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783. Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Matthew Mulcahy is a professor of early colonial and disaster history at Loyola University in Maryland who received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Minnesota in 1999. Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 was his first book and he is currently surveying natural disasters in the early modern Caribbean. It was published in 2006 by Johns Hopkins University Press and published in paperback in 2008. Mulcahy’s Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 is a comprehensive, multipronged approach to an analysis on the impact of tropical systems on the economic, religious, cultural, and political aspects of colonial society in the West Indies. As such, I believe that this book gives us an opportunity to understand colonial history and society in the Caribbean through the lens of natural disasters.
It makes a good addition to any scholar’s or educator’s bookshelf, but any general reader should read about the colonization of the Caribbean before attempting to read this challenging monograph. Mulcahy has given us a comprehensive analysis which approaches the history of hurricanes and their impact in the British Caribbean between 1624 and 1783 from multiple angles, such as religion, construction, economics, slavery, and social politics. He provides good evidence to support his argument that the mercantilist culture of the British Greater Caribbean influenced how the colonists in the Caribbean and the British government in England interpreted and mitigated the impacts of hurricanes and other natural disasters.
In his multipronged approach to the study of nature’s impact on the history and culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British colonies in the West Indies, Mulcahy uses accounts from colonists who survived the storms and earthquakes as well as letters written to London requesting humanitarian aid. The accounts reveal the extent of the damage done to homes, businesses, shipping, and society by hurricanes in the British Caribbean. “In the harbor at Kingston, one observer wrote, ‘nothing was to be seen but death and destruction, numbers lying on the shore drowned, and others floating on the sides and pieces of wrecks.’” (2). Thus, for me, the book combines the history and facts with the element of human suffering as shown by the accounts.
Records of correspondence between the colonies and the officials in London come mainly from primary sources such as the CD-ROM edition of the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: America and the West Indies. Others include the online edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette and microfilm copies of the Barbados Mercury, as well as English newspapers such as the St. James Chronicle, and periodicals such as the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Annual Register, both of which contained detailed accounts of hurricanes and other natural disasters. Mulcahy is attempting to help scholars understand the role that hurricanes and the physical environment in general have played in the history of the British colonization of the West Indies and his sources are diverse, ranging from memoirs written by colonists, to correspondence with London officials, to newspapers and other print media publications from that era, making them adequate since they will provide information on different aspects of the disasters from multiple perspectives. He uses them to present a convincing argument by displaying tables throughout the book showing damages and losses, quotations from colonists’ letters and memoirs which show the reader the writer’s thoughts on a storm they lived through and how it has affected their life. He mainly uses secondary sources such as newspaper articles but also a few primary sources, such as the letters and memoirs. The use of secondary sources is good for a book if it is balanced by the presence of primary sources. Mulcahy is quite thorough in his use of primary sources as quotations from the accounts of colonists permeate all chapters of the main text.
The contents of the book are arranged topically, and this is a good strategy for explaining the different ways in which hurricanes affected the Greater British Caribbean, though on first glance, the text will bounce back-and-forth chronologically as events are described. The contents are not necessarily arranged chronologically, though each chapter’s focus on an aspect of the colonists’ reactions to hurricanes is associated with a specific period in the larger period covered by the book. For example, the chapter “A Conspiracy of the Winds,” which describes the etymology of the word “hurricane” and tells of how the colonists believed hurricanes to be supernatural manifestations of divine wrath and providence, takes place primarily from the perspective of events set in the 17th century, a time in which religion was still the main source of explanations for natural phenomena. The contents feature tables detailing losses due to hurricanes and a few maps of the islands colonized by the British. As the main text progresses to 1783, more scientific explanations for the formation of hurricanes emerge that involve the interactions between air currents. Though there are not many photographs or diagrams, there are scores of endnotes, and the endnotes are one of the book’s strengths because they show the extent of his research.
The book is readable; however, the events jump around chronologically, making it tricky to follow. Therefore, it is my view that that this book lets us understand the impact of natural disasters and the book shows facts are not separate from human suffering as shown by the accounts. Mulcahy’s book is well-written for a scholarly readership but for the general reader, the flow can feel disjointed but since scholars are the book’s intended audience, the style is appropriate.
I Pledge that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this assignment and that I received help from Anne-Marie Guelcher at the writing center.
Bibliography:
https://www.loyola.edu/academics/history/faculty/mulcahy
https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/hurricanes-and-society-british-greater-caribbean-1624–1783
