| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624–1783. By Matthew Mulcahy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 257 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. Cloth $45.00.

Climate change—no longer the exclusive domain of scientists investigating global warming and its documented effects on melting glaciers, rising sea levels, protracted droughts in formerly well-watered regions of the world, and extended seasonal rainfall in areas unaccustomed to deluge—has become a category of inquiry for environmental historians. Ted Steinberg's Acts of God (Oxford, 2000) and James Fleming's Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (Oxford, 1998) are among the most provocative works published on this topic in recent years. In addition, the impact of natural disasters and human responses to these events has resulted in widespread public discourse in the wake of hurricanes Andrew (1992), Ivan (2004), and Katrina (2005). Mulcahy's vivid descriptions of Caribbean hurricanes, their impact on colonial economic and social life, and their effects on the larger Atlantic world is a most valuable contribution to the recent number of books on disasters in history.

While the book moves chronologically, its focus is placed on a few central questions seldom addressed by historians studying major storms: How did colonists interpret these new and terrifying events? What effects did hurricanes have on the plantation economies and slave societies of the region? How did colonists recover from various calamities and what adjustments did they make in response to the storms? Mulcahy suggests that calamities tested plantation societies' commitment to permanent settlement, ideas about transforming a "wild-erness" into a productive econ-omy, and dependence on North American colonists and their supporters across the Atlantic.

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