THE VOLCANO LOVER: Climate, Colonialism, and the Slave Trade in Raffles's History of Java (1817).

This essay revisits Montesquieu's racialized theories of climate in the context of the British Interregnum in Java, 1811-16 and the devastating eruption of Mt. Tambora. In his "History of Java" (1817), Stamford Raffles, would-be empire builder in Southeast Asia, positions himself as a revisionary re...

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Publicado en:Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Vol. 8; no. 2; pp. 33 - 56
Autor principal: WOOD, GILLEN D'ARCY
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: University of Pennsylvania Press Fall/Winter2008
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: THE VOLCANO LOVER: Climate, Colonialism, and the Slave Trade in Raffles's History of Java (1817).
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        au: WOOD, GILLEN D'ARCY
      su:
        Mount Tambora Eruption, 1815
        Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir, 1781-1826
        Colonial administration
        Colonies
        History of Java, Indonesia
        Java (Indonesia)
        Mount Tambora (Indonesia)
        Indonesia
        Asia
      sug:
        subj:
          Java (Indonesia)
          Mount Tambora (Indonesia)
          Indonesia
          Asia
          Mount Tambora Eruption, 1815
          Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir, 1781-1826
          Colonial administration
          Colonies
          History of Java, Indonesia
      ab: This essay revisits Montesquieu's racialized theories of climate in the context of the British Interregnum in Java, 1811-16 and the devastating eruption of Mt. Tambora. In his "History of Java" (1817), Stamford Raffles, would-be empire builder in Southeast Asia, positions himself as a revisionary reader of "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748): one who accepted Montesquieu's progressive understanding of the link between human societies and their material conditions but who, as a self-made bureaucrat of empire, upheld government, not climate, as the nurse of culture. Raffles writes as a European governor seeking to embody in his liberal reforms and georgic representations of Java the "mildness" of his own native climate, but his romantic depiction of Javanese agriculture and society is haunted by the island's volcanic geology and its cataclysmic manifestation in the Mt. Tambora eruption of 1815. The devastating human impact of the Tambora event entirely overawed his colonial administration, seriously thwarting his globalizing agenda for the Dutch East Indies, and consolidating instead the indigenous systems of slavery and maritime raiding. As an eco-historical case study, this essay offers an example of the regressive impacts of ecological disaster on the development of Western-driven global trading networks and their liberal political apparatus.
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