Inventing disaster the culture of calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the johnstown flood. Copies will be for sale. Thrilled to be with you to hear her talk. I hope you will join me in a very warm welcome for cindy kerner. [applause] prof. Kierner in 2012, Superstorm Sandy destroyed many places i cared about. It was not in the ocean on a road on it. Stories about this storm really riveting. Especially the Human Interest stories about its victims, survivors, efforts to provide post Disaster Relief in the way in which the whole says situation became politicized. It happened so soon before president ial election. I also found it interesting what all the stories told us about the larger story worlds of new york and new jersey. In the United States generally. In 2012. , i noticedortant that the news followed a pattern familiar to me from katrina and other disasters. The quantitative information about what happened. How many people died, how much property was destroyed in the value of that property. Second came the Human Interest stories, mostly uplifting stories about relief and resilience. Came the postlly disaster investigation. Process inhreestep this threestep process is how we do disaster. This is what the culture of calamity looks like in 21st century america. Struck, i was looking for new book project and my new sandy obsession seemed to point many fruitful direction. A few years earlier as jamie aboutted, i wrote a book a sex scandal that occurred in virginia in the 1790s. Book is what historians call a micro history, a project that uses a single, very specific event as a window into the past. Find an early american disaster and write a micro history about it . Enlist in ads, dramatic story in the service of teaching and learning and speaking about history. Seemed like a great idea. Encountered ail i major problem. I could not find an early american disaster suitable for a book length study. Aboutlooking for stories tearful sufferers, about inspired efforts of Disaster Relief and prevention. In the 17th or 18th century. There was little to be found. It wasnt that bad things didnt happen. They happened all the time. There were epidemics, hurricanes, there were all sorts of bad things happening, these events didnt have the same expansive cultural impacts. And even more important looking for sources, they didnt result in the voluminous cultural production. Newspaper articles and certain things. So the project evolved. Instead of writing about a specific event i spoke wrote about a specific question. Was how and when did the idea, did ideas about the and meanings of famines, fires, hurricanes and earthquakes, floods, epidemics and other catastrophic events become recognizably modern. When did that happen. Brief and then i will talk about stuff, my answer briefly is how we do disaster today, our culture of calamity if you will, is a product of the enlightenment with a e. As most of you know a cultural and intellectual movement of the late 17th and anh centuries and it was intellectual and Cultural Movement celebrated human reason , it celebrated the pursuit of knowledge, that encouraged people to believe in the possibility of Human Progress and that people can make things better by the use of their reason. There were three aspects of the enlightenment that i think are especially relevant in terms of this development of this modern culture of calamity. Number one, the spread of information. Information is a lot more available to people during the enlightenment and thereafter. Initially information travels by way of letters written by government officials, explorers, merchants, people on the move. But later it becomes even widely accessible in the growing world. It included newspapers, magazines, sermons, tree disease, travel logs tree to treatises, travel logs. Thats the first income information. , this new belief in human agency in progress i mentioned. It inspired efforts to understand hurricanes, earthquakes and other things of that sort. Rather than just accepting not only to understand them, but to find ways to limit their bad effect. In other words, science. The enlightenment is about using reason to understand things. And sometimes to make things better. This is kind of what science is ultimately about. , a newnd finally appreciation for emotion. And for sympathy for the suffering of others. To experience fellow which areuffering seen at the time as a sign of virtue. Pain, could feel your then in fact that meant you were a good person. This is a quality people the time called sensibility. That is mostly associated with the scottish enlightenment. Explainingactor in the huge popularity especially sentimental knowledge during this period. ,he book begins in jamestown the deathtrap that was the english colony in virginia. We are roughly five out of every six settlers died between the in 1624 of the colony when the king revoked the Virginia Company charter and made virginia royal economy royal colony. Faminets died mostly a wordssease and in other things today we would likely characterize as disasters. Surrounding this was nothing like the response to the famine in ethiopia in the 1980s. Hardly everyone knew about that in jamestown because there were no newspapers or tv or radio in the colonies londonbased corporate sponsors back in london did everything they could to keep the situation quiet. ,hey didnt want people to know people would stop investing, there is no information really about the troubles of jamestown. The only Disaster Relief for jamestown was to send more people and hope they didnt die, of course they did. Five out of six. So jamestown is kind of my baseline, its a time and a , but where things happened the response to those things that happened was nonexistent and i would just call it premodern, its not all the way we respond to disasters today. Jamestown, ifrom was searching every kind of source for the century or so after jamestown led me to shipwreck stories. Which became an important literary genre as europeans colonization in the chapterdern, the second is actually about shipwrecks because in a very basic way, shipwreck stories brought together three elements of enlightenment culture i mentioned earlier, information, science. Information about shipwrecks was becausevailable in part of the appeal of the adventure also because of readers practical interest in the monetary and economic value of ships and their values. One could argue the first newspapers are really all about publishing where ships are going and what they are carrying and when they sink come what property was being lost as a property what property was being lost. Second, among many early shipwreck stories were kind of simple unemotional tallies of human and property losses, more sentimental accounts became common in newspapers but also in literature and graphic art and then finally can get rid of the roller coaster. Painting by the french shipwreck was painted in 1772. It is huge and colorful and dramatic. If you look at it, the painting is telling a story of is not just the wreck of the ship but the situation of the people suffering as a result of it so you see people trying to get to shore, people hanging on the people have top, make it on the beach trying to recover, a woman raising her , the to ask for gods help significant colorful and illustration is the color page for a poem. 1769 i wasitten in poet. H and a sailor and a the actual title was the shipwreck, the sentiment of a descriptive problem. You dont have to believe me. Thats kind of what the point is. No one has ever heard of this poem today it really is quite a slog to read it. It went through many a dish itions on bothed sides of the landtag. In england and in north america. We are getting sentimental stories about shipwrecks. In the same way we will later get sentimental stories about katrina and sandy. Third and finally, the science bit. More cool pictures. Shipwrecks and the human and financial losses they cause to lead to important efforts by scientists and inventors to prevent maritime disasters. Or at least to limit the lossoflife that o occurred as a result of them. So they experiment with improvements in maritime architecture and they also invent a variety of flotation devices. Here are two notable examples. The example on your right, my left is the first lifejacket made of cork. Which is patented by a british physician inventor in the 1760s. My personal favorite, this is one of my favorites of the illustrations. It is a hydropsis. It is kind of like it is made of wood and it is hollow and it is a gay 3d doughnut. You can see from the picture there are hinges, so it opens and you can put it around your waist if you are shipwreck. Shipwrecked. You can lock it so its secure. You can see there are secret compartments built into it. You can put not only important papers that you want to save promo water but food and stuff , so if you are shipwreck for a shipwrecked long time you have stuff to eat and drink. If you have a small child with you, you can set the small child. This is one of my favorite things. I dont think it ever caught on. But the lifejacket stated. But the lifejackets did. These innovations are important early examples of people using science not simply accepting bad things that happen as acts of god that they cannot do anything about. But rather using ingenuity and to solvence potentially fatal problems. In terms of a specific disaster with a huge cultural impact, the watershed moment was the great lisbon earthquake of 1755. Which killed tens of thousands of people and utterly destroyed the portuguese capital. Lisbonholars consider the first modern disaster and they use the phrase for a of reasons. First of all news and information on the disaster was spread very quickly by letters in newspapers spread throughout europe and south america as well. The portuguese had colonies. They considered it cultural commentary from basically in 1755 who was anyone had something to say about the lisbon earthquake and the people who wrote about it were as diverse as john wesley, the english owner of the web Methodist Church to people like voltaire, voltaire if youve heard him at all is probably known to you. Which is kind of a satirical story set in the aftermath of the lisbon earthquake. Poem upon thethis lisbon disaster which is not satirical at all. Its very sad and very affecting. And very graphic in terms of describing what you would have seen in the aftermath of lisbon. Close your eyes and imagine, women and children heaped on mountain high, limbs crushed. Mangled, torn, and panting for their breath. Sinkingeneath their rich expire and and there wretched lives and torment. Dyer. This is pretty hot stuff. Some people did indeed view the earthquake as a sign of divine vengeance. But the lisbon disaster also led to sustained Scientific Investigation of earthquakes and their physical causes. Observations about lisbon in the aftermath of the earthquake really shaped a very ambitious government funded building of the portuguese capital. Science is really important in terms of understanding what happened and trying to prevent what had happened from happening again. At the same time, poetry and ries about lisbon, how inspired and unprecedented number of visual images, not just poetry. Some of which was available really quickly. I got from theh royal picture collection at windsor castle. Very cool place to visit by the way. This is on the streets of london within a month. Which is really fast for the 18th century. This before and after set up was something that was very popular. The before part which is very detailed and would have taken a lot of time to do was done significantly before the earthquake. The after part as kind of a which is just kind of a mess, you can make that really quickly. Its done in the immediate aftermath. They tacked on an eyewitness description. The idea was when we are talking about lisbon we are talking , about not just poetry. Not just newspaper accounts, not just letters and everything but number ofted pictures. The lisbon earthquake gave rise to the International Relief first Disaster Relief effort. Its kind of a big deal in that regard. I am interested in the british impacton mostly for its on the englishspeaking world. I am interested in the British Empire. Im interested in what eventually becomes the United States. I would argue that the earthquake had a profound impact throughout the englishspeaking world. And not only because england and portugal were longtime military allies and because there was in fact a community of english merchants living and working in lisbon. For my purpose, what was most significant about the earthquake was its effect on british philanthropy and influence. At the time, in the 1750s, philanthropy was growing in or mislead in great britain. Especially with newly wealthy merchants looking for ways to use good works to enhance their stature. What was different about the response to lisbon was the unprecedented contribution of government to post Disaster Relief. Specifically king george the hisnd, as kings go was in 80s, he only spoke german. Publicly presumably through a translator donated 100,000 pounds of money and provisions to help the portuguese and really unprecedented and on both sides of the atlantic, his subjects praised him for his generosity. Withnt very nicely britains emerging sense of themselves as a uniquely enlightened people. People writing poems saying what a great guy george is. We are a great people. Here is an example of some of that bad poetry i alluded to praising his bounties with his tender heart, bequeathing stuff to a foreign land. They are really enthusiastic about the king and the fact having such a benevolent monarch reflects well on the british britain andin great in north america. Americacolonists in actually praise their benevolent monarch, they also came to expect relief from the mother country when disaster struck and this is something they had previously neither expected nor received. Between the lisbon earthquake in 1755 and american independence in 1776, columns look to london for relief after hurricanes, floods and fires and they typically did get some. It was more likely to come from these philanthropic committees of merchants and clergy than it was to come from the king or parliament. The point of trying to make is Disaster Relief sort becomes a thing in the aftermath of lisbon and colonists saw themselves as part of a larger British Imperial movement. And more often and not people in britain had information about disasters that happened in the american colonies and they also made some sort of donation that signaled their sympathy for people who were suffering in america. I could give you a lot of inmples of this happening that relatively brief window for american independence and there were more in the book but a monistic with four for now. So chronologically first up in march of 1760 is a big fire in boston for there were fires in boston all the time. This is when they call the great fire. There were no deaths, surprisingly there fires all the time but people rarely die because most of the buildings are low. About 400 buildings were destroyed, totaling at least 50,000 pounds sterling in property loss. More than 200 families were left homeless. What happens . The kings representative in massachusetts the royal , governor, decides he needs to step in. That he needs to help. He creates this successful fundraising effort by contacting all of the royal governors from nova scotia to virginia and asking them to help. And they do. A very successful governmentsponsored governor sponsored intervention that helps people in boston. Of 1765rs later in may there is another fire in montreal this time. In 1765 is a relatively recent addition to the British Empire. Having been conquered by great 1763, victory over the french. The overwhelming majority of people montreal were french break they said they spent their lives hating the british, they are not real keen about being theirs. That is not cool. The fire in montreal was the perfect opportunity for the British Empire to do pr about how great it was to be in the British Empire. We will take care of you. The fire in montreal killed 10 people. Property losses were comparable to boston. This time the royal governor of quebec decided he wanted to do a fundraising effort that was similar. His was much less successful largely because of the stamp act. Ofple in the 13 were kind pistol. Raisedaising committee about 9000 pounds for montreal. And king george the third, who had succeeded his grandfather at this time also pitched in 500 pounds in humanitarian relief and also sent a statue of his very vanilla very benevolent self. Statue or what was left of the statue interestingly eventually pulled down by english montrealers. It was replaced with this inscription that basically talks about what a benevolent dude king george was. This was the cover of fundraising pamphlet used by the people who were raising money for the fire. This standing figure of the woman is brittania, the kneeling figure is supposed to represent montreal and we know its supposed to represent canada because there is a beaver right next to her. Montreal being the center of the fur trade. The poor beavers were the further got traded. Then you see the city burning in the background. There is a good response to that. In 1772, in august, there is a major hurricane in the Leeward Islands in the caribbean. There were hurricanes all the time. But this one was particularly bad. Hundreds of people died. At least 21 ships and their cargoes were destroyed. Property losses totaled about a half a Million Pounds sterling. In 1772, minimal aid comes from london. The reason for that is that london is in the midst of a profound financial crisis. The very people who would be likely to send aid to the colonies are currently in a position are not currently in a position position to do that. He sent 2000 pounds to help build destroyed military barracks and hospital. The fourth example also from the caribbean this time from barbados in jamaica october 1780, another hurricane, this one much worse indeed i think its still the worst hurricane in caribbean history. Died, nearlypeople 2 Million Pounds sterling in property losses and of course by 1780 we are talking about a very differe