Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina

473 Pages·2015·3.39 MB·English

by  Stuart B. Schwartz

SEA OF STORMS
••
LAWRENCE STONE LECTURES
Sponsored by:
The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies and Princeton University Press
2012
A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.
SEA OF STORMS
••
A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean
from Columbus to Katrina
Stuart B. Schwartz
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
Jacket Art: detail of engraving from “Plenas” series © Lorenzo Homar. Reproduction
authorized by Susan Homar Damm and Laura Homar Damm.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0-691-15756-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014950430
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Palatino Lt Std
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
to don Victor and doña Seti
for the past
to Ali and Lee
for the present
to Leo and Mae
for their future
to María
forever

Contents
••
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxiii
Chapter 1. Storms and Gods in a Spanish Sea 1
Chapter 2. Melancholy Occasions: Hurricanes
in a Colonial World 33
Chapter 3. War, Reform, and Disaster 70
Chapter 4. Calamity, Slavery, Community, and Revolution 110
Chapter 5. Freedom, Sovereignty, and Disasters 145
Chapter 6. Nature and Politics at the Century’s Turn 192
Chapter 7. Memories of Disaster in a Decade of Storms 226
Chapter 8. Public Storms, Communal Action,
and Private Grief 272
Chapter 9. Ancient Storms in a New Century 319
Abbreviations 339
Notes 341
Bibliography of Works Consulted 393
Index 427

Preface
••
In the summer of 1986, I took my dog- eared copy of Fernand Braudel’s
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World off the shelf and began to
reread it. During much of the period from the mid- 1960s to the mid- 1980s
I had been researching and writing a book about the history of sugar plan-
tations and slavery in Brazil. During that time I had read extensively in
some of the wonderful and innovative books published in that period
about slavery, race relations, plantation systems, and colonial societies not
only in Brazil and Spanish America, but in North America and the Carib-
bean as well. As I finished my book on Brazilian sugar, I began to consider
beginning a new project on the Caribbean, but I wanted to branch out and
to explore some dimension other than slavery that might provide a unify-
ing theme for my studies. The Caribbean seemed broadly analogous to the
Mediterranean, and so I turned to Braudel’s book, an old friend, for inspi-
ration. This great book is filled with provocative ideas, some that have
withstood the test of time better than others, but its focus on the sea itself,
its islands and surrounding mainlands, peninsulas, mountain ranges, and
the coasts that gave the Mediterranean its shape had been at its time an
exciting way to reconceptualize the history of a region. By downplaying
political change and by disregarding the division of that sea into Christian
and Muslim spheres, or into histories confined by national or cultural
boundaries, Braudel had sought the elements that had defined the region
as a whole, and that had often resulted in shared behaviors, beliefs, and
actions transcending national, religious, and other cultural divisions.
As I read on through that summer, it was clear that geography and en-
vironment, or what Braudel called “climate,” set the parameters of cul-
ture, politics, and history in that ancient sea where bread, olives, and the
vine had created a shared civilization. While Braudel writing in the late