American Climate and the Civilization of Nature

Bibliographic Data

ID23745247
AuthorsJan Golinski (corresponding author)
Year2008
Pages153-174
Publication date2008-09-25
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueScience and empire in the Atlantic world (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9780203933848-9
OpenAlexW2770729910
ISBN9780203933848
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Accordingly, descriptions of the American climate became parts of travelers&s; narratives, topographical surveys, and natural histories of the New World. Medical writers, natural and moral philosophers, and historians were all discussing how climate would affect the development of civilization. This chapter explores the roots of the conception of climatic change in eighteenth-century North America. It argues that it arose both from the familiarity of Creole intellectuals with Atlantic discourse concerning the effects of climate on civilization and from the specific situation in which the settler population found itself. As the American climate moderated toward the European norm, Williamson anticipated, it would bring additional benefits of civilization: increased yields of crops and improvements in health. Believing that they were moderating the extremes and anomalies of the American weather and molding it to fit the needs of civilization, the settlers allayed their anxieties that climatic factors had played a part in the disastrous collapse of the native population.

Archaeology · Civilization · Environmental ethics · Political science · American Environmental and Regional History · History · Philosophy

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