Cyclonic Ecology

Sugar, Cyclone Science, and the Limits of Empire in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean World, 1870s-1930s

Bibliographic Data

ID3542852
AuthorsRobert M Rouphail (0000-0002-7686-1064, University of Illinois System, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume110
Issue1
Pages48-67
Publication date2019-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/702729
OpenAlexW2922911572
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited16

Tropical cyclones posed unique challenges to the mobility and durability of British colonial capital in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Indian Ocean world. Although a veritable community of scientists studying these storms in the Bay of Bengal and the Mascarene Islands developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, knowledge about cyclone generation, movement, and internal makeup remained opaque. This article analyzes one response to these limitations: the growth of “agrometeorology” on the African island of Mauritius. Agrometeorology, a field of study that integrated knowledge produced on cyclones with that in sugar cultivation, the industry at the heart of the island’s economy, studied how cyclonic winds and rains constituted part of a broader ecology of sugar cultivation, rather than focusing exclusively on developing models of prediction

Archaeology · Bay · BENGAL · Biology · Capital (architecture · Colonialism · Cyclone (programming language · Empire · Geography · Indian ocean · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Ecology · Geology · Oceanography

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