The Letter from Dublin

Climate Change, Colonialism, and the Royal Society in the Seventeenth Century

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3924733
AutoresBrant Vogel (autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen26
Número1
Páginas111-128
Fecha de publicación2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaOsiris (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/661267
PMID21936189
OpenAlexW1996650221
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas9

This article discusses an anonymous letter published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1676 that reports the theories of American colonists about the cause of their warming climate (cultivation and deforestation), and offers Ireland's colonial experience as a counterexample: Ireland was a colony with decreased cultivation, but the same perceived warming. That such an objection seemed necessary to the author shows that anthropogenic climate change could be a subject of debate and that the concept of climate was tied into theories of land use and to the colonial enterprise. Since he was liminal to both the Royal Society of London and the intellectual circles of Dublin, his skepticism, contextualized here, questions both the elite discourse and the discourse at the colonial periphery

Ancient history · Archaeology · Climate change · Colonialism · Environmental ethics · Classics · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Philosophy · Geology · Oceanography