Climate, Science, and Colonization Histories from Australia and New Zealand

About this book

Offering important new historical understandings of human responses to climate and climate change, this cutting-edge volume explores the dynamic relationship between settlement, climate, and colonization. The contributions gathered here consider a wide range of interrelated topics, among them the use of scientific evidence in historical research, the physical impact of climate on agriculture and land development, and changing understandings of climate, including the development of "folk" and government meteorologies. They reveal Australasia to be a remarkably varied and fertile area for analyzing cultural responses to climate as well as the wider social ramifications of historical climatic events.

Contents

PART I: FRAMES
1. Overview: Themes in Climate, Empire, and Science; Georgina Endfield and Sam Randalls
2. Australasia Palaeoclimate during the Last Glacial Maximum and the Holocene; Andrew M. Lorrey

PART II: EVENTS
3. "The usual weather in New South Wales is uncommonly bright and clear... equal to the finest summer day in England": Climate and Weather in New South Wales, 1788-1815; Claire Fenby, Joelle Gergis, and Don Garden
4. It Isn't Always ENSO: The Extreme Weather in New Zealand and Australia, 1895-98; Don Garden
5. Climatic Challenges to Agriculture and Settlement in Southern New Zealand, 1850-1900: Science, Models, and Good Practice; Peter Holland

PART III: HUMAN CLIMATIC CHANGE
6. Debating the Climatological Role of Forests in Colonial Victoria and South Australia; Stephen Legg
7. Rainmaking Experiments and Rainmaking Prayers: Science, Religion, and Nature in Australasia; James Beattie
8. Drawing Goyder's Line: Climate, Wheat Farming, and the Limits of Settlement in South Australia; David Walker

PART IV: CLIMATE UNDERSTANDINGS
9. Settling the Seasons: Understanding Climatic Variability in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1829-2007; Ruth Morgan
10. "Soothsaying" or "Science"?: Meteorology and Environmental Knowledge in Colonial Australia; Emily O'Gorman
11. Imported Understandings: Calendars, Weather, and Climate in Tropical Australia; Christian O'Brien
12. Australasian Airspace: Meteorology and the Practical Geopolitics of Australasian Airspace, 1935-40; Matthew Henry

Customer Reviews

Biography

James Beattie is a Senior Lecturer in the History Programme at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Matthew Henry is a Senior Lecturer in the Planning Programme, Massey University, New Zealand.

Matthew Henry is a Senior Lecturer in the Planning Programme at Massey University, New Zealand.

Emily O'Gorman is an Associate Research Fellow in the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research at the University of Wollongong, Australia.