White, Sam (Author)
In the early exploration and colonization of the Americas, Europeans encountered unfamiliar climates that challenged received ideas from classical geography. This experience drove innovative efforts to understand and explain patterns of weather and seasons in the New World. A close examination of three climatic puzzles (the habitability of the tropics, debates on the likelihood of a Northwest Passage, and the unexpectedly harsh weather in the first North American colonies) illustrates how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century observers made three intellectual breakthroughs: conceiving of climates as a distinct subject of inquiry, crossing the hitherto-separated disciplines of geography and meteorology, and developing new theories regarding the influence of prevailing winds on patterns of weather and seasons. While unquantified and unsystematic, these novel approaches promoted a new understanding of climates critical to the emergence of climate science. This study offers new insights into the foundations of climatology and the role of the New World in early modern science.
...More
Chapter
Golinski, Jan;
(2008)
American Climate and the Civilization of Nature
Book
Sigrist, René;
Candaux, Jean-Daniel;
(2001)
H.-B. de Saussure (1740-1799): Un Regard sur la Terre
Article
Martin Mahony;
(2016)
For an empire of ‘all types of climate’: Meteorology as an imperial science
Article
Molina García, Juan Alberto;
(2013)
El sistema de cuestionarios y relaciones geográficas en el mundo hispánico de la Ilustración. Un procedimiento para obtener y difundir información climática
Article
Simon Naylor;
Neil Macdonald;
James P. Bowen;
Georgina Endfield;
(2022)
Extreme weather, school logbooks and social vulnerability: The Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Book
Fiona Williamson;
(2025)
Imperial Weather: Meteorology, Science, and the Environment in Colonial Malaya
Book
Giulia Iannuzzi;
(2022)
Geografie del tempo: Viaggiatori europei tra i popoli nativi nel Nord America del Settecento
Article
White, Sam;
(2015)
“Shewing the difference betweene their conjuration, and our invocation on the name of God for rayne”: Weather, Prayer, and Magic in Early American Encounters
Article
Degroot, Dagomar;
(2014)
“Never Such Weather Known in These Seas”: Climatic Fluctuations and the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century, 1652--1674
Article
Adriaan MJ De Kraker;
(2005)
Reconstruction of Storm Frequency in the North Sea Area of the Preindustrial Period, 1400–1625 and the Connection with Reconstructed Time Series of Temperatures
Article
Wheeler, Dennis;
(2005)
British Naval Logbooks From the Late Seventeenth Century: New Climatic Information from Old Sources
Book
Jankovic, Vladimir;
(2000)
Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820
Article
Dario Camuffo;
Antonio della Valle;
Francesca Becherini;
(2023)
Tre serie meteorologiche storiche: Firenze, Bologna e Padova
Article
Macdonald, Alan R.;
McCallum, John;
(2013)
The Evidence for Early Seventeenth-Century Climate from Scottish Ecclesiastical Records
Book
Brückner, Martin;
(2006)
The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity
Book
Schuchard, Margret;
(2007)
Bernhard Varenius, 1622--1650
Chapter
Blom, Frans R. E.;
(2010)
Picturing New Netherland and New York: Dutch-Anglo Transfer of New World Information
Article
Vogel, Brant;
(2011)
The Letter from Dublin: Climate Change, Colonialism, and the Royal Society in the Seventeenth Century
Article
Pleasant, Jane Mt;
(2011)
The Paradox of Plows and Productivity: An Agronomic Comparison of Cereal Grain Production under Iroquois Hoe Culture and European Plow Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Book
Carey, Daniel;
(2012)
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe
Be the first to comment!