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The Blue Death: Tambora, Climate Change, and Global Cholera, 1817-1832

Sat, April 2, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Westin Seattle Hotel, Cascade 1C

Abstract

In my book Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World (Princeton, 2014), I draw on the most recent climate and epidemiological literature, and historical weather data, to link the eruption of Tambora to the first global cholera epidemic, which originated in Bengal in 1817, and ultimately killed tens of millions worldwide. Because cholera shaped the nineteenth-century world to such a dramatic extent, Tambora’s eruption as a driver of disease dynamics in the Bay of Bengal in 1816-17 may be said to mark its single greatest impact on humanity. This paper delves more deeply into the climate change and cholera literature behind the argument presented in the book; while, in a larger sense, the paper makes the argument for Tambora as a truly global event, not one whose effects were felt solely, or disproportionately, in Europe and North America.

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