DeepSummary
The episode features an interview with Philip Gooding, a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, about his edited volume "Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World." The book explores the histories of droughts and floods in the Indian Ocean region and their connections to broader global climatic events, taking an interdisciplinary approach rooted in climate history.
Gooding discusses the motivation behind the book, which was to understand what makes the regions around the Indian Ocean a distinct world and to interrogate the variability of the Indian Ocean monsoon system. The book includes case studies examining how droughts and floods have historically affected states, societies, and ecologies in the Indian Ocean World, including impacts on food security, diseases, political stability, economic change, and scientific knowledge.
Gooding also shares insights from his own chapter on drought and floods in equatorial eastern Africa between 1876-78, highlighting the sources used, such as missionary archives and rain gauge data, and the potential effects on food shortages, disease outbreaks, and political instability in the region.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The book 'Droughts, Floods, and Global Climatic Anomalies in the Indian Ocean World' takes an interdisciplinary approach rooted in climate history to explore the impacts of droughts and floods on the Indian Ocean World.
- The book aims to understand what makes the regions around the Indian Ocean a distinct world and to interrogate the variability of the Indian Ocean monsoon system.
- Case studies examine how droughts and floods affected states, societies, and ecologies in the Indian Ocean World, including impacts on food security, diseases, political stability, economic change, and scientific knowledge.
- Gooding's own chapter focuses on drought and floods in equatorial eastern Africa between 1876-78 and their potential effects on food shortages, disease outbreaks, and political instability.
- The book utilizes various sources, including missionary archives, rain gauge data, global climatic models, and natural proxies like tree rings and lake sediments.
- Gooding's current research aims to reconstruct the climate history of equatorial eastern Africa from 1750 to 1900 using diverse sources to create a new climate archive.
- The book highlights the importance of incorporating climate history into historical analysis to better understand the impacts of global climatic events on the Indian Ocean World.
- There was a reluctance among historians of Africa and the Indian Ocean World to engage with climate as a driving factor in historical processes, due to the colonial legacy of climatic determinism.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “Now, these. Now, what happens if you put all this data together next to each other? You can also reconstruct past climatic conditions in a certain locale. If there's a series of tree rings in a certain locale, then you can maybe strip past local climatic conditions. Then you can also feed these into global climatic models.“ by Ryan Reynolds
- “So firstly identified the. Identified the climatic conditions, then kind of explored the ways in which that they might have affected states and societies in the region, particularly focusing on food security, disease and political instability.“ by Ryan Reynolds
- “And the idea here is kind of similar with this edited volume, is to kind of write a climate history of the region firstly by reconstructing past climates using a variety of sources and then using that kind of new climate archive is what I'm kind of clawing. I'm trying to create basically an archive that uses climate models, documentary sources, climate reanalysis global circulation models, local proxy records in like lake sediments, tree rings from just outside the region, coral records from in the Indian Ocean itself to kind of make a reconstruct climate for the period 1750 to 1900.“ by Ryan Reynolds
Entities
Product
Person
Book
Company
Episode Information
New Books in Environmental Studies
Marshall Poe
5/22/23