Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World

摘要

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, for all its worldwide fame as the destroyer of Pompeii and Herculaneum, had no lasting impact on the Roman empire. The equally famous eruption of Krakatau, west of Java, in 1883 ejected enough volcanic dust to produce a dramatic impact on the earth's atmosphere and on the developing science of volcanology, but had no significant effect on international politics and economics. Yet, the far larger eruption of Tambora, east of Java, in 1815-though far less well known than the eruptions of Vesuvius and Krakatau-really did "change the world", as Gillen D'Arcy Wood claims in the subtitle of Tambora. His remarkable, even pioneering, book is the first to discuss the Tambora eruption as a global phenomenon afflicting Asia as well as Europe and America. Five years in the making (including a visit to Tambora) but wearing its research lightly for the benefit of the general reader, the book gathers together and synthesises reliable evidence from 1815-19 and after-such as the eyewitness eruption report of a surviving local raja, graphic poetry about famine by a Chinese farmer, Li Yuyang, and cholera reports by a Calcutta physician, James Jameson-with subsequent academic studies ranging right across the humanities and the sciences.