The imperial project was a fundamental driver of climate science during the long nineteenth century. The global expansion of European empires encouraged scientists to consider the varied impacts of climatic conditions on their colonial possessions, which in turn fostered new thinking about the relationship between environmental and social change in Europe. Much of the historical scholarship on imperial climate science, like Katharine Anderson's Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology, has focused on overseas empires (Chicago, 2005). Continental empires, by contrast, have received far less historical attention.
In her fascinating and remarkably wide-ranging book Climate in Motion: Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale, Deborah Coen positions the Austro-Hungarian Empire as an important center for the development of modern climatology. In contrast to overseas empires, where the discontinuity of observations encouraged scientists to privilege either local or global frames of analysis, imperial-royal scientists in Austria-Hungary developed a “dynamic climatology” that evaluated atmospheric change across local and global scales. The act of “scaling” climatic interactions from the micro- to the macrolevel remains a central problematic in modern climate modeling, and Coen argues that its roots can be unearthed in Habsburg lands between 1850 and the first decades of the twentieth century. Climatology flourished in the region due to its political, geographic, and cultural diversity. According to Coen, scaling was both a scientific challenge and a “social process” that fulfilled the political need to find unity in this diversity.
Coen divides her book into three parts. Part one tracks the coevolution of imperial ideology and environmental science. Austria-Hungary's diverse human and physical geography demanded new ways of conceptualizing and seeing imperial space. Atmospheric circulation presented a tantalizing object of analysis because it forced scientists to reckon with the influence of local and nonlocal conditions. Finding unity in diversity became the sine qua non of both imperial and climatological ambitions. Coen traces this discourse to the sixteenth century, but it assumed increasing political and scientific influence after 1848. Dynamic climatology emerged as an attempt by imperial-royal scientists to demonstrate the interdependent influence of local conditions in an integrated climate system. “Scaling up” climate both responded and contributed to the construction of the “Austrian Idea.”
Part two explores the diversity of strategies climate observers employed to represent local and global atmospheric conditions. Coen draws on an impressively varied array of sources, from landscape artists and cartographers to the modeling work of scientists. Each developed new tools to visualize climate and empire. Climatography, for instance, emerged as a new environmental genre during this period. In contrast to Romantic Humboldtian cosmographies, climatography drew upon a pragmatic imperative to define natural regions and track the circulation of resources within the empire. Relying on data from observatories and citizen scientists, and coordination through Vienna's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geomagnetism (ZAMG), climatography linked local and global scales of atmospheric circulation and translated those findings to the public.
The third and final portion of the book considers the personal and social construction of scaling. What larger political and social goals did it serve? What motivated scientists to seek these connections? These chapters are as ambitious in scope as they are rewarding to read. Coen moves the reader from the level of the nation-state down to the individual, mirroring the act of scaling she explores throughout the book. Her chapter on the “Forest-Climate Question,” for instance, considers the national political implications of desiccation theory—the widely held belief that deforestation led to adverse climate changes. This theory disguised the socioeconomic roots of ecological crisis. The process of “scaling up” localized environmental changes into broader atmospheric dynamics exposed the public to new visions of climate as a regional and global phenomenon. Dynamic climatology presented a framework to address a scientific and social problem across scale.
Coen's final chapter, by contrast, is an exercise in scaling down. “Landscapes of Desire” considers the emotional and moral implications of scaling for the individual scientist. Using a unique combination of unpublished journals and correspondence, Coen leads readers through the mental landscape of influential figures in dynamic climatology. In the case of Austrian scientist Julius Hann, his contradictory need to embrace local diversity and duty to promote whole-state research left him in a state of “emotional turmoil” (313). Scaling served his personal and emotional needs by presenting tools to negotiate these twin desires, just as it contributed to larger scientific and political goals.
Climate in Motion presents a compelling case that Austria-Hungary's unique geographic and cultural geography fostered new ways of seeing, understanding, and modeling both climate and empire. In doing so, it contributes new insight to multiple historiographies. Environmental historians have long viewed the empire-climate matrix through the lens of overseas (often tropical) environments. Climate in Motion challenges readers to consider not only Austro-Hungarian contributions but also the role of other continental empires. It likewise builds on the work of Jan Golinski (British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment [Chicago, 2007]), Vladimir Jankovic (Reading the Skies [Chicago, 2001]), and others who forcefully argue that the history of climate science should consider the social and cultural contexts of its development. Coen moves this appeal into new terrain, encouraging historians to draw from less-used (often noncognitive) source material, whether the botanical work of naturalist Anton Kerner von Marilaun or the poetic musings of meteorologist Heinz Ficker. Finally, Coen makes a significant intervention in the historiography of Austrian nationalism. Historians have debated the origins and need for an “Austrian Idea” since the late nineteenth century and Coen traces this discourse through A. J. P. Taylor's work in the 1970s (The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809‒1918 [Chicago, 1976]). Climates in Motion reframes this question. Rather than seeking origins, Coen considers the intellectual tools Habsburg subjects employed to fashion Austrian identity—chief among these was scaling. Dynamic climatology, as part of the larger social act of scaling, moves this nationalist debate into new territory.
As is often the case with histories that engage multiple historiographies, readers will find some chapters resonate more than others. What might be perceived as a limitation is also an invitation to discover foreign territory, and Climate in Motion is an impressive guide to begin this journey.
