In Inventing Disaster, Cynthia Kierner traces the development of what she terms a “modern culture of disaster” in the English-speaking Atlantic World by analyzing a series of chronological case studies. With the exception of a chapter on the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, Kierner focuses primarily on the present-day eastern United States, from, as the subtitle explains, the ill-fated Jamestown colony (first settled in 1607) to the Johnstown Flood of 1889. The disasters examined here were selected not for their high death tolls or their great financial cost but for their cultural resonance. By the eighteenth century, disasters—including hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, as well as “the ordinary disasters of earlier eras,” such as fires, shipwrecks, and steamboat explosions—dominated news stories and fueled the imaginations of contemporaries (13).
In her first major foray into the field of disaster studies, Kierner sets out to explore how disasters were “experienced, understood, and managed (or not managed)” in the past and how they continue to inform our experience of, and approaches to, disasters in the United States today (10). Relying on contemporary newspapers, broadsides, sermons, government records, images, and other sources, Kierner argues that a modern “culture of calamity”—consisting of information (how we learn about disasters), science (how we manage and prevent disasters), and sentiment (how we engage with news about disasters)—grew in part from an eighteenth-century Enlightenment belief in progress, the spread of literacy and print culture, and a new culture of sensibility that followed.
Inventing Disaster’s first chapter looks at the Jamestown colony and the legacy of disaster it left behind. This case study serves as an example of a premodern disaster, one without a supposed “modern” attempt to assess vulnerability or risk, or even to relieve its victims or prevent further disaster. The remaining chapters trace the ebbs and flows that characterized the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century development of what might be described as modern understandings of disasters, including considerations of their possible causes and potential management. Chapter 2, for example, looks at the emergence of a new, secular literary genre of shipwreck stories that grew alongside other literary genres in the eighteenth century and helped advance a culture of what Lynn Hunt has called “imagined empathy.”Footnote 5 As evidenced by Kierner’s remaining case studies, this new sensibility resulted in efforts to mitigate and prevent new calamities, through, for example, marine insurance, lighthouses, and flotation devices (the first modern life jacket was patented in 1765). In this way, “these narratives were influential antecedents of the modern culture of disaster” (68).
As the eighteenth century wore on, American colonists increasingly relied on London for relief in times of crisis, especially after the widely publicized Lisbon Earthquake of 1755—the only disaster examined here that did not take place in North America—which involved, according to Kierner, the “first international relief effort in world history” (69). Following the American Revolution, however, disaster relief again became a function of the community, rather than the government, in contrast to the British imperial government at this time, which increasingly adopted “interventionist policies” for dealing with disasters (141). The United States followed suit after an “epidemic of steamboat explosions” that began in the 1820s. More so than earthquakes or great storms, these led to debates about human culpability and the proper role of government in times of crisis. They led to some of the first federal legislation designed to protect citizens, the Steamboat Acts of 1838 and 1852.
The book ends with a look at postbellum disasters, including the Johnstown Flood, and the growing presence of the federal government in disaster response, prevention, and mitigation. The author looks forward to the Disaster Relief Act of 1950—the “first comprehensive national disaster legislation” (208)—and beyond, to some of the issues we face today as we grapple with an overabundance of information and the increasing normalization of disaster while confronting a rampant anti-intellectualism and resistance to science.
Inventing Disaster demonstrates that questions of prevention, management, and relief are never fully resolved, and questions about the causes of disaster are never completely settled. Religious justifications for disasters are present throughout the narrative, and remain to this day, as do debates about the responsibilities of citizens, governments, and other institutions. There is also a lesson about the difficulty of enacting changes necessary to prevent disasters in the first place. For example, those who represented the vested interests of companies and individuals worked to thwart the passage of legislation, such as laws targeting steamboat companies, which could potentially threaten profit margins. Despite large death tolls, widespread sympathy for victims, and expert reports laying out a need for reform, Congress has too often failed to act decisively, especially when public pressure has not been sufficiently forceful and persistent.
Kierner has delivered an important, well-researched study that sheds light on the history of American disasters and disaster management. Especially impressive, in this disaster historian’s opinion, is the interdisciplinary scope of her research. She engages not only historical literature but the writings of sociologists, anthropologists, and others. Engaging and filled with fascinating details and relevant images, Inventing Disaster will interest scholars, students, and the general public while proving particularly useful for specialists and graduate courses in American history, urban and environmental history, and the history of disaster.
