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• W4312982007 abstract "As the longtime director of the Johnstown Flood Museum, I have developed a great affection for the way that the May 31, 1889, Johnstown Flood engaged the sentimental core of Victorian society in America. Correspondents working for daily newspapers from the eastern and midwestern United States flocked to get the story of the epic disaster. These journalists began a deluge of words that lasted for several months. Early coverage of the Flood was like a mirror on which Americans projected their social and political concerns. First there was a search for the guilty; initial stories from Johnstown focused on a false tale that immigrant “Huns” were looting the bodies of the victims. When the press learned that the faulty dam that failed, causing the disaster, was owned by some of the wealthiest industrialists and financiers in the country, they had found a worthy target that engaged the growing populist sentiment of the age.The Johnstown Flood touched the heart strings of humanity more than either the Civil War or the Chicago fire. News of the disaster brought on a rush of popular charity far beyond any previous disaster; Johnstown residents received $2,702,853.82 in cash alone (although no state or federal funds were appropriated), as well as goods of every kind. Clara Barton and her newly organized American Red Cross came to distribute relief supplies; when she left five months later, she was at the height of her fame.The Johnstown Flood was quickly commercialized and lived on in popular culture for decades. Commercial photographers produced sets of prints and stereopticon cards portraying the Flood’s destruction. Books were quickly published, including The Johnstown Horror, which came out in just eight days. Tin Pan Alley turned out sheet music, with popular songs dedicated to heroic horsemen and telegraphers. Lecturers toured the country presenting magic lantern–illustrated shows. Attractions recreating the Johnstown Flood were featured at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, and even toured European cities. Eventually a 1926 Hollywood film and even a Mighty Mouse cartoon (1946) were produced that are based on the story of the Johnstown Flood. The causes and effects of that disaster are still actively debated today.Despite my immersion in the history of a prominent disaster, I did not appreciate the extent to which historians are now participating in the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies. In Inventing Disaster, Cynthia Kierner provides a highly detailed and persuasive argument that the public response to the Johnstown Flood was the culmination of three centuries of development. The evolving way in which American and British citizens and leaders viewed the causes, consequences, and meanings of catastrophic events has created a pattern for how we view and react to disasters in the twenty-first century. This new pattern was rooted in the Enlightenment era’s confidence in humanity’s ability to conquer and control nature. It depended on access to news, faith in science, and belief in the power of heartfelt emotions to inspire benevolence.In Jamestown colony (1607), famines, diseases, and attacks by Native Americans took heavy tolls. Few knew about them and no one really sought to relieve the suffering. Reports and sermons interpreted these disasters as divine vengeance for failing to Christianize the Indians, and personal and collective repentance and reform were viewed as the way to prevent future calamities. Likewise, shipwreck stories were thought to be signs of divine wrath, although secular accounts featured human interest stories that elicited sympathy and benevolence.A turning point in disaster relief came with the November 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which with the subsequent tsunami claimed 40,000 lives. King George II and Parliament offered 100,000 pounds to the Portuguese sufferers. The earthquake provoked new discussions about the relative roles of God and nature in causing earthquakes and raised new questions about the role of the state in disaster planning and relief. The role the British royalty and government played in disaster recovery became a source of pride among British citizens and residents of British colonial America who came to expect relief from London when disaster struck. In the post-revolutionary era, the new American response to fires and epidemics was decentralized, local, and ad hoc. With the proliferation of print news outlets, these calamities became widely reported and assumed national significance.Americans were deeply moved by accounts of steamboat accidents, with 233 steamboat explosions and at least 2,562 lives lost between 1816 and 1848. Kierner thoroughly explores the popular culture of America’s new experiences with steam technology. In addition to print accounts, visual representations of exploding steamboats, such as the lithographs by Nathaniel Currier, became available in the 1830s. Unlike other types of disasters, the causes of these calamities were easily understood and the federal steamboat acts of 1838 and 1852 represented the first time that the American government created legislation to protect citizens from one type of disaster.Placing disasters in a historical context reminds us that our modern response to such events originated in the intellectual and political environments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Kierner observes that “understanding the causes of disasters and learning the victim’s stories are often more a means of managing loss, both practically and emotionally, than a way of preventing future tragedies” (13). This seems to have been confirmed by events such as Hurricane Katrina, where engineers knew that levees in New Orleans were insufficient to protect the city, thereby leaving thousands of its poorest citizens vulnerable to one of the deadliest hurricanes in US history. Kierner summarizes the current understanding of disasters: “At the same time, many experts are now concluding that innovations in science, technology and engineering have ultimately proven unable to realize the Enlightenment inspired conceit that humans could—and should—wield complete mastery over the natural world” (210–11).Inventing Disaster is full of graphic and heart-wrenching disaster stories, as well as terrifying illustrations. The author uses a huge range of sources. The book will delight intellectual historians and provide much-needed context for those whose job involves keeping us safe in an increasingly disaster-prone world." @default.
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• W4312982007 date "2022-01-01" @default.
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• W4312982007 title "Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood" @default.
• W4312982007 doi "https://doi.org/10.5325/pennhistory.89.4.0654" @default.
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