Weathering Colonial Calcutta: Climates, Cultures and Everyday Experiences of the Weather, 1800-1945

ended

The planetary scale of environmental and climatic complexities, and the anxieties of global crises prompted by threats introduced by the spectre of the Anthropocene have brought scalar imagination at the forefront of historical writings. One of the well-known ironies of the climate crisis is the fact that, despite its planetary and temporal scale, its effects manifest themselves in everyday experiences of seasons and weather. Weathering Colonial Calcutta introduces nuances of material, cultural and political systems into historical examinations of how communities and social groups understood, coordinated and responded to climate and the weather. It presents an urban, material and cultural history of colonial Calcutta as a story of changing ideas about, and everyday experiences of the weather. It aims to reframe histories of Calcutta by examining the place of the weather, seasons and climate in cultural and political expressions, public and domestic spaces, and material culture. The research takes two distinct yet interrelated approaches to writing a history of the social construction of “weather”. The first theme examines the shifts in knowledge of Calcutta’s “weather” (noun) through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this sense, the research offers critical insights into the insistence with which Calcutta’s weather, seasons, and climate forced themselves on scientific and social viewpoints, and modes of cultural activity. Second, the project traces the concept of “weather” as a transitive verb — “to pass through and survive” — and explores the braiding of daily lives and “weathering” practices as embedded in the creation and maintenance of racial, class and social thinking and practices. Overall, the project takes the evocative history of the weather into politics, culture and society, revealing its importance to key themes from science, literature, art, architecture, urban planning, and technologies to race, religion, environment, gender and culture.