Underwriting and Cyclones in the Indian Ocean
UCD Humanities Institute Seminar Room (H.204) and online
Mar 7, 4:00 pm–5:30 pm
Professor Debjani Bhattacharyya (Zurich) will deliver the fourth seminar, ‘Underwiting and Cyclones in the Indian Ocean’, in the ‘Methodologies concerning Extractivism’ series being held by the IRC MINERALS Laureate Project.
Abstract: This paper will show how the underwriting practices that developed with Britain’s imperial expansion in the Indian ocean critically shaped the very parameters of meteorology in the early 19th century. Analyzing navigational journals and insurance cases fought in the marine courts in India and the admiralty courts in London, the talk reflects on why tropical cyclones, instead of becoming limits to be overcome through scientific forecasting, were instead financialized and made profitable through a brisk and thriving underwriting business. Bridging economic and environmental history, the talk documents how the very modalities and frameworks for assessing climate disturbance emanated out of these webs of insurance and trade that enveloped the globe during this period.
Professor Debjani Bhattacharyya is the Chair for the History of the Anthropocene at the University of Zürich. Previously, she was an Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies at Drexel University. Her work lies at the intersection of legal and environmental history. Her research is driven by the desire to understand how legal and economic structures order our conceptualization of environmental transformations and shape how we respond to climate crises. Her book, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Cambridge University Press, 2018) won the 2019 honorable mention for the best book in Urban History. It documented how legal experimentation through the 18th and 19th century was central to reshaping the political economy of urban land and waterscapes in the Bengal Delta. Currently Prof. Bhattacharyya is writing a long history of how marine insurance market’s risk apprehensions shaped weather knowledge, colonial oceanographic sciences and a derivatives market in climate futures in the Indian Ocean Region. She is also interested in developing alternatives to climate adaptation strategies of planned retreat along the Bay of Bengal coast.
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