FellowSpeak: "‘Tempest-tost’?: Climate, Disaster, and Migration to America in the Age of Sail"

A 30 min. talk by Sam White (Institute for the Humanities visiting professor and professor of History, Ohio State University) followed by Q & A.

Accelerating global warming has raised dire warnings of tens or hundreds of millions of "climate refugees" in the coming decades. But what could we learn from climatic variations, disasters, and human migrations of past centuries? This talk will examine the current state of research on historical climate and migration and offer examples from the presenter's previous and current research on European migration to colonial North America. The presentation will make the case that climate played a significant role in population movements of the past, and may again in the near future. However, the history of climate and migration to America suggests the link was never simple or straightforward. Each migration event had its specific reasons and circumstances, which we need to consider in order make sense of climatic vulnerabilities and human decisions.