Cyclones and Earthquakes: The Jesuits, Prediction, Trade, and Spanish Dominion in Cuba and Philippines, 1850-1898

How is scientific knowledge produced in a colonial context? Furthermore, how is it possible that two colonies such as Cuba and the Philippines could have among the most notable scientific achievements in the history of nineteenth-century Spain? Finally, what happens when these achievements were driven by a religious order like the Society of Jesus? Why and what kinds of interests were at stake? This book is an original, rigorous and well-documented study of how two central fields of scientific prevention-cyclone prediction and earthquake resistant construction-have their roots in the commercial, military, and educational context of late-nineteenth-century Spanish insular possessions.