The Eighteenth-Century Climate of Jamaica Derived from the Journals of Thomas Thistlewood, 1750-1786

Chenoweth, Michael | from Multimedia Library Collection:
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Chenoweth, Michael. The Eighteenth-Century Climate of Jamaica Derived from the Journals of Thomas Thistlewood, 1750-1786. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2003.

The journals are invaluable for examining life in a plantation society based on black chattel slavery. The weather records, however, are even more precious than the journals. They are the most important daily record of the earth’s climate from anywhere in the tropics in the eighteenth century yet found and as such are a unique source for studying a topic—the earth’s weather—that is undoubtedly likely to become a matter of prime historical importance as the effects of global warming start to change everything in the twenty-first century. — Trevor Burnard, H-Net Review