Chilling Allahabad: Climate Control and the Production of Anglicized Weather in Early Modern India

Abstract

I want to begin with two stories about ice. Benigne Poissenot described his encounter with a glaciere in his Nouvelles histoires tragiques (1586). Passing through Jura region of France in June of 1584, he stopped at city of Besancon and was offered wine chilled with for his refreshment. In spite of fact that effects of radical climate changes characterizing sixteenth- century Europe were common knowledge-effects that included unusually long winters and prolonged periods of cold that extended well into spring and summer months-Poissenot found idea of an endless supply of summer something truly marvelous, particularly for luxurious purposes. He longed to see for himself sources of this wondrous store of ice, and was taken to Froidiere de Chaux, through dense woods on twisting paths to opening of enormous cave, . . a place so terrifying that he was reminded of what is said to be St. Patrick's hole in Hibernia. Nevertheless he drew his sword and entered cavern paved with ice, and with crystal-clear water, colder than that of mount Arcadia Nonacris (qtd. in Ladurie 138). His reaction to cave, however, was primarily of terror:Whenever I looked upwards my whole body shuddered with fear and my hair stood up on my head, seeing all upper part of cave covered with blocks of ice, least of which falling on me would have been enough to dash out my brains and tear me in pieces: so much so that I was like criminal whose punishment in Hell was to have a big stone continually threatening to fall on him. (qtd. in Ladurie 138-39)Not an isolated historical instance, successive travelers stumbled across this refrigerator that continued to supply people of Besancon with to cool their wine cellars. In fact, Froidiere de Chaux was still steadily exploited for its until a disastrous flood in 1910 appeared to dissolve its reservoirs and reformed again (Ladurie 140).Some two hundred years later, Sir Robert Barker, Fellow of Royal Society, adventurer, observer, and early modern climatologist, had a similar experience in Allahabad, where he was regaled with sherbets and iced creams when the thermometer has stood at 112° (Barker 257). Barker's reaction to availability of extreme heats of summer was far different from Poissenot's. Unlike glaciere shown to Poissenot, Barker had never heard of any persons having discovered in pools or cisterns, or in any waters collected in roads (252). In a letter to Royal Society, he begged permission to present you with method by which [ice-making] was performed at Allahabad, Mootegil, and Calcutta (252). He describes process by which porous clay vessels of water, buried in pits filled with reeds, salt, and saltpeter, came to provide for these cities:From these circumstances it appears, that water, by being placed in a situation free from receiving heat from other bodies, and exposed in large surfaces to air, may be brought to freeze when temperature of atmosphere is some degrees above freezing point on scale of FAHRENHEIT'S thermometer; and by being collected and amassed into a large body, it is thus preserved, and rendered fit for freezing other fluids, severe heats of summer season. (256)Unlike Poissenot's cautious approach to caves of Jura, Barker was eager to observe foreign practices of icemaking, and while he muses that during [his] residence in that quarter of globe, [he] saw any ice (255), somehow this absence of a natural explanation seemed perfectly sensible to him. While Poissenot expresses himself to be burning with desire to be shown great stalactites of ice in Froidiere de Chaux, he interprets actual sight of this cave and its source of both as a threat and as a form of criminal trespass (qtd. …