"It is a volcano that absolutely and very visibly refuses to die. It is a volcano that seems to me to possess a wonderfully seductive combination of qualities, being beautiful and dangerous, unpredictable and unforgettable. And more: though what happened in its former life was unutterably dreadful, the realities of geology and seismicity and peculiar tectonics of Java and Sumatra will make sure that what occurred back then will without a doubt one day repeat itself, and in precisely the same way."
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| Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded - Simon Winchester |
This book. Is so. Well. Written. The ideas narrated are illustrated with a voice of such ease, evident excitement and utter fascination, that their complexity becomes irrelevant in understanding as one becomes absorbed in the biography of Krakatoa. I say biography because, effectively, it is. Winchester starts by meticulously navigating through the colonial history of Indonesia and the progression in understanding of the processes of the earth (plate tectonics, volcanology, evolutionism etc.), prior to narrating our present understanding of the earth. He then discusses both the physical and the human build up(s) to the infamous August 1883 eruption, describes the eruption and its aftermath, and finally explores the subsequent implications and repercussions of the eruption leading up to its influences today. Truly, honestly, frankly - it is an amazing read.
I'm sure most of you have encountered Krakatoa in some form or other. You may know it as the Indonesian volcano that erupted in August 1883 (amongst other less certain dates) killing 36,000 people and impacting the global community; you may know it as the word Squidward screams in an episode of SpongeBob (to fuel your curiosity); you may know it as a word to describe something of gargantuan proportion and impact. Or, conversely, you may never had heard of it.
My first encounter, rather less romantic than those of Winchester's spent gazing at the picturesque silhouetted presence of Anak Krakatoa (son of Krakatoa) in the waning Indonesian sun, came towards the end of September this year in an episode of the documentary series 'How The Earth Works'. This explored the international ramifications of the Krakatoan eruption on food production, geopolitical relations and health, whilst hinting rather sinisterly at the probable possibility that Anak Krakatoa, the reincarnation or descendant of Krakatoa, could interrupt the present solidity of life in an eruption not dissimilar to that of 1883. From the outset, this dystopian manifestation of the earth's processes has intrigued me; why would an eruption be so explosive naturally and socially? How could an event in one small corner of the world be so globally powerful and important? What exactly goes on in the earth? How much do we really understand?
Winchester makes an exemplary start at answering these curiosities.
Observation/Intrigue #1: Volcanology and our geomorphological understanding are mere toddlers in the demographics of our scientific clarity.
Plate tectonics and associated hazards are, in my experience, taught in Geography lessons at every level of its study; so much so, that they have become one of the core foundational topics accepted as constituting the subject (alongside population, rivers, and coastal systems). Hence, one sub-consciously believes that our understanding is as advanced and old as that of Physics. As I've been discovering this year - it's not. It's in its infantile stages of life, growing ever more curious and mature in understanding. There have been numerous theories revolving around the processes governing the physical world below our feet, culminating most famously in Alfred Wegener's 1912 Theory of Continental Drift which suggests that the continents were once joined together as a single supercontinent, Pangaea, prior to slowly drifting apart to form the structure we now know. During his lifetime, Wegener's theory was rejected, rebuffed and taken as farce. Inevitably, his theory has since been accepted - what was lacking initially was the required evidence to support his musings. When was all this evidence attained? Towards the latter half of the 20th century - less than 100 years ago. It so enthuses me that we are living through the growth and development of this science; it's happening all around us, physically and socially; there are still things we don't understand, still things we are yet to learn, things we are yet to uncover. I loved Winchester's exploration of historical, theoretical sides of Geography and our present developments.
"Geological evidence from around the world admits a number of bigger and more devastating volcanoes, true. Krakatoa is reckoned today to be only the fifth most explosive in the planet's certain geological history. [...] But these were all eruptions quite lost to antiquity, with rather little effect on human society. When Krakatoa exploded it was 1883, and the world was a profoundly different place. Sophisticated human beings were on hand to see this volcano's convulsions, they were able to investigate the event, and they were able to attempt to understand the processes that had caused such dreadful violence. And yet, as it happens, their observations, painstaking and precise as science demanded, collided head on with a most discomfiting reality: that while in 1883 the world was becoming ever more scientifically advanced, it was in part because of these same advances that its people found themselves in a strangely febrile and delicately balanced condition, which an event like Krakatoa did much to unsettle." - page 5
Observation/Intrigue #2: The human structure of the earth in the late 19th Century was of almost equal import as the physical structure in Krakatoa's explosiveness and renown.
The Krakatoan eruption took place in a period of strengthening curiosity and scientific study, coinciding with technological advancements which had birthed a global community of inter-connectedness. Hence, the eruption was made so widely known not merely by its environmental implications, but also because it was shared so rapidly around the world - it was the first major event concerning the world as a whole, and people possessed the opportunity, experiencing the event as a related body. Other, physically larger eruptions (see quote above) like Taupo in New Zealand, don't live on in most people's memory because of the social structure of the earth at the time of their eruptions; they remain largely confined to their small corners of the world. It was the perfect combination of physical excitedness and human eagerness and progression which made Krakatoa so explosive.
"The principal elements of the story of its great eruption of 27 August 1883 - the immense sound of the detonation, the unprecedented tidal waves, the death-rafts if drifting pumice, the livid sunsets - all still play their part in the world's collective consciousness. They remain annealed into the popular mind in a way that the spectacular eruptions of the planet's other truly great volcanoes, like Etna, Santorini, Tambora and St Pierre - and even the Vesuvius of Pliny and Pompeii - have still never quite managed to match." - page 393
Observation/Intrigue #3: The eruption not only ruptured the weather patterns and atmospheric conditions of the 19th Century world, but also catalysed eruptions in human developments.
In its explosion, Krakatoa threw tonnes of tephra, ash and other eruptive material into the atmosphere, which intercepted the stratosphere and was distributed around the world. This revolutionised not only obvious things such as weather forecasting and meteorological understanding, but advanced the arts. The ejected particles in the stratosphere refracted the sunlight, leading both to a dark, dreary and dull existence in exaggerated temperatures (a global decline in average temperatures of around 1 degree was experienced subsequent to the eruption), and the most spectacular sunsets. What a paradoxical, literary-like time to inhabit. The former dullness and the relationships established through underwater telegraph cables inspired many literary works, particularly poems, including Tennyson's epic 'St Telemachus'. The sunsets contributed equally to such literary phenomena as well as to the artistic world; one British artist painted something like 400 paintings documenting the sunsets each evening. Disregarding the ejected material itself, the eruption also revolutionised Indonesia's socio-political make-up; prior to the eruption, a local leader of Islam predicted an upcoming religious war, indicated by fiery skies, earthquakes shaking the ground and thousands killed by unknown phenomena. Krakatoa provided just that to local believers. Hence, weeks after the eruptions ceased, some of this local community began to attack and overthrow the Dutch colonial powers who had ruled them over the preceding decades. Eventually, tensions between the two led to independence in the early 20th century, and the largest Muslim population in the world in Indonesia. As you may have gathered thus far - Krakatoa's eruption was a collision of the human and physical world.
Other eruptions too have resulted in huge diversions in the course of human development, with some wiping out entire languages, some altering global migration and interrupting/shifting the socio-political demographical make-ups of nations in the long term, and others destroying present crop production, forcing the invention and engagement with alternative methods (see pages 295-298). We're not so immune to the processes of nature as we'd perhaps like to think.
"Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak
Been hurl'd so high they ranged about the globe?
For day by day, thro' many a blood-red eve,
The wrathful sunset glared"
- page 286 (from Tennyson's poem)
Observation/Intrigue #4: Krakatoa implicated the ecological interdependence of the world.
Winchester writes that this 'was the event that presaged all the debates that continue to this day: about global warming, greenhouse gases, acid rain, ecological interdependence. Few in Victorian times had begun to think truly globally - even though exploration was proceeding apace, the previously unknown interiors of continents were being opened up for inspection, and the developing telegraph system, allowing people to communicate globally was having its effects. Krakatoa, however, began to change all that. The world was now suddenly seen to be much more than an immense collection of unrelated peoples and isolated happenings: it was, rather, an almost infinitely large association of interconnected individuals and perpetually intersecting events. Krakatoa, an event that intersected so much and affected so many, seemed all of a sudden to be an example of this newly recognised phenomenon (pages 271-2).' I don't think it could be put better (hence why I cited his own words in their entirety rather than making my own!). Krakatoa is a perfect example of illustrating our inter-dependence with each other and with the world; in so many of the present problems we face - world hunger, poverty, overpopulation, environmental degradation and warming - remembering this fact is key. Arguably, they require socio-environmental cooperation on global scales, not conflicting individual ideals that unbalance and contradict one another.
Observation/Intrigue #5: Civilisation exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice (Will Durant).
To some, events like Krakatoa, with their mass loss of life and destruction, present evil manifestations of the earth, threatening the solidity of humanity's existence. Winchester hints that the world, 'its location in space, its size, the processes that led to its creation', have all been 'suited perfectly, when taking the long view, to the sustenance and maintenance of organic life'. Movies like 'Interstellar' and books like 'Across The Universe' deal with the search for alternative planets for us to inhabit having messed up this one, reflecting perhaps discreetly the growing desperation of the need to address our relationship with where we live. But what if we were put on this world, specifically Planet Earth, because it's so perfect for us? Yy philosophical side begs conversely, are we perfect for it? Maybe not in our present widespread attitude.
On the whole, Winchester's account is a fascinating insight into the world in the 19th Century both socially and physically."But consider location, for instance. Planet earth is sited just close enough to the star around which it orbits to derive only benefits from the latter's infernal solar heat. It is neither so close as to risk the boiling of its oceans and the loss of its water into outer space by photo-dissociation in the upper atmosphere, nor so far away that all its present liquid water remains uselessly and inconsumably frozen. The size of the earth is spot on too. Thanks to its moderate size its gravitational pull is just right. It is strong enough to overcome in particular the escape velocities of the molecules both of water and carbon dioxide, which means that we have a sheltering canopy - a benevolently situated greenhouse, even though this is a word with more negative associations today - that first allowed life's building blocks to be assembled, and then ensured that the fragile living entities so made could be cosseted against the perilous radiations from outer space. And then there are the volcanoes - just the right number, of just the right size, for our own good. The deep heat reservoir inside the earth is not so hot, for instance, as to cause ceaseless and unbearable volcanic activity on the surface. The amount of heat and thermal decay within the earth happens to be just perfect for allowing convection currents to form and to turn over and over in the earth's mantle, and for the solid continents that lie above them to slide about according to the complicated and beautiful mechanisms of plate tectonics. [...] Almost all our neighbour planets are, so far as is known, volcanically lifeless. They are also, on all the available evidence, more or less biologically lifeless - and that is quite probably at least in part because they are so volcanically dead." - Page 301-2
Until next time,
C
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