Enlightenment ideas of climate and culture, developed in an era of European expansion, were stimulated by the writings of explorers, colonists, and travelers. Initially, colonists were confused and confounded by the cold winters and harsh storms. The New World was the object of considerable disdain for many European elites. Convincing them that the North American continent was not a frozen, primitive, or degenerate wasteland became a crucial element in American apologetics. The notion that a harsh climate could be improved by human activity—draining the marshes, clearing the forests, and cultivating the soil—was a major issue in colonial and early America and remained so until the middle of the nineteenth century. If the climate could truly be transformed, the implications were enormous, involving the health, wellbeing, and prosperity of all. There were contrarians, however, who called these ideas just so much wishful thinking. Early settlers in North America found the climate harsher, the atmosphere more variable, and the storms both more frequent and more violent than in similar latitudes in the Old World. In 1644–45, the Reverend John Campanius of Swedes’ Fort (Delaware) described mighty winds, unknown in Europe, which “came suddenly with a dark-blue cloud and tore up oaks that had a girt of three fathoms.” Another colonist in New Sweden, Thomas Campanius Holm, noted that when it rains “the whole sky seems to be on fire, and nothing can be seen but smoke and flames.” James MacSparran, a missionary to Rhode Island for thirty-six years until his death in 1757, spent considerable energy warning colonists against emigrating to America. He found the American climate “intemperate,” with excessive heat and cold, sudden violent changes of weather, terrible and mischievous thunder and lightning, and unwholesome air—all “destructive to human bodies.” While new settlers in all countries and climates are subject to many hardships, Dr. Alexander Hewatt observed that the hardships experienced by the first settlers of Carolina “must have equalled, if not surpassed, everything of the kind to which men in any age have been exposed. . . . During the summer months the climate is so sultry, that no European, without hazard, can endure the fatigues of labouring in the open air.”
LAND USE AND MITIGATION EFFECTS ON BARRIER BEACH EROSION IN STORMS: CASE STUDY IN RHODE ISLAND