Science in a crisis: Assembling volcanic knowledge in twentieth century Montserrat

In the 1930s Montserrat, part of the British Leeward Islands colony, experienced a prolonged period of seismic unrest which many on the island interpreted as presaging a volcanic eruption. During the crisis several international scientists visited Montserrat and advised the local and imperial authorities on the likelihood of an eruption, and the island became a key node in an increasingly global volcanology. The process of assembling reliable knowledge about the volcanic system and its likely future behaviour was nonetheless heavily structured by colonial hierarchies and contestations over the reliability of different observers and the utility of long term monitoring. When the volcano eventually began erupting in 1995 it put paid to lingering governmental doubts over its very existence. We propose that work on the geographies of science has so far paid insufficient attention to the spatialities of crisis science, and that doing so can shed new light on both the history and persistence of colonial practices in the environmental sciences and in disaster management. Adopting longer perspectives on the politics of crisis science can yield new insights into the geographies and political geologies of a crisis-ridden present.