This paper analyses how ideas about managing a hot climate shaped elite women’s drinking practices in colonial Singapore. It considers the extent to which wealthy women from diverse cultural backgrounds followed the advice of colonial officials and medical practitioners regarding the need to limit alcohol intake in the tropics. It also analyses how Chinese domestic servants influenced the ways these women quenched their thirst and coped with the climate. It does this by focusing on the emergence of interwar cocktail culture.

Mixed alcoholic drinks were consumed by British men in Singapore from at least the 1910s, including the famous ‘Singapore Sling’. They were promoted as refreshing stimulants, especially following a sweaty stint on the sporting field. By the 1920s cocktails had become the drink of choice not only for elite men but also for wealthy women from Singapore’s Chinese, British, and Eurasian communities. The increasing availability of domestic refrigerators in Singapore ensured that multiethnic elites, accustomed to frequenting bars and cafés to enjoy cocktails, began to host their own cocktail parties. The interwar cocktail party offered wealthy women a means to display conspicuous consumption and cosmopolitan modernity (aided by their Chinese servants). At the same time, however, these women had to navigate the intense social angst about the impact of cocktail drinking in the tropics on their health, beauty and moral standing.

This article aims to explore the cultural effects of atmospheric knowledge in Imperial Japan. As the authoritative source of modern atmospheric knowledge, meteorology in Japan developed in close connection with imperial politics. On one hand, the Meiji regime established its first meteorological observatory and meteorology lectures in the new colonies of Hokkaido and Taiwan respectively. On the other hand, after an initial phase influenced by American and European sciences, Japanese meteorologists sought to established a distinct Japanese meteorology by the 1920s, amid the intellectual trend of “independence of learning.” Phenomena such as typhoons were regarded as uniquely Japanese that required local theory developed by Japanese meteorologists. Consequently, atmospheric knowledge was both produced within the imperial structure and inspired assertations of locality by imperial scientists.
　　The bidirectional dynamics between atmospheric knowledge and locality extended beyond the realm of meteorology. For instance, the Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro explored the relationship between climate, history, and race across Europe and Asia. In colonial Taiwan, the philosopher Hung Yao-shun applied Watsuji’s framework to articulate Taiwan’s cultural position. Kazuo Ogasawara, a meteorologist of Taihoku Imperial University, offered recommendations for Japanese colonial governance based on his views on southern climate. These examples illustrate how climate discourses were simultaneously embedded in local contexts and shaped imaginations of locality.
Therefore, this paper examines climate discourses articulated by intellectuals in Imperial Japan, analyzing the cultural impact of local atmospheric phenomena, and thereby exploring the historical relationship between atmospheric knowledge and broader political contexts.

This paper examines the appearance of two spectral figures—a witch and a werewolf—as cultural phenomena that illuminate local understandings of cyclonic disaster in modern Mauritius. The presentation will examine how the witch, which appeared as an omen of a major cyclone in 1892 and the werewolf, which prowled the streets of the island after the catastrophic 1994 cyclone, Hollanda, act as expressions of ambivalence and frustration with formal state institutions meant to predict or otherwise protect everyday Mauritians from the threats of these storms.