On 27 August 1183 the most terrifying volcanic eruption occurred on the island of Krakatoa, five miles off the western tip of Java. The island was detroyed and almost 400,000 people were killed. The impact was truly global: ships sailing in the Red Sea were covered in ash; barometers went haywire in Washington; immense rafts of pumice floated to Africa. The world shifted, geologicaly, politically and socially. The recent completion of the global telegraph meant that an event on one side of the world could be communicated to the other within just a few hours. And there would be even more far reaching effects: the destruction by this volcano would become the catalyst to a dramatic and bloody uprising of the region's Muslim community against their Western colonial masters.