Natural Disaster at the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-108-92659-1
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 357 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 581 g

Reihe: Studies in Environment and History

By the early eighteenth century, the economic primacy, cultural efflorescence, and geopolitical power of the Dutch Republic appeared to be waning. The end of this Golden Age was also an era of natural disasters. Between the late seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth century, Dutch communities weathered numerous calamities, including river and coastal floods, cattle plagues, and an outbreak of strange mollusks that threatened the literal foundations of the Republic. Adam Sundberg demonstrates that these disasters emerged out of longstanding changes in environment and society. They were also fundamental to the Dutch experience and understanding of eighteenth-century decline. Disasters provoked widespread suffering, but they also opened opportunities to retool management strategies, expand the scale of response, and to reconsider the ultimate meaning of catastrophe. This book reveals a dynamic and often resilient picture of a society coping with calamity at odds with historical assessments of eighteenth-century stagnation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sundberg, Adam

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Soziale & wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen von Umweltfaktoren
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Naturgewalten & Katastrophen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Rampjaar reconsidered; 2. 'Disasters in the year of peace': The first cattle plague, 1713–1720; 3. 'The fattened land turned to salted ground': The Christmas flood of 1717 in Groningen; 4. A plague from the sea: The shipworm epidemic, 1730-1735; 5.'Increasingly numerous and higher floods': The river floods of 1740–41; 6. 'From a love of humanity and comfort for the fatherland': The second cattle plague, 1744–1764; 7. The twin faces of calamity: Lessons of decline and disaster.

Über Autor(innen)

Sundberg, Adam
Adam Sundberg is an associate professor of History at Creighton University. His work has appeared in Environmental History, Dutch Crossing, and The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History.