Abstract
Reviewed by: James P. Bowen, Leeds Trinity University, UK
Traditionally historians, fearful of being criticized as deterministic, have been cautious in emphasizing the role of climate. However, this innovative book examines how Dutch society lived through the Little Ice Age, the timing of which is debated, but ranges broadly from the late-thirteenth to the nineteenth century. The climate of Europe was at its lowest during the period 1560–1720, coinciding with the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century.
The book opens by outlining the context of the human and environmental histories before focusing on how the Little Ice Age affected the Low Countries using evidence from Dutch and English ship logbooks. The remainder is divided into three parts. Part I examines how freezing winters and storms affected trade and commerce in the Baltic Sea as well as internal travel within the republic. Part II considers the influence of climate change on the republic’s ability to wage war on land and sea in order to maintain its commercial dominance. Part III comprises chapters illustrating how the Little Ice Age was represented culturally, for instance, in paintings of frozen landscapes and stormy seascapes produced by Dutch artists and maps like those by Gerardus Mercator depicting parts of the world discovered by European explorers. Poems and literary works describing weather events like floods, gales, storms, winds and severe winters are contextualized as cultural responses which helped to reinforce memories of past weather extremes.
The notion of ‘ice cultures’, cited on numerous occasions, is proposed to describe how with the freezing of rivers and waterways people of all social classes took to the ice drinking beer and wine, selling goods, skating and participating in carnivalesque pastimes; and how in contrast to elsewhere in Europe, the republic saw a reduction in weather-related witchcraft persecutions as conversely the harsh winter conditions benefitted the republic. Also considered are technological innovations developed in response to the cooler climate, such as ice wagons and icebreakers and likewise water pumps and fire-resistant building materials to counter the threat of urban fire.
The conclusion synthesizes the chapters and describes the three concepts underpinning the book: extreme weather as an effect of climate change that dramatically affected Dutch society; the influence it had on pre-industrial societies in terms of energy use; and finally, the potential that interdisciplinary approaches offer for studying new aspects of history as well as those that have previously attracted attention. Emphasizing the link between the seemingly separate disciplines of science and history, it is suggested that work bringing together scientists and historians ‘can lead us to novel perspectives on past, present, and future climate change’ (303). It is argued that climate change should be incorporated into histories of the Dutch Golden Age and that the ability of societies to be resilient and adapt to such challenges should feature more prominently in environmental histories of climate change. The author engages with concept of a ‘global crisis’ during the seventeenth century put forward by Geoffrey Parker (who has principally been concerned with political developments including the Dutch Revolt), which some historians have taken issue with. He goes on to contrast the Dutch and Japanese experiences of the Little Ice Age, pointing out that the former explored and mapped the world in exploiting it, whereas the latter remained isolated and grew its domestic economy.
A short final section considers lessons from the past including how even moderate changes in climate highlight the complex relationship between climate change and human activity, the effects of which can affect societies differently depending on human activities and their respective environments. The last forward-looking lesson is perhaps the most important: whilst moderate changes in climate have clearly influenced the course of human history, as illustrated by how Dutch citizens responded to floods, storms and severe winters during the Little Ice Age, future climate change may see, for instance, even greater temperature changes raising questions as to how we as a society, globally respond.
Overall this book successfully brings together different methodological approaches, draws on a variety of source material and provides an engaging historical narrative which embraces a wide range of subject areas. It shows how between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the republic successfully coped with the challenges of climate change, achieving its apogee economically, socially and culturally regardless of extremes of temperature and precipitation. There is a helpful glossary of climate terms, several maps, an appendix outlining how temperatures and journey statistics were calculated and information about the Danish sound tolls registers, along with an extensive bibliography detailing archive sources, and online and published primary and secondary sources. Offering an exemplar of how climate and the environment more generally can be integrated into national histories, it will be of interest to historians of the Dutch Republic and Europe as well as environmental historians, particularly those interested in the relationship between weather, climate change and human society.