The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720 (Studies in Environment and History)
Cambridge University Press, 2/8/2018
EAN 9781108419314, ISBN10: 1108419313
Hardcover, 384 pages, 22.9 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Dagomar Degroot offers the first detailed analysis of how a society thrived amid the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling that reached its chilliest point between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age allowed it to thrive as neighboring societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation. By tracing the occasionally counterintuitive manifestations of climate change from global to local scales, Degroot finds that the Little Ice Age presented not only challenges for Dutch citizens but also opportunities that they aggressively exploited in conducting commerce, waging war, and creating culture. The overall success of their Republic in coping with climate change offers lessons that we would be wise to heed today, as we confront the growing crisis of global warming.
Introduction
crisis and opportunity in a changing climate
1. The Little Ice Age
Part I. Commerce and Climate Change
Part I. Preface
2. Reaching Asia in a stormy, chilly climate
3. Sailing, floating, riding, and skating through a cooler Europe
Part II. Conflict and Climate Change
Part II. Preface
4. Cooling, warming, and the wars of independence, 1564–1648
5. Gales, winds, and Anglo-Dutch antagonism, 1652–88
Part III. Culture and Climate Change
Part III. Preface
6. Tracing and painting the Little Ice Age
7. Texts, technologies, and climate change
Conclusion
lessons from ice and gold
Appendices.