Floods, Worms, and Cattle Plague: Nature-induced Disaster at the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age, 1672-1764

Abstract

The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic was waning by the end of the seventeenth century. The dramatic economic growth and cultural efflorescence that had defined this era was stagnant. The catastrophic "disaster year" of 1672 was a watershed event that revealed the Republic's increasing fragility. It also signaled the beginning of an era of nature-induced disaster. Between 1672 and 1764, environmental catastrophes repeatedly tested Dutch cultural, technological, and economic resiliency. The four most dramatic nature-induced disasters included a massive coastal flood in 1717 that devastated communities across the North Sea coastal region, an infestation of invasive mollusks (shipworms) into the wooden components of sea dikes in the 1730s, and two outbreaks of cattle plague (1713-20; 1744-1764) that decimated herds in the Netherlands and across Europe. Dutch religious figures, government officials, technocrats, and the public wrestled with the meaning and consequences of these disasters in the context of Dutch decline. This dissertation argues that nature-induced disaster was a central element in the decline of the Dutch Republic. For contemporaries, disastrous events reflected increasing cultural and moral anxieties about the decay of this once-dominant European power. Disaster events also created social and economic instability that amplified the cultural resonance of these traumas. The repeated disasters of the period between 1672 and 1764 compounded these effects. Decline was far from homogenous, however. Disasters tested Dutch resiliency, but they also sparked introspection and innovation. Nature-induced disaster prompted reappraisal and redesign of institutional, technological, and medical strategies to manage and control environmental vulnerabilities. They also prompted providential reassessments of the ultimate cause and meaning of these events. Four case studies evaluate catastrophic disaster events that occurred between 1672 and 1764, highlighting the contingencies and continuities that shaped Dutch interpretation and response. Ideas about natural change mirrored shifting environmental realities as the seemingly novel, or uniquely devastating condition of disasters during this era conditioned Dutch moral, technological, and medical reactions. Disasters were also long-term processes. They were the cumulative outcome of long-standing natural and cultural relationships. Disasters often underscored increasing disequilibria in Dutch relationships between a changing environment and their cultural and social systems of control. Contemporaries conceptually integrated multiple disaster episodes into a longer period of disaster that lasted from 1672-1764. The repeated nature-induced catastrophes during this post-Golden Age era of disaster entered into a conjuncture of economic, cultural, and climatic disasters that created a devastating and deadly synergy. The cumulative and compounding nature of this synergy was a significant factor in Dutch Golden Age decline.