Disaster in the Early Modern World

How did early modern societies think about disasters, such as earthquakes or floods? How did they represent disaster, and how did they intervene to mitigate its destructive effects? This collection showcases the breadth of new work on the period ca. 1300-1750.

Autorentext

Ovanes Akopyan is a Marie Sk odowska-Curie fellow at Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

David Rosenthal is a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and co-director of Hidden Cities apps.

Inhalt

Introduction Part 1: Examinations 1. Taming the Future?: From 'Natural' Hazards and 'Disasters' to a Securitisation Against 'Risks' 2. Power, Fortune and Scientia naturalis: A Humanist Reading of Disasters in Giannozzo Manetti's De terremotu 3. Thinking with the Flood: Animal Endangerment and the Moral Economy of Disaster 4. Flood, Fire, and Tears: Imagining Climate Apocalypse in Scheuchzer's De portione (1707/08) 5. Communicating Research on the Great Frost in the Republic of Letters: From Halle to London Part 2: Representations 6. What is an Avalanche?: Death in the Snow from Antiquity to Early Modern Times 7. Disasters and Devotion: Sacred Images and Religious Practices in Spanish America (16th-18th Centuries) 8. Straightening the Arno: Artistic Representations of Water Management in Medici Ducal and Grand Ducal Florence 9. Responses to a Recurrent Disaster: Flood Writings in Rome, 1476-1598 Part 3: Interventions 10. Flood, War and Economy: Leonardo da Vinci and the Plan to Divert the Arno River 11. The Making of a Transnational Disaster Saint: Francisco Borja, Patron Saint of Earthquakes from the Andes to Europe 12. Dikes, Ships and Worms: Testing the Limits of Envirotechnical Transfer During the Dutch Shipworm Epidemic of the 1730s