Resilient societies, vulnerable people.

Storm Surges and Coastal

Floods in the North Sea Area before 1800.

Tim Soens | tim.soens@uantwerpen.be | 14 November 2016

Working Paper. All comments welcome.

I. Vulnerability: from people to systems (and back again).

Over the past years, an increasing number of historians forcefully argued for the vulnerability
of pre-industrial societies to natural hazards or shocks. New and exciting data on climatic
variation in the past reveal impressive climatic and environmental fluctuations and these
fluctuations seem to coincide with major social, economic or political transformations. Forget
about markets, institutions or power relations, it is the climate stupid, becomes the battle-
cry of a new generation of historians, exemplified by Geoffrey Parkers 2013 analysis of the
Global Crisis of the seventeenth century and Bruce Campbells more recent Great Transition
on the Black Death.1 And although all of these authors carefully state that the extreme
vulnerability of the societies under study is a product of both social and natural dynamics,
variations in natural conditions steered by solar activity, volcanic eruptions or El Nino events
- might offer the best explanation why some periods in history were so particular disaster
prone. Without doubt, this new generation of environmentalists among the historians, have
a point when drawing our attention to the neglected role of climatic, biological and
geophysical processes in history. After all, pioneers in climate history like Emmanuel LeRoy
Ladurie or Christian Pfister have been developing similar arguments since decades, but only
now their arguments gain in credibility, as they are supported by paleo-climatic data other
than historic documents.2

1
Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (2013); Bruce
Campbell, The Great Transition, although more nuanced on the causal chain.
2
LeRoy Ladurie; Pfister.

1
At a conceptual level, the renewed enthusiasm for some kind of independent role of natural
drivers in human history, is a clear product of its time. It mirrors the present-day confusion
about the interaction between nature and society in the present-day Anthropocene, the new
geological epoch, in which humanity influences the basic conditions of the planetary
ecosystem. Anthropocene scholars accept that one of the fundamental premises of modernity
is fatally flawed: the idea that nature is out there and can be controlled by men. Instead nature
and society are deemed to be permanently co-evolving, humans are co-producing nature, just
like nature is coproducing humans.3 The awareness that control is impossible, implies that we
are living in a risk society as Ulrich Beck aptly labelled it.4 In such risk society, we have to live
with the vagrancies and vicissitudes of climate and nature: the extreme events are there, we
dont control them, and we cannot escape them. Impact mitigation and adaptation the buzz
words of two decades of alarming reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) are the only solutions available.

Of course, applying such perspective on natural hazards and extreme events in the past also
raised some objections and even resistance, not at least with regard to the difficulty of
demonstrating causality between natural variability and societal change, or the difference in
geographic scale between atmospheric disturbances on a global scale and the often very
localized societal transformations.5 In this article I want to raise yet another issue, which is
related to the very nature of the discipline of environmental history (and environmental
studies as a whole): the idea of vulnerability and its opposite resilience as a characteristic of
systems, rather than people. The toolkit of historians looking at natural hazards and climate
extremes today is largely derived from environmental studies. Since the Post-WWII period,
biologists moved away from studying isolated plants or animals and instead turned their
attention to the complex systems in which these organisms lived. Such systemic ecosystem-
approach is at the origins of modern environmental sciences.6 In ecosystem analysis, resilience
initially indicated the buffer capacity of a system, its ability to absorb perturbation. In such
definition resilience was either measured through the magnitude of the disturbance which
could be absorbed before structural change occurred, or alternatively through the time it took

3
Winiwarter aritcle in Anthropocene over co-evolution; Chakrabarty Four Climate theses?
4
Beck, Risk society.
5
See Warde, Global Coincidence.
6
See Radkau for the origins and forerunners up to the nineteenth century (Liebig).

2
to recover from disturbance.7 Later, the concept was transferred to the social sciences. W.N.
Adger defines it as the ability of communities to withstand external shocks to their social
infrastructure, and sees a direct link between ecological and social resilience in societies
which were highly dependent on one single resource or a single ecosystem (for instance
fishing communities).8 Today, vulnerability and resilience are often framed from such systemic
perspective. According to the ecologist and system-theorist Marten Scheffer, who directly
inspired Bruce Campbell in the elaboration of his Great Transition, systems are normally
supposed to be in a certain equilibrium. They can be labelled vulnerable when this equilibrium
is prone to disturbance or unbalancing (either provoked by endogenous dysfunctions or
exogenous stresses). A system can only absorb a certain amount of disturbance. Once a certain
threshold or tipping point is reached, qualitative change might operate, and the system
might move to a new equilibrium.9

The unbalancing of socio-environmental systems, thresholds, tipping points these are

familiar terms in present-day debates on global warming, the Anthropocene, and Climate
Change, which are now applied to past societies well. However, when limiting ourselves to
natural or better, nature-induced10 - hazards in pre-industrial societies, do we really find a
lot of evidence supporting such systemic vulnerability? The answer to this question not only
depends on the strength of the causal relationship, but also on the definition of what is
considered systemic vulnerability. Take for instance the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, the best
known earthquake in European history, which might have killed about 20 to 30,000 people in
Lisbon alone (out of a population of 160,000 to 200,000). The Earthquake certainly changed
the appearance of Lisbon, but did it provoke a systemic change and can Portugese society
before 1755 be characterized as vulnerable? For sure, the Portugese government headed by
the Marquess of Pombal instrumentalized the disaster to reshape the Portugese capital, to
modernize the administration, and to renegotiate trade relations with England.11 But is this
enough to speak of a systemic transition, especially when considering the system as an

7
The pioneering article was Holling, Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems, 1973; Adger; 349; Revet,
gives a good overview; Bavel, B. and Curtis D. (2016), Understanding disasters by better using history:
Systematically using the historical record as a way to advance the field of disaster studies,
8
Adger, 361.
9
Scheffer, Marten, Critical Transitions in nature and society, Princeton, 2009; see Campbell, Great Transition, 23-
24, who does mention recent criticism on the tipping point concept.
10
Pfister 2009 argues for the use of nature-induced instead of natural disasters.
11
Footnote.

3
integrated socio-environmental reality? For the Lisbon Earthquake and for most natural
hazards in the pre-industrial period, research on systemic vulnerability and transition, will
reach the same conclusion as Georgina Endfield in her discussion of extreme drought and
floods in colonial Mexico: society as a whole did not collapse, but proved remarkably resilient
to such problems.12 The clear examples of societal or socio-ecological - breakdown triggered
by a natural hazard are very rare. Perhaps this might be different for communities in extremely
fragile and isolated environments think of Norse Greenland or Easter Island13 - or for these
limited episodes in human history which saw a concentration of particularly unfavorable
environmental conditions aptly called sloughs by the historian of China Timothy Brook14 -
with the Black Death this combined physical and biological conspiracy of nature15 - as its
most prominent example. In the words of Bruce Campbell, the floundering socio-ecological
regime of pre-Black Death Europe was terminally undermined by the perfect storm of the
Black death and a new age was born, Little Ice Age conditions replacing those of the Medieval
Climate Anomaly.16

Even there, things become problematic when realizing that evidence of change following
shocks is not necessarily a sign of their previous vulnerability. In disaster studies, older
conservative definitions of resilience measuring the restoration of the previous equilibrium
are replaced by more progressive ones, seeing adaptation and even transformation of the
system as something positive rather than negative. Apart from the buffer capacity of societies
(absorption or bouncing back), two further levels of resilience are usually discerned: on the
one hand the adaptive capacity (or the capacity to learn and [] adjust responses to
changing external drivers and internal processes, and continue operating) and on the other
the transformative capacity (or the capacity to create a fundamentally new system when
ecological, economic or social structures make the existing system untenable).17 From such

12
Endfield, The resilience and adaptive capacity, p. 3677.
13
Even in these cases, collapse is seldom directly triggered by natural hazards or medium- to long-term climate
change. After all the miracle of Norse Greenland is not its eventual demise, but its long-term continuity.
(Diamond, Collapse).
14
Timothy Brook, The Troubled empire. China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Harvard University Press, 2013,
pp. 50-78; 249-255.
15
Campbell, Nature as historical protagonist, 305.
16
Campbell, the Great Transition, 328-329.
17
Christophe Bn, Derek Headey, Lawrence Haddad and Klaus von Grebmer, Is resilience a useful concept in
the context of food security and nutrition programmes? Some conceptual and practical considerations, Food
Security, 2016, 8: 125, quoting Berkes et al. 2003: 13 and Walker et al. 2004: 5.

4
perspective even the falling yields, settlement retreat, and the conversion from arable farming
to animal husbandry after the Black Death might be not so much the result of uttermost
disruption, but rather from a series of deliberate and rational decisions by clever demesne
officials, adapting to changing conditions, as for instance suggested by David Stone in his
analysis of the post-Black Death manorial economy in the East Anglian fenlands.18 Qualitative
change in disguise of the abandon and replacement of traditional coping mechanisms,
becomes a sign of resilience rather than vulnerability.19

Labelling a society resilient or vulnerable in the face of natural disaster, the answer seems to
be in the eye of the beholder (either eye-witnesses or historians).20 So, should we abandon
these concepts all together? Not at all, but we should move the analysis from the level of the
system as a whole, and instead try to locate the vulnerability within the system. Are the signs
of breakdown, adaptation and transformation mostly situated at the level of politics, the
economy, the ecosystem, culture or social relations? Or is vulnerability not so much a feature
of societies as a whole, but rather of specific groups within society, who through a
combination of environmental and social processes might be put at risk, either physically, in
their material assets or in the organization of their livelihoods.21 In disaster studies, the latter
approach is usually associated with the work of social geographers like Ben Wisner or Piers
Blaikie, and the Latin-American RED de Estudios Sociales en Prevencin de Desastres. Spurred
by the African Sahel Droughts of the 1970s social scientists started to react against the until
then predominantly technological approach of disasters, as well as the presumed naturalness
of natural disasters. Not natural variability, but global inequality and the underdevelopment
of the Third World - turned natural hazards into disasters.22 While the equation of vulnerability

18
David Stone, Decision-making in Medieval Agriculture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 120 dealing with the
period 1349-1375 as a whole. Stone admit a much more chaotic situation in the immediate post-Black Death
years 1349-1353 (Stone, The Black Death and its immediate aftermath). Campbell, The Great Transition, 373-
394 sees such post-Black Death economic adjustments, as well as the undeniable increases in living standards,
as mostly windfall gains which could not impede long-term stagnation (and hence cannot be seen as a sign of
resilience); compare Dyer, Standards of Living, 259-260
19
Revet, op cit.
20
Contemporary observers of disaster could conceive competing narratives of resilience and vulnerability, see:
Raingard Esser, Ofter gheen water op en hadde gheweest Narratives of resilience on the Dutch Coast in the
Seventeenth Century, Dutch Crossing, 40:2, 2016, pp. 97-107, On vulnerability as discursive strategy, see also:
Gregg Bankoff Rendering the world unsafe: vulnerability as Western discourse, Disasters, 25.1 (2001), 19-35;
21
Virginia Garca Acosta, Historical Disaster Research.
22
B. Wisner en P. Blaikie (eds.), At Risk: Natural Hazards, Peoples Vulnerability and Disasters (Londen 1994); Phil
OKeefe, Ken Westgate and Ben Wisner, Taking the naturalness out of natural disasters, Nature, 260, April 15,
1976, pp. 566-568 was an eye-opening article, even though the reference of the 1976 Guatemala Earthquake as

5
with poverty might be considered reductionist23, the basic research question of Wisner and
Blaikie Who Suffers and Why? still offers a valuable starting point for an alternative reading
of natural hazards and disasters in history. In what follows, I will illustrate this by focusing on
one specific type of natural hazard: coastal floods following storm surges in the North Sea
Area, questioning whether vulnerability and resilience should be searched for at the level of
North Sea Society as a whole (its economy, environment or political system), or rather can be
retraced to specific groups in specific contexts.

II. Coastal Floods in the North Sea Area.

The North Sea Area has a long history of coastal floods induced by storm surges, from the
mythical 838 flood in Frisia to the modern disasters of 1953 and 1962, respectively killing
about 1800 people in the Netherlands, and about 350 in the North-German Elbe estuary. For
more than a thousand years living with the permanent risk of flooding has been a dominant
feature of North Sea society.24 Storm surges are a typical example of extreme weather a
conjunction of a powerful storm and high water levels (often spring tide). Itself the storminess
might be fueled by broader fluctuations in global atmospheric conditions. As such, climatic
drivers, in combination with the environmental dynamics of the coastal lowlands might
explain why storm surges occurred in the North Sea Area. More difficult is the question
whether or not some periods experienced more storms than others. Reliable instrumental
measurements on wind speed are only available from the nineteenth century onwards, and
mostly indicate considerable interannual to multidecadal variability with periods of more
storms for instance in the late nineteenth and the late twentieth century alternating with
periods of significantly less storminess (for instance the 1960s and 1970s), but without
consistent long term trends.25 Reconstruction of storminess in a more distant past is

a Classquake and the overall rejection of climate change seem outdated today. See also Andrew Maskrey (ed.),
Los desastres no son naturales. Red de Estudios Sociales en Prevencin de Desastres en Amrica Latina, 1993 ;
Hewitt, INterpretations of Calamity, 1983. Cabane and Revet, 2015, 60-61.
23
See for instance Martinez Alliers work on the Environmentalism of the Poor.
24
Mauelshagen; Bankoff;
25
Dangendorf et al. North Sea Storminess, 2014; Suursaar, How to quantify long-term changes in coastal sea
storminess, 2014. Most research indicates a relationship between greater storminess in Northern Europe and a
strongly positive NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) index (producing intense westerlies reaching the North Sea) in
the North Athlantic, but on a more regional level the intensity and directions of cyclonic activity might
significantly fluctuate over time.

6
complicated as most available proxies would record the impact (damage) rather than the
actual strength of the storm.26 Using historical documentary proxies, Adriaan de Kraker
has tempted to reconstruct storminess along the Flemish and Zeeland coast for the period
1390-172527. From this analysis, De Kraker derived nine periods of intensified storminess, but
once again without long-term pattern of increasing or decreasing storm activity. As the vast
majority of historical sources only document storms which caused damage, the reconstruction
inevitably combines an assessment of the occurrence of storms with an assessment of their
impact. It hence remains difficult to conclude whether the variation in storminess revealed by
De Kraker is to be explained by (exogenous) variations in storminess or (endogenous)
variations in the resilience to storms and storminess.

So, while extreme storms happened in the North Sea, while some of these storms were more
extreme than others, and while some decades saw more severe storms than others, North
Sea Storminess tells us very little about the occurrence of flood disasters. The storm surge
only turns into a catastrophe due to social interference, both in the way the coastal lowlands
were organized, in the organization of settlement and land-use, and in the coping and relief
mechanisms deployed. If humans would not have built sea-walls, sea-walls could not have
been breached by storm surges, and the storm surge would not have turned into a disaster.
Or as, Scott Gabriel Knowles, puts it: it is the manufacture of second nature technological
systems at the interface of water and land [] that creates the context of modern disaster.28
In the coastal wetlands of the North Sea Area, such technological systems combining the
construction of sea-walls and drainage systems appeared around 1000 AD. Before that period,
most settlement was situated on higher grounds the terpen, Warften and Wurten which
were partially natural and partially artificial elevations in the coastal landscape29. After 1000
AD a Great Transformation set in, in which coastal marshes were reclaimed and permanently

26
For the North Atlantic, inlands deposits of seasalt in Greenland ice cores the result of storm wind - might
offer a proxy, just like sand deposits in (inland) peat bogs. The first analyses are not consistent with regard to a
long-term trend. Recent research on peat bogs in the Outer Hebrides, confirms the link with positive NAO, and
suggests an overall lesser storminess during the Little Ice Age compared with the Medieval Climate Anomaly:
Orme, L. et al., Aeolian sediment reconstructions from the Scottish Outer Hebrides: Late Holocene storminess
and the role of the North Atlantic Oscillation, Quarternary Science Reviews, 2016, 132:15-25.
27
De Kraker, 2003 and 2006.
28
Scott Gabriel Knowles, CIT.
29
Huge literature on terpen in the Wadden Sea region:

7
protected by sea-walls, enabling a more intensified land-use and a spread of settlement.30 The
first more or less reliable reports on flood disasters follow shortly afterwards in Flanders for
instance in 1014 and 1042).

Figure 1: location map with some of the places mentioned in the text (figure: Iason
Jongepier, GIStorical Antwerp).

From compilations of narrative sources (mostly chronicles) on weather conditions and

weather-related hazards in the North-Sea Area, some clusters of flood disasters can be
derived.31 These clusters are different from region to region, contrasting for instance the early
15th century Elizabeth Floods in the Southwestern Netherlands with the devastating Wadden
Sea Floods of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.32 Future storminess research might

30
Rippon, Stephen, The transformation of coastal wetlands: exploitation and management of marshland
landscapes in North West Europe during the Roman and medieval periods. Oxford 2000; Tys, D. the Medieval
embankment of coastal Flanders in context, in: Thoen, Borger, Soens, Landscapes and Seascapes.
31
M.K.E. Gottschalk, Storm Surges and River Floods in the Netherlands (Assen, 19711977) and Buisman for the
Low Countries, Gram Jensen and Petersen/Rohde for Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein/Niedersachsen, Lamb and
Frydendahl for England.Gottschalk 1971-77, Buisman 1995-2006; Lamb and Frydendahl. The latter to be
supplemented by more regional studies.
32
For Flanders between the 13th and the 16th century: Soens, T. (2011): Floods and money. Funding drainage
and flood control in coastal Flanders (13th-16th centuries), Continuity and Change, 26 (2011), 333-365; For the
Dollard region in Groningen/Ost-Friesland, Otto Knottnerus could demonstrate that many alleged late-medieval

8
indicate that such floods coincided with decades of increased storminess, and that a
prevalence of arctic cyclones generating northwestern storms was particularly dangerous for
coast X or Y. However, highly similar events occurred in other periods and in neighbouring
regions as well, without necessarily turning into a disaster. We hence should investigate why
particular coastal communities in particular contexts proved so vulnerable for floods, and how
the features and causes of these vulnerability can be assessed?

III. The system was resilient: recovery and adaptation of coastal

economy, society and ecology

From the framework of systemic vulnerability and resilience elaborated above, it can be
derived that a coastal socio-environmental system can only be labelled vulnerable if the
disturbance caused by a flood or a serious of floods - cannot be countered through either
absorption, adaptation or transformation. If a system shows rapid recovery after a flood,
either without structural changes or with changes increasing the capacity of the system to
cope with future floods, the system could be deemed resilient. Looking at the history of
coastal flood disasters in the North Sea Area before 1800 absorption seems to prevail: the
overwhelming majority of flood disasters at least of those who did not coincide with a major
episode of open warfare33 - was followed by rapid recovery and a remarkable continuity in the
economic, political and environmental functionings of a system.

In a pioneering article on the economic impact of pre-modern flood disasters, Mark Bailey has
argued that repeated coastal flooding did contribute to a stagnation and decline of agricultural
output in Southern England between 1280 and 1350.34 His argument can apparently be
underpinned by fiscal data showing the relative decline of English coastal marshes, which in

flood disasters (1277, 1287, 1362) either did not affect the region or turned out to be complete myths
(Knottnerus 2013; D. Curtis,Coping with Crisis: The Resilience and Vulnerability of Pre-Industrial Settlements,
Farnham: Ashgate, 2014: 186-187; Rheinheimer (M.) (2003): Mythos Sturmflut. Der Kamp gegen das Meer und
die Suche nach Identitt, Demokratische Geschichte 15 (2003), 9-58).
33
On the impact of wartime floods: de Kraker.
34
Bailey, M., Per impetum maris: natural disaster and economic decline in EasternEngland, 1275-1350, in B.
Campbell (ed.), Before the Black Black Death. Essaysin the crisis of the early fourteenth century (Manchester,
1991), 184-208.

9
the thirteenth and early fourteenth century belonged to the richest districts of England, but
by the sixteenth century yielded much less tax revenue per surface unit than neighbouring
inland regions.35 It is tempting to associate this relative decline of the coastal marshes in late-
medieval England to increased flood problems.36 For the marshlands of southern England as
for Coastal Flanders - this view has recently been challenged, most notably by Mark Gardiner
and Spencer Dimmock, who both have argued that the spectacular decline in population and
the loss of entire villages did occur much later than often thought (c. 1470-1530) and were
not caused by catastrophic flooding (nor by the Black Death more than a century before).
Although there certainly were serious flood events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
and sometimes entire villages were flooded, this did not imply the end of the marshland
communities. Instead flooded villages, including their churches, were carefully dismantled and
relocated to higher ground. Before the sixteenth century, building materials were carefully
recuperated and reused by their former inhabitants who were still living nearby.37 More
structural changes became visible from the late sixteenth century onwards, as the region
turned into an area of extensive pasturing. This transformation however, cannot be explained
by catastrophic floods nor by the Black Death - but rather by long-term processes of
consolidation of landholding, engrossment of holdings, the declining autonomy of the village
communities, the fiscal burdens of warfare and so on.

In other words, the potential of flood disasters to force economic change should not be
overestimated. Floods even the largest ones were localized events, which did not affect

35
In the Lay Subsidy of 1334, marsh districts were among the districts showing the highest population densities
and the highest assessments per square mile in England (30 and over per sq. mile). This is the case for the North
Kent marshes, the Norfolk Broads and the marshland of Freebridge Hundred along the Wash in Norfolk
(Glasscock, 1975: XXVII), as well as the parts of Romney Marsh in the south included in the Lay Subsidy (Spencer
Dimmock, The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400-1600, Leiden, Brill, 2014: 238). Two centuries later, in the
Lay Subsidy of 1524/25, the picture was reversed, and Romney Marsh was the district of Kent with the lowest
taxation per square mile (Sheail and Hoyle, 1998, p. 107).
36
Mate (M.) (2006), Trade and economic developments 1450-1550: the experience of Kent, Surrey and Sussex,
Woodbridge, 169ff.
37
Gardiner, Settlement Change, 1998, pp. 130-132; Dimmock, 240-242; Compare the village of IJzendijke in
coastal Flanders, which was flooded in XXX. After attempts to restore the dikes, the village church was carefully
dismantled and the building materials were recuperated (Van Slembrouck XXX). A similar story of relocation and
adaptation in a flooded landscape could be told for the Grote Waard in the Dutch River Delta, were 22 villages
were flooded, but not abandoned, in the wake of the 1421 Elisabeth floodThis was the astonishing conclusion
from an official enquiry one century after the Flood: the flooded Grote Waard was still intensively used, with
many people living either nearby or on higher spots within the flooded region, combining typical wetland
activities (fishing, reed cutting) with cattle holding (Published by Wikaart V. et al., Nijet dan water ende
wolcken).

10
entire economic regions. Unlike for instance the Great Famine of 1315-1738, there is no sign
whatsoever that even the worst flood disaster caused disintegration of agricultural markets,
neither in the fourteenth nor in the eighteenth centuries.39 The few long-term reconstructions
of agricultural output in coastal regions40 also indicate that bouncing back was the
predominant answer of coastal economies on flood disasters. For the coastal village of Heist
in Flanders, tithe receipts (of cereals) can be followed from the 1280s to the end of the
eighteenth century. In this coastal region a structural decline of cereal production can be
noticed, starting well before the Black Death. Floods on the other hand, did cause a drop in
tithe receipts in minimum 9 and maximum 13 years (1391 being the first flood visible in the
series, 1714-15 the last one).41 Three flood episodes - 1404, 1421/24 and 1509/11 even led
to a significant reduction in tithe profits which lasted for more than one year. However, these
major floods as well were followed every flood was followed by rapid recovery, and this is also
true for other types of nature-induced hazards such as harvest failures or the Black Death. In
this region cereal production boomed in the early 1350s. The only type of hazard which really
disturbed agricultural output was warfare: major periods of (civil) war like 1383-87; 1484-
88/1491-92 and 1570-1585 and 1601-04 had a much more lasting impact on tithe receipts.
Wars not only affected more people, larger regions for longer periods of time, they also tend
to bring destruction of capital goods, which might not be the case in a flood (see below) or a
famine.42

38
Slavin, Market Failure.
39
See coastal price series published by Verhulst for Bruges (Coastal Flanders) or Tijms for Groningen.
40
As manorialism and demesne farming tend to be weakly developed in coastal regions after 1250, we lack
reconstructions of production on a yearly base. See for instance the distribution of medieval manorial accounts
in Campbell, Seigniorial Agriculture, 52-53.
41
We only considered drops of more than 25% compared to a twenty-year moving average.
42
Gutman XXX. A similar conclusion on the economic impact of natural hazards (limited) and war (large) in
contemporary society is reached by Cavallo et al. 2013.

11
 12000

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0
1283
1298
1313
1328
1343
1358
1373
1388
1403
1418
1433
1448
1463
1478
1493
1508
1523
1538
1553
1568
1583
1598
1613
1628
1643
1658
1673
1688
1703
1718
1733
1748
1763
1778
Figure 2: cereal tithes in the coastal parish of Heist, Flanders (1284-1793) (cash receipts
converted to litres of wheat, using prices of the current year, based on Dombrecht 2013).

While absorption prevailed, in some contexts signs of economic adaptation are visible (even
though it is difficult to say whether these should be conceived as the direct impact of floods,
or of floods being instrumentalized by economic actors to accelerate changes which were
happening anyhow). In the 1370s, the English Abbey of Barking was confronted with major
flooding on its central manor near the Thames Estuary. Originally, the reaction was vigorous,
and considerable amounts of money were spent to repair the sea-walls, helped by tax
exemptions and the issuing of commissions de wallis et fossatis by the English Crown (aimed
at coordinating the repair works). However, by the 1380s James Galloway detected a clear
change in the abbeys policy: investments came to an end and the flooding of large stretches
of marsh was no longer countered. Instead the abbey started to organize fisheries and the
exploitation of saltmarsh resources. No further commissions were issued by the Crown for this
area. Are we witnessing the final breakdown of a system collapsing due to increased pressure
from the sea? Not really, from the point of view of the Abbey, this was a pragmatic and
entirely rational accommodation to changed socio-economic and environmental realities,
including the social breakdown of the coastal peasantry in the wake of the Peasant Revolt of
1381.43 Of course, the abbeys new policy brought severe dislocation for many of its tenants

43
Galloway, London and Beyond, 2012, p. 78; p. 83. A similar transition of high investment policies to
minimal spending was observed for Coastal Flanders, shortly after 1420: Soens, Floods and Money, 338-340.

12
and other inhabitants of the Barking marshes, but from a systemic point of view, the changing
strategy of coping was a sign of resilience, rather than vulnerability.

In the Early Modern period as well, even the worst flood catastrophe seldom brought real
economic breakdown.44 The devastating Wadden Sea Floods of the seventeenth and early
eighteenth century, which will be discussed more in detail below, killed thousands of people
and dislocated thousands of others, but the coastal economy was not critically endangered by
the floods. As a matter of fact, the coastal economy of the Northern Netherlands and Northern
Germany performed very badly in this period, and in Groningen for instance, land prices
reached a secular low just after the Christmas Flood of 1717.45 Furthermore, Manfred
Jakubowski-Tiessen observed for neighbouring parts of Germany that land-owning farmers
saw their debts increase significantly. In some regions although not everywhere debts
related to the Christmas flood would only be repaid in the late 18th century.46 However, land
prices had been declining for decades as a result of the agricultural crisis, so the flood as well
as concurrent outbreaks of cattle plague - proved at best complicating factors.47 The structural
characteristics of the coastal economy did not change because of the flood. Even engrossment
of farms in the wake of the flood disaster remained in the end rather limited, as few landlords
were interested in investing in regions liable to flood in a period of agrarian depression.
Certainly some big farmers got bankrupt, but they were replaced by others. Only after 1750
the coastal economy of the northern marshlands went through a period of structural
transformation and growth, converting the marshlands in an extremely polarized but
economically prosperous grain republic dominated by wealthy farmers, but the flood
disaster of 1717 plays no role in the explanation of the economic success story of the coastal
marshlands in this period.48

44
In Zeeland-Flanders for instance, the impact of the 1714 and 1715 floods on the export of cereals was minimal.
In fact, in 1714, the export recovered from a low point in 1713, and from 1715 onwards boomed as never before
(Van Cruyningen, P. J. 2000, Behoudend maar buigzaam. Boeren in West-Zeeuws-Vlaanderen 1650-1850,
Wageningen AAG Bijdragen.: 412-414).
45
Priester (P) (1991), De economische ontwikkeling van de landbouw in Groningen 1800-1910 : een
kwalitatieve en kwantitatieve analyse, Wageningen, pp. 120-121; Knibbe, Pachtprijzen in Friesland.
46
Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen (1992), Sturmflut 1717. Die Bewltigung einer Naturkatastrophe in der Frhen
Neuzeit (Mnchen: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992): 198-200.
47
For the relationship with Cattle Plague, see Sundberg XXX.
48
The remarkable economic expansion of the coastal marshlands in the later half of the 18th century is analyzed
by Priester, Groningen and Richard Paping 'Voor een handvol stuivers' : werken, verdienen en besteden: de
levensstandaard van boeren, arbeiders en middenstanders op de Groninger klei, 1770-1860, Groningen, 1995;
The polarization process is analyzed by Curtis.

13
Similar stories of absorption complemented by adaptation could be told from an institutional,
social and environmental perspective. For the most part, pre-industrial flood disasters did not
witness major institutional changes in the way flood protection, insurance strategies or village
politics were organized. Around 1700 for instance, the traditional maintenance of flood
protection through the allotment of sea-walls to individual farmers was increasingly
questioned by supra-local authorities searching to expand their grip on coastal environment
and societies. In such context, flood disasters were eagerly recuperated to prove the failure
of traditional coping mechanisms. After all, never waste a good crisis.49 As similar changes
also occurred in regions with did not experience flood disasters, and as many flood-haunted
regions did not see institutional change, we hardly speak of an institutional innovation cycle
driven by disaster. Absorption and continuity also predominated social relations. Most flood
disasters did not witness major reconfigurations of landholding and landed property. In the
wake of the 1717 Christmas Flood the most deadly flood in the history of the North Sea Area
- some bankrupt tenant farmers were replaced by new ones, and landless labourers managed
to acquire pieces of land previously owned by peasants killed in the flood, but evidence for
real engrossment is limited.50 However, in contexts which were already prone to either
engrossment or fragmentation of landholding, a flood might accelerate this evolution. This
was the case for instance in thirteenth and fourteenth century Flanders, where monastic
landholders managed to acquire thousands of hectares of flooded peasant land in the wake
of the 1288 and 1334 floods.51 Perhaps social reconfiguration might be more important after
wars as argued by Thomas Piketty for the redistribution of capital in the wake of World War
I and II52 - or a major demographic collapse like the Black Death. Even in the latter cases
however, the direction of the redistribution towards either consolidation or fragmentation
was diverse and depending on the pre-existing conditions before the Disaster.53 Finally, from

49
See Van Tielhof XXX; Van Cruyningen XXX; Sundberg XXX. Compare Richard J. Samuels, 3.11 Disaster and
Change in Japan, Cornell University Press, 2013 for an in-depth analysis of the rhetoric of crisis and need for
institutional change following the Fukujima nuclear disaster. Miao and Popp offer an example of the
innovation-spurred by disaster thesis.
50
Jakubowski-Tiessen XXX. In a sample of 110 so-called Kloostermeiers (big tenant farmers of former monastic
land) in the heavily affected Hunsingo District in Groningen, we found only one example of engrossment
following the 1717 flood: in 1719 Rinje and Frauke Halsema, tenants of the Freddema-house in Kloosterburen,
enlarged their considerable holding of 75 hectares with the land of Jacob Jurjens (27 hectares). In 1722 a
further extension followed, with the land of Clais Hindric (42 hectares). Halsema hence became by far the
largest farmer in our sample (Account provincielanden 1719)
51
Soens, COST Ecology and Environment.
52
Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century.
53
As observed by Curtis, Van Bavel and Soens, 2016, 765.

14
an environmental point of view, the capacity of an estuarine or coastal system to absorb floods
depends to a large extent from the available space to accommodate excess flood waters.
Present-day flood protection programs are to a large extent aimed at increasing this
accommodation space through coastal realignment or the construction of controlled
inundation areas.54 From such perspective, dike breaches and even the abandoning of land to
the sea or the estuary, can be deemed highly resilient adaptations as they increased the
available accommodation space.

In short coastal society as a whole never witnessed systemic disruption forced by a flood
disaster. It managed to overcome these disasters through absorption and adaptation. The
basic social and ecological features of the system continued to function along the pre-disaster
lines, or dynamically adapted to new conditions. Either reaction can be called resilient from
a systemic point of view. Floods however could be a hugely traumatic and devastating
experience at the level of individual households living in the coastal marshes. The overall
resilience of society, did not impede the extreme vulnerability of people.

IV. Who suffered and why? Identifying the victims.

Medieval and early modern chroniclers were fascinated by floods, and left us with a huge
number of flood reports which since have been compiled in gazetteers.55 They often speak of
large numbers of victims and huge amount of material damage. Especially when discussing
floods in a distant past or in distant regions, they often mention spectacular numbers of
people allegedly killed in the disaster. According to Johannes Hoyer, writing in the seventeenth
century, 200,000 people were killed in Northern Germany by the flood of 1362. In 1666,
Antonius Heimreich who gives reliable information on the 1634 Burchardi flood mentions
400,000 death for the 1570 All Saints Flood. 56 Such claims are of course utter nonsenses, as
they exceed by far the total population living in these coastal areas. There are good reasons
to assume that the many flood disasters, especially in the medieval period, were NOT
particularly deadly. First of all, as mentioned above, until the 15th century, most flooded

54
Temmerman, Stijn and Kirwan, Matthew L. (2015), Building land with a rising sea, Science 7 August 2015:
588-589.
55
Gottschalk 1971-77, Buisman 1995-2006 and digital indices like www.tambora.org
56
Rheinheimer 2003, 30; for similar criticism on the use of medieval chronicles see also Raska et al. 2014.

15
villages were in fact relocated, with the settlement continued on a different location which
was deemed safer or more appropriate. Secondly, in many medieval lowlands floods remained
a frequent life experience57, one to which the inhabitants were accustomed, and one for
which they were prepared. Already in the twelfth century, Saxo Grammaticus considered the
repeated flooding as something which had both advantages (for its deposal of sediments) and
disadvantages (for erosion and damage to people and houses).58 In the sixteenth century
coastal marshes along the Schleswig-coast, high tides overtopping the sea-walls were still
considered part of everyday life. After a flood, the floodwater could be evacuated through the
normal drainage system.59 As argued by Martin Rheinheimer these amphibious practices got
lost from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards. New type of sea-walls were built,
which just like their counterparts in the Southern North-Sea Area offered a more permanent
type of flood protection, allowing settlement to leave the Warften.60

So, killing a lot of people was not a universal character of flood disasters in the North Sea Area.
High numbers of casualties were limited to specific floods in very specific conditions, and as
we will see these floods also killed specific groups of people. Buisman recently compiled the
available evidence on the number of fatalities caused by flood disasters in the Dutch Republic.
He concluded that only four floods since 1570 certainly killed more than 1,000 people: 1570,
1686, 1717 and 1953:

Year 1570 1717 1686 1953 1825 1682

Victims 6,000 ?? 2,426 c. 1,900 1,836 c. 380 < 100

Table 1: most deadly flood disasters in the history of flood disasters in the Netherlands
(based on Buisman, Duizend jaar weer, wind en water in de Lage Landen. VI, Franeker: Van
Wijnen, 2015: 980-981).

Based on our analysis we above, we would be inclined to add that these four flood disasters
were the most deadly in the entire human history of the North Sea Area. Even for the 1570

57
Bankoff, XXX; Mauelshagen, North Sea XXX.
58
Meier, Khn and Borger, Der Kstenatlas, p. 75-76, translated by A. Panten. The practice described reminds of
the periodic warping of marshlands as technique of fertilization (Agricultural History Review, Warping).
59
Rheinheimer, Mythos Sturmflut, 19
60
Rheinheimer, Mythos Sturmflut, 20-21, based on Bantelmann, 1966: 89

16
flood it remains to be questioned whether this flood indeed took the life of more than 6,000
people in the Dutch Republic alone, as suggested by Buisman. Nevertheless, with 1510 to 1559
verified victims in the Frisian district Oostdongeradeel and 559 in the East-Frisian Amt Esens,
the 1570 flood stands out as the first in a series of deadly floods characterizing the North of
the Dutch Republic and the adjacent Northern German districts from the late 16th to the early
18th century, with the 1717 Christmas flood standing out as the most deadly flood disaster in
the entire history of the North Sea Ara. For the latter flood, lists of death have been compiled
from Friesland to Denmark, often aggregated from detailed assessments per household by
parish vicars61, totaling 11,399 (Jakubowski-Tiessen) or 13352 (Buisman) death, mostly
concentrated in the Groninger districts of Hunsingo and Fivelingo, as well as Ost-Friesland &
Harlingerland (2787); Jever (1275-1294) and Butjadingerland (2316-2339).62

A striking contrast can be observed between these deadly Wadden Sea Floods - 1570, 1636,
1717 and 1686 - and the more limited number of death killed by flood disasters in other parts
of the North Sea Area in the same period. The 1682 flood, which mainly affected the
Southwestern Netherlands offers a good example. Whereas non-local sources such as the
loopende nieuwe maaren published in Utrecht mention high numbers of fatalities - 600
people killed near Hulst ! more accurate local sources mention about 70 people killed on
different spots on the Zeeland islands. The maximum number of people killed on one spot is
30 near or in the Zeeland town of Veere most of them described as poor or labourer.63
Similar or even lower numbers of fatalities characterize early modern floods in England, from
the 1607 Bristol Channel flood to the Boston flood in 1810.64

High numbers of casualties were not a general feature of coastal flood disasters, but only
characterized some flood disasters, in very particular contexts. For three of the catastrophic
Wadden Sea floods, detailed lists of victims have been preserved, which in two cases can be

61
According to Sundberg, dissertation, 24-25, the vicars also recorded the number of death in their parish
registers.
62
Gottschalk, Storm Surges, 681-683. The compilation of Jakubowksi-Tiessen seems more accurate. For
instance, for Land Wrsten Buisman mentions 500 death against 181 in Jakubowski-Tiessen; Ehrhardt,
Wrsten, 364 gives the detailed list per parish for Wrsten, totaling 191 death.
63
Gottschalk, III, 297ff
64
According to a pamphlet by vicar Samuel Partridge from May 1811, three people were killed by the flood: a
poor woman of Kirton, 83 years old, washed out of her bed; a young women of Fosdyke, who was milking cows
and perished through a dike breach in a nearby sea-wall and a young man of Fishtoft, died when trying to save
his fathers sheep (Boston flood 1810 XXX). For the Bristol Channel 1607 flood, the usually cited numbers of 500
to 2,000 death are unverifiable, and most probably hugely exaggerated (Mike Hall, 2013).

17
linked to data on wealth or farm size. As such they allow a unique insight in the social profile
of the flood victims. The first case concerns the district or Amt Esens in East-Frisia
(Niedersachsen) during the 1570 All Saints flood. In 1570 Esen, already was a society of large
farms, with 84% of the land concentrated in farms over 20 hectares. Their occupiers were not
tenant farmers, but rather landowning yeomen, with a voice in representative organizations.65
Homeier could link information on the damage suffered by individual households to the
amount of cattle they owned.66 A clear social bias becomes visible: the larger farmers were
seldom killed, and their houses were seldom destroyed, the two obviously being linked to each
other. Most of the victims clearly were smallholders and/or agricultural labourers, who also
saw most of their houses destroyed and a larger percentage of their cattle killed.

Size of tenants households with fatal % destroyed % dead cattle

(cattle units) Cattle units casualties (%) houses units
Lowest Quartile 0-2 54,4 81,6 73,2
Second Quartile 3-11 40,6 61,7 76,9
Third Quartile 12-33 28,8 33,6 59,3
Upper Quartile 34-119 4,7 7 49,3
Total 32,1 46 54,2

Table 2: relative casualties (people and cattle) in Esens (East-Frisia) after the 1570 Flood
(Based on Homeier 1970: 69 and Rheinheimer 2003: 17).

For 1634, Anton Heimreich, vicar on the island of Strand reproduced a damage assessment,
which was probably compiled by the local representative of the duke of Schleswig-Holstein
(the Staller). Interestingly, he did not only list 6034 death in 19 parishes on the former island
of Strand which mostly was abandoned after the flood but also mentions the number of
surviving households (436, hence about 2180 people). If this list is correct, two thirds of the
inhabitants of Strand were killed by the flood, which would be the highest mortality rate ever
found in a storm-induced flood disaster.67 Interestingly, Heimreich differentiated his report

65
Knottnerus: 7-8.
66
Homeier (H.), Die Allerheiligenflut von 1570 in Ostfriesland, in: De Vries and Winsenius (eds.), De
Allerheiligenvloed van 1570, Leeuwarden, pp. 62-78.
67
Meier, Khn and Borger, Kstenatlas, p. 105ff. The reliability of this list has yet to be examined. 1012 death on
the rather small island of Pellworm would indicate a high population density.

18
on the surviving households between farmers (Hauswirte or Bohlsmanner) and cottagers
(Ktener or Ktner). From the 436 surviving households only 14% (61) were cottagers.68 It is
highly unlikely that such distribution mirrors pre-flood conditions, as the number of cottagers
usually exceeds the number of farmers by far. In other words: most of the victims will have
been cottagers, whereas most of the survivors were farmers.

Finally, the most detailed evidence concerns the parish of Uithuizermeeden in the Groningen
district of Hunsingo. Both in 1686 and 1717, Hunsingo suffered extremely high numbers of
casualties (642 and 1942 respectively), and Uithuizermeeden was one of the most affected
parishes, with respectively 313 and 209 death. We ignore the precise size of the 1717
population in Uithuizermeeden, but 174 households were listed in a detailed assessment of
damage. As a result, a total population of around 1000 people seems realistic69 and the
devastating effect of the flood becomes clear: one out of three inhabitants in 1686 and one
out of five in 1717 might have died in the flood. Per household, the assessment lists the
number of people, cattle and horses killed as well as the damage to the houses. The results
can be compared with a 1721 fiscal census verpondingslijst which is basically a land tax,
based on land use and hence mirroring farm sizes.

Amount fatal
Size of land of land casualties Cattle lost destroyed
(ha) (ha) 1717 Victims 1717 (N) 1717 (N) houses 1717 (N)
Landholders
1721 census
Lowest Quartile
(37 households) 0,36-3,69 64,2 13 2 18 4
Second Quartile
(37 households) 3,69-14,55 303,0 17 27 86 14
Third Quartile
(37 households) 14,55-25,10 717,0 27 11 162 18

68
Own calculation based on Meier, Khn and Borger, Kstenatlas, 112. For one of the 19 villages (Osterwold),
the amount of surviving cottagers was missing, but as only 6 farmers households survived, it was probably zero.
69
Assuming that almost every household in 1717 suffered some form of damage, and 5 to 6 members per
household. In 1795/95, Uithuizermeeden counted 1286 inhabitants (Noordhoff, De 200e penning, pp. 99-100)
while the 1721 fiscal census listed 148 landholding households. XXX BEVOLKING.

19
 Upper Quartile
(37 households) 25,10-90,32 1457,6 29 6 290 14
Total 1721 (148
households) 2541,8 86 46 556 50
Victims 1717
Landholders
1717 NOT in
1721 census 88 163 169 55
Total 1717 174 209 725 105
Table 3: victims of the 1717 Christmas Flood in Uithuizermeden (Groningen) and census data
for the same village in 1721

As can be derived from Table 3, only half of the households in the 1717 list, were still present
in the 1721 list. The other half of the households, which had disappeared from the region by
1721 - suffered most of the deadly victims (163 out of 209), though only minor losses of cattle.
The contrast between people and cattle indicates that those were killed in the flood did not
own a lot of cattle. Among those households still present in the area four years after the flood,
we see huge differences according to farm size. The large farmers of Uithuizermeeden
holding more than 25 hectares of land each suffered only minor losses of life and most of
them (29 out of 37 households) could maintain themselves in the area, at least until 1721. The
Christmas Flood of 1717 seldom killed a large farmer or a member of his household. This is
confirmed by the administration of the Provincial land. On a sample of 111 kloostermeiers
holding on average 28 hectares of land in the Groninger district of Hunsingo, only one Duirt
Willems from Kloosterburen - was killed during the flood, and this was a rather atypical
kloostermeier, because he only farmed 12,5 hectares of land.70 On the other hand, the large
farmers were also seriously affected by the flood. In Uithuizermeeden, they lost on average
10 head of cattle each. Compared to the big farmers, the smallholders and the lower middling
groups working less than 14.55 hectares of land - were those who faced the risk of actually
dying in a storm flood. Between both groups, important divergences existed in the way the
survivors recovered from the flood: only the minority of smallholders which by chance
were largely unaffected by the disaster, continued to live in Uithuizermeeden, whereas among

70
Account Provincielanden 1719. The 48 guilders he owed the Provincial administration at the moment of his
death, could not be recovered, because he had lost everything.

20
those with a bit more land, we also find households mourning a lot of death, who still showed
continuity of residence.

In the three cases discussed the social bias in the profile of the victims is obvious. In all three
cases, a substantial amount of people proved extremely vulnerable to storm flooding, but this
vulnerability was never a general feature of society as a whole. The upper layers of rural
society seldom saw their lives threatened, although they could suffer severe economic
damage. In contrast, the labourers and cottagers were highly exposed to the risk of dying in a
flood disaster. Such extreme exposure to floods on the part of labourers and cottagers was
not a general feature of coastal societies: as we have seen, many early modern flood disasters
did not witness similar numbers of casualties. The question hence is: why were so many
people in the Early Modern Wadden Sea area at risk of dying in a flood disaster?

V. Explaining vulnerability: how people were put at risk.

In 1649 the famous Dutch engineer and land surveyor Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater published
a chronicle in which he recounted his experience of the Burchardi-Flood of 1634 along the
west-coast of what is today Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. At the time, Leeghwater was
overseeing the ambitious construction of a new dam - the Bottschlosser Werk which would
allow the reclamation of a vast amount of marshland in the Dagebuller Bcht on behalf of
Friedrich III, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf. When the wind was reaching gale force and
the waves pounded the sea-walls, a servant urged Leeghwater to flee to his nearby house.
Leeghwater declined the offer, because the servants house was only situated five or six feet
above surface level. Instead he returned to his own house, situated on a dike, 11 feet above
surface level. While in bed, he was alerted that his house would not hold, as the waves were
overtopping the dike on which it stood. Leeghwater and his son fled to the Herenhuis the
house of the dike reeve, which also served as local inn and gathering place for the absentee
landlords when they visited the area. This house was larger and stronger, and though wood
posts were bursting, and part of the earth underneath the house was washed away, the house
did not collapse. Leeghwater, his son, the dike reeve and about twenty refugees with him

21
survived the flood (only to be chased the next day by a furious crowd of people accusing
Leeghwater for his obvious failure to build strong sea-walls).71

Leeghwaters story perfectly illustrates the first level of analysis in the so-called Pressure-and-
Release (PAR)-model developed by Wisner and Blaikie72 which aims to explain vulnerability to
natural hazards. In this model, vulnerability is conceived as a combination of a natural hazard
with (A) Unsafe conditions: living on dangerous locations, in houses lacking adequate
protection; (B): Dynamic pressures: periods of crisis (either economical or political), or rapid
transition (e. g. periods of rapid population growth, industrialization or urbanization); (C) Root
causes: limited access to power, resources, and structures (e.g. formal and informal networks
of assistance and relief). The PAR-model can be applied on a macro-level, investigating why
some regions where more vulnerable than others, but also on the micro-level of individual
communities, explaining why some families and individuals were more likely to survive than
others.

In the Wadden Sea Floods, the three levels of vulnerability are clearly visible. First of all, the
victims faced unsafe living conditions. in Leeghwaters narrative, only the Herenhuis survived
the flood. We already mentioned the medieval shift in settlement from elevated locations into
the lowlands of the marsh, protected by sea-walls. Even then, important farms often
continued to be built on elevated spots, probably both for reasons of status and safety. In the
early modern period, this practice was less and less observed in new embankment and
drainage projects, and sometimes even major farms were constructed on low locations. Most
problematic however, was the housing of agricultural labourers and smallholders: there are
quite a few examples of polders where permanent or temporary houses for labourers were
located next to sea-walls or even entrenched in the slope of the sea-wall73 - on land provided
to them by the water board or the village authorities. Alternatively, they were housed by
individual farmers on pieces of low-valued - and low-lying - land. For the coastal marshlands

71
Jan Adriaensz, Leeghwater, Een kleyne chronycke ende voorbereydinghe van de afkomste ende t vergrooten
van de dorpen van Graft ende Ryp; ende van meer verscheyden notable oude stucken ende gheschiedenissen,
Amsterdam, Dominicus van der Stichel, 1649, pp. 32-34; see also Allemeyer, Kein Land ohne Deich: 287-288 and
307-308; and Esser Ein sonderlich und erschrcklich Wasserflut, 221 ff.)
72
Wisner and Blaikie, At Risk, 24.
73
See also Meier, Khn and Borger, Der Kstenatlas, 98-99: Anders als die in den Kgen auf teilweise hohen
Warften angelegten Hfe der Reichen errichteten die armen Leute und Handwerker ihre Katen auf See- und
Mitteldeichen. In most cases the cottages would not have been situated on top of sea-walls, but rather at their
foot; see also Lorenzen-Schmidt, Landliche Bevlkerung, 174.

22
of Groningen in which the parish of Uithuizermeeden discussed above is situated the
separation of living between the grand farmhouses of the large farmers, which in the
eighteenth and nineteenth century would reach an almost aristocratic grandeur, and the
clusters of labourer houses sinking in the mud in marginal and low-lying hamlets has been
clearly documented.74 For people living on marginal location, the question often is not if a
disaster would occur, but when.75 Living on higher ground did not provide absolute safety, as
many old medieval terp villages also flooded in the 1717 Christmas flood.76 However, living a
few metres higher, on a location removed from the sea-walls and in larger and stronger
houses, might have made the difference between life and death. Even as late as 1953 it is
surprising how many victims of the storm surge in Zeeland, were labourers and smallholders,
living in hamlets close to the sea-wall.77

Apart from living conditions, we should also take into account more dynamic pressures which
help to explain why some flood catastrophes were more deadly than others. The combination
of natural hazards with warfare and economic depression the two sometimes related often
proved fatal.78 It can hardly be deemed a coincidence that the Burchardi-Flood of October
1634 destroying the Schleswig island of Strand, occurred in a period when Nordfriesland was
ravaged by the armies of the King of Denmark, and the Duke of Schleswig-Gottorf during the
Eighty Years war.79 At the time of the Christmas flood of 1717, many of the northern German
principalities affected by the flood, were heavily involved in the Great Nordic War.80
Furthermore, the same 1717 flood disasters also coincided with a secular low in the
agricultural economy. In north of the Dutch Republic the economic recession ending the
Golden Age, might have started later (only after 1650), but also lasted longer.81 In turn, the

74
Curtis, Coping with Crisis, pp. 205-207.
75
Oliver-Smith 2009 in : he Political Economy of Hazards and Disasters edited by Eric C. Jones and Arthur
D.Murphy.).
76
Gottschalk, Storm Surges, 379 argues against the opinion that damage would have been less on the old terp
villages.
77
The social profile of the 1953 victims would require further research. However, an overrepresentation of
agricultural labourers and smallholders, linked to vulnerable housing locations, seems plausible: Slager, 2003.
78
See also Slavin and Campbell XXX.
79
Rolf Kuschert, Nordfriesland in der frhen Neuzeit, Nordfriisk Instituut, 2007, pp. 26-27.
80
Zie geschiedenis Schleswig-Holstein; zie agrargeschichte Germany.
81
Paping of Priester XXX.

23
low return from land might have had a direct impact on the maintenance of sea-walls, as
investments were postponed or cancelled.82

Finally however there are the root causes, which are the underlying mechanisms locating
people to unsafe locations, introducing types of land-use increasing the frequency or strength
of a natural hazard, or limiting the capability of people to secure their livelihoods. While the
root causes of the series of devastating and deadly floods in the early modern Wadden Sea
Area need further research, a few general features can be discerned: marginalization83
processes both at the regional level, and within village communities in this region; the
presence of a political elite which lacked accountability to most of the inhabitants; and an
economic system which induced a high-risk type of land-use. First of all, from the sixteenth
century onwards, most of the coastal marshes in the Wadden Sea Area had witnessed an
increased social polarization combined with a disintegration of the traditionally strong and
autonomous village communities (the Frisonica Libertas).84 This evolution broadly coincided
with the transition from a peasant economy to a capitalist farming system, which can be
observed in other coastal marshes of the North Sea Area as well. In the Wadden Sea Area the
transition to agrarian capitalism both displayed a specific chronology and several distinct
features, such as the importance of hereditary leasehold (instead of short-term leasehold) and
the leading role of farmers (rather than landlords) in preparing the ground for agrarian
capitalism to take root.85 From the sixteenth century onwards, the numbers of crofters
(Ktter-Ktner) and agricultural labourers with limited access to land was on the rise. In
contrast to other coastal regions, land consolidation was not paralleled by migration:
cottagers largely stayed in the coastal marshes. For the Wadden Sea Marshes as a whole, Otto
Knottnerus assessed the number of households holding less than five hectares of land at 50-
60 % of all households around 1550, rising to 60 to 80% in the second half of the seventeenth
century, and 70 to 90 % in the eighteenth century.86 On the other hand, before 1750 these

82
A similar link between land rents and investments in the flood protection system has been observed for late
medieval Flanders: Soens, Floods and Money.
83
See Wisner, Marginalization.
84
Oebele Vries, Frisonica libertas: Frisian freedom as an instance of medieval liberty, Journal of Medieval
History, 2015, 41:2, 229-248; see also Van Bavel XXX on the tradition of peasant revolts in this region between
the 12th and the 14th century.
85
Knottnerus, O. (2004), Yeomen and farmers in the Wadden Sea coastal marshes, c. 1500-c. 1900, in:
Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea area, pp. 149-186,
86
Curtis; Coping with crisis; Curtis, The Impact of Land Accumulation and Consolidation, 208. Curtis,
Landholding. Knottnerus, Yeomen and farmers, 157.

24
cottagers could not yet rely on an economic symbiosis with a powerful group of successful
tenant farmers. As argued by Daniel Curtis, the dual economy of multi-tasking cottagers on
the one hand and giant agricultural enterprises on the other would only take off in the latter
half of the eighteenth century.87

Secondly, we discern a problem of accountability88 on behalf of the political and economic

elites. From the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, village communities were
dominated by a small number of leading families developed into local lignages Hoofdelingen,
Haedlingen, Geschlechter which in war periods assumed military functions as captain and
inhabit reinforced stone houses89. In the early modern period, these lignages turned into a
sort of rural gentry called Jonkers in the Groninger Ommelanden. Whereas in the medieval
communal model of the marshes, political offices including those regarding water
management circulated among all old-established farms (excluding off course cottagers and
newcomers90, in the early modern period those were increasingly monopolized by the new
gentry. Individual farmers of old-established farms were still obliged to maintain their
traditional stretch of sea-wall (the so-called Kabeldeichung-system), but they increasingly
lacked the power to steer decision-making, as relevant offices were more or less feudalized.91
By 1700 most of the farmers even those occupying old established farms hence had little
grip on the organization of flood protection.92 On the other hand, large landowners, including
the gentry, urban elites, princes and provinces, were confronted with a system of hereditary

87
Knottnerus, Yeomen, p. 166; Curtis, The Impact of Land Accumulation and Consolidation, 208.
88
In famine studies, accountability designates the degree of responsibility towards the protection of
populations assigned to individual actors (from governments to companies and NGOS), irrespective whether
they are functioning or not in a democratic context: Devereux S. (eds.), The New Famines; Howe and Devereux
2004; De Waal A. 1997: Famine Crimes.
89
Vries, Frisonica Libertas, pp. 231-232.
90
Brakensiek, North-West Germany, 1000-1750, 2010: 242-244; Lange (U) (ed.), (1988), Landgemeinde und
frhmoderner Staat.
91
Feenstra, H., 1981: De bloeitijd en het verval van de Ommelander adel (1600-1800), Groningen, pp. 68-81.
Most rewarding in financial terms were the Schepperijen supervising the drainage system - yielding an average
fee of fl. 150 to 200 a year in the 18th century, not including fines (ibidem, p. 74). The term feudalized is used
by FOCKEMA, VI, pp. 33-35 for the Hunsingo and Fivelingo districts (as opposed to the Oldambt district where
offices related to water management kept on rotating); see also Hempenius 1991: 331-332. In other regions
offices kept on rotating, but the office and the actual exploitation of the farm were separated: Alma, R.H. (2011),
Klauwboeken-Entstehung, Entwicklung und berlieferung, Quaerendo, 41, 1-2, pp. 57-71; Feenstra and
OUdman, Vergeten plattelandselite, 67-81.
92
For similar problems faced by the peasantry of Coastal Flanders, see also Soens, T. (2013): Flood security in
the Medieval and Early Modern North Sea Area: a question of entitlement?, Environment and History 19
(2013): 209-232.

25
leases.93 In such system, the farmer enjoyed a much more secure form of tenure and the
advantage of fixed rents (which were not adapted to inflation). At the same time however,
the owner of the bare property rights (blooteigenaar) did not intervene in the maintenance,
repair or upgrading of the flood protection system, which remained the sole responsibility of
the tenant farmer.94 In contrast to systems of short-term leasehold95, hereditary leasehold did
not provide large landowners with an incentive to intervene either before or after the flood.

Thiridly, there might be one final root cause which helps to explain why so many people in
the Wadden Sea Area were put at risk of dying in a storm flood: the almost colonial dynamics
of coastal land reclamation in this region. Starting in the sixteenth century, a new type of
reclamation of coastal marshes spread all over the Wadden Sea Area. It presented a clear
break with the traditional system of flood protection, based on rather low sea-walls protected
by extensive stretches of salt-marsh in front of the sea-wall (usually exploited as common).96
The new embankments were either initiated by outsiders, or by local powerbrokers copying
foreign initiatives. They clearly served the territorial consolidation of principalities eager to
break local autonomy and were based upon a contested and sometimes violent reshufflement
of land rights. Technological schemes were imported from abroad (in this case the
southwestern Netherlands), just like the initial capital to realize the project and the settlers,
which hoped for a social mobility impossible in their homeland (the so-called Hollandereien).97
Production was based on bulk products (cereals, cattle, cheese) for export markets, entailing
an extreme simplification of nature (in the words of Donald Worster)98, and hence displayed
all the environmental instabilities typical for frontier colonial capitalism99. The adventures
of Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater in seventeenth century Schleswig, already illustrate much of
this dynamics. But the implications become even clearer, when considering the experience of

93
By 1755 the farming population of the Hunsingo-district of Groningen owned only 24% of the land, the rest
was shared by local nobility, citizens of Groningen, the Province of Groningen and institutional landowners
(Paping, Voor een handvol stuivers, 184).
94
Priester, Economische ontwikkeling, 110. Hereditary leasehold predominated all over the Wadden sea Area,
except for the Dutch province of Frisia, parts of East Frisia (Amt Esen) and in many new embankments along the
coast of Schleswig: Knottnerus, Yeomen and Farmers, 161-168.
95
Van Cruyningen P.J. 2014: From disaster to sustainability: floods, changing property relations and water
management in the south-western Netherlands, c.15001800, Continuity and Change, 29/2, p. 241-265.
96
This will be elaborated in Soens and Jongepier, Forthcoming (Technology and Culture).
97
Many of these characteristics can be found in early modern drainage projects in other regions as well (Eastern
England, Southern France, but also as in the marshes of the Oder and Vistula), but they were very pronounced
in the Wadden Sea area. See Raphal Moreira, Lasschement; Ciriacono, XXX; for eastern England: Engelse PhD.
98
Worster XXX.
99
Commodity Frontiers VAnhaute/Bosma; Moore XXX.

26
the Land Wursten along the East bank of the Weser estuary (Niedersachsen, Germany),
recently studied by Michael Ehrhardt.100 In the first half of the seventeenth century, the
communal saltmarsh protecting the seawalls of Wursten was privatized and embanked,
creating the Neufeld. As the project faced extensive flooding from the start, it had to be sold
by its local initiators to an urban investor Jan Berens Bulder and associates from Emden
who converted his share of the Neufeld into a huge marshland estate (Schnort) exploited
through tenant farms. This did not protect the area from flooding: the Christmas flood of 1717
would kill 191 people in Wursten, including 88 children. The large majority of victims (137 out
of 191) and most of the material damage were found in the Neufeld, as can be derived from
Table 4:

New Land
Old Land (Neufeld) Total
Adults killed (N) 27 76 103
Children killed (N) 27 61 88
Horses killed (N) 20 200 220
Cattle killed (N) 111 476 587
Sheep killed (N) 119 1091 1210
Pigs killed (N) 239 305 544
Livestock (Value in Reichtstaler) 2952 14407 17359
Houses floated (N) 26 33 59
Barns and other buildings floated (N) 6 49 55
Buildings (value in Reichstaler) 8401 7378 15779
Movable goods (value in Reichstaler) 3333 4114 7447
Cereal stocks (value in Reichtstaler) 7543 6748 14291
Arable land flooded (area in Jck) 8174 1120 9294
Arable land seeded (area in Jck) 2517 301 2818
Total damage (value in Reichstaler) 22230 36110 58340

100
Ehrhardt (M.) (2007): Dem grossen wasser allezeit entgegen. Zur Geschichte der Deiche in Wursten, Stade. The
old land of Wursten is famous among archeologists for its long history of settlement on so-called Dorfwurten
(village terps) since the beginning of our era. One of these terps Feddersen Wierde has been subject to
excavation and in-depth study. The village terp was permanently inhabited between the first century BC to the
fifth century AD. New village terps originated in the early and classic Middle Ages, including most of the villages
of the Old Land, like Spieka, Cappel and Paddingbttel (Meier, Die Nordseekste, 56-59).

27
Table 4: damage of the 1717 Christmas Flood in Wursten along the Weser, Northern
Germany (Source: Ehrhardt, Dem grossen Wasser allezeit entgegen, p. 364).

From Uithuizermeeden in Groningen over Wursten along the Weser, to the Dagebuller Bcht
in the North of Schleswig, the seventeenth century reclamation of saltmarsh in front of the
medieval seawalls not only deprived communities of valuable resources, it also decreased the
robustness of the flood protection system and affected coastal dynamics in ways which were
poorly understood. Furthermore, it trapped people in a high-risk way of living unknown in the
region before. The embankment itself fitted in a broader process of social polarization,
declining autonomy of village communities, and disruptions in the traditional organisation of
the flood protection system. Such were the root causes explaining why so many cottagers and
labourers in the Wadden Sea Area were at risk of dying in a storm surge around 1700.

VI. To conclude: locating vulnerability in the system.

In pre-industrial societies, natural variability was not something which had to be discovered
by paleoclimatologists. Floods and droughts, harvest failures and epidemics, avalanches or
earthquakes, depending on the region in which one lived a mix of these and other nature-
induced hazards were part of everyday life. But unlike warfare, nature-induced hazards and
shocks seldom brought the type and degree of societal breakdown as might be derived from
recent historiography on natural disasters and climatic variability in the past. Mostly through
absorption, and to a lesser degree through adaptation, societies were perfectly able to
overcome periodic episodes of nature-induced disasters. This was the case for flood disasters
in the pre-industrial North Sea Area, and it might be the case for most famines, earthquakes,
epidemics and so on. It might even be the case for the ultimate catastrophe in European
premodern history the Black Death depending on whether we qualify the many
adaptations in the wake of the shock as a sign of resilience or breakdown and whether we
necessarily have to link these often non-directional - adaptations to any systemic
vulnerability preceding the shock.

28
Notwithstanding the overall resilience of societies, nature-induced hazards might still cause
a tremendous amount of suffering and disruption for large numbers of people, although never
in a random way. Specific groups in well-defined contexts saw their livelihoods fatally
disturbed by a flood, a famine or an earthquake, while others were escaping or even profiting
from the very same disaster. Systemic resilience and vulnerability of people clearly are two
different things.101 Rather than in the overall resilience to hazards, societies differed in the
number of people exposed to harm and in the degree to which they were exposed. In the case
of the remarkable sequence of deadly flood disasters in the Wadden Sea, culminating in the
Christmas Flood of 1717, a clear link could be established between the high numbers of victims
on the one hand and the marginalization of cottagers, the limited ability of local elites to
extent solidarity and flood protection to these groups, as well as the quasi-colonial way of
transforming the floodplains on the other. Investigating hazards and disasters in the past,
historians can reveal the mechanisms which explain who suffers and why the basic research
question of Wisner and Blaikie - and through comparative research demonstrate why the
exposure to hazards was so much higher in some societies than in others.102 For this purpose,
much more research is needed on the victims of nature-induced disasters in the past (there is
surprisingly little for the moment). We have to identify the victims, retrace their occupation,
family, wealth and living conditions, the nature and amount of disruption they faced, as well
as the mechanisms which put them at risk.

And what about resilience? Should we abandon the concept all together, as argued by scholars
studying the perverse effects of present-day resilience-oriented policies, aiming to enhance
the coping capacity of individual households, while leaving the basic mechanisms which put
these same households at risk intact?103 In historical research as well, resilience-oriented

101
To a certain extent, the two could even be opposed to one another: in unequal societies, marginalization
processes could expose large numbers of people to physical harm from natural hazards. At the same time,
inequality concentrates capital goods in the hands of an elite, well-capable of protecting its assets against the
impact of the very same hazards. As a result a quick recovery becomes possible, although at the expense of a
large number of death.
102
As argued by Van Bavel and Curtis.
103
For an analysis of resilience as a new form of biopolitics in a Foulcaudian way, steering populations at a
distance while consolidating existing power relations and (neoliberal) economic dependencies, see Daniel
OConnor, Philip Boyle, Suzan Ilcan and Marcia Oliver, Living with insecurity: Food security, resilience, and the
World Food Programme (WFP), Global Social Policy, 2016, pp. 1-18; B. Evans and J. Reid: Dangerously exposed:
the life and death of the resilience subject, Resilience, , 2013, pp. 83-98; Cannon and Mller-Mahn,
Vulnerability, resilience and development discourses in context of climate change, Nat. Hazards, 2010, 55: 621-
635..

29
frameworks, might obscure the power relations producing environmental hazards as well as
falsely presuming the unavoidability or even necessity - of environmental shocks and
disasters. In other words, resilience helps to naturalize natural disaster and to turn them into
random Acts of God, which they never were, neither in the pre-industrial nor in the modern
period.104 The only alternative might be too limit resilience and vulnerability to what is really
at stake in the history of disasters: the question whether or not a society is able to limit the
exposure of people to suffering and disruption. In a comparative analysis, resilience becomes
a relative quality of societies which are better able than others to protect their inhabitants
from harm. The other way round, the many societies which witnessed renewed economic,
social or cultural dynamics in the aftermath of a disaster, but at the same time saw a significant
part of their population killed, bankrupt of forced to migrate, can no longer be labelled
resilient.105 Only this way the paradox of resilient societies producing vulnerable people can
be resolved.

104
Knwoles, learning from disasters; Ted Steinberg, Acts of God. The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in
America. Steinbergs basic
105
An obvious example would be the city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: in economic terms
(GDP per capita), the city was better off after the disaster, but this was not the case for many its former
inhabitants, see Deryugina et al. (2014): The economic impact of hurricane Katrina on its victims: evidence from
individual tax returns, National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper 20713, and the violent attack on
disasters as force for good in economics by Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrines.

30