| Popis: |
This thesis examines the social, cultural and political contexts of flooding in early modern England. It explores the relationships between floods and the productive practices and organising principles of the communities in which they occurred. Drawing on insights from the environmental humanities and social sciences, this thesis approaches flooding as a socio-natural phenomenon, in which humanity and nature played mutually influential parts. Taking in evidence from England as a whole, and with special reference to South Holland in Lincolnshire, and the Severn Estuary Levels in Gloucestershire, this thesis locates flooding at the forefront of cultural and political changes occurring over the early modern period. Following recent European approaches to histories of flooding, this thesis considers the ways in which early modern society contributed to, and sought to mitigate the effects of particularly damaging flooding. In five chapters it analyses the productive and destructive role of flooding in local communities, how these floods were interpreted by those they affected, the political nature of disputes about flooding and the impact of flooding on the early modern state. Together, these chapters stress the need to understand flooding as a socially and culturally generated phenomenon that had political implications. Far from being purely 'natural', flooding was a complex process which contemporaries both recognised and actively negotiated. In analysing an environmental process with specific reference to the traditional domains of social, cultural and political history, this thesis links the small but expanding subdiscipline of early modern English environmental history to broader historical narratives, showing the potential for an environmental approach to pre-modern England. |
