(Un)Natural Disasters: Environment and Politics in the Early Modern World

Catalog description

Fires and floods, droughts and plagues, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions: these environmental crises are both natural and political events. They transform human environments and require large-scale, coordinated responses, but they are also cultural constructs, emerging through public discourse and debate. This course will explore how natural disasters catalyzed political, cultural, and technological change in the early modern period (roughly 1450-1800), an era of widespread political conflict, unprecedented global exchange and colonial conquest, and the climatic disruption of the “Little Ice Age.” Starting with the Black Death in Europe, we will look at natural disasters across the early modern world to address the following questions: What, and who, made something a natural disaster? How did natural disasters reshape humans’ understanding of their environments and produce new knowledge, especially in colonial contexts? How did different polities, states, and empires respond to these events? And what do these crises tell us about power and politics in the early modern world?