Disaster in the Early Modern. World Examinations, Representations, Interventions

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Table
Introduction
Notes
Part 1: Examinations
1. Taming the future?: From 'natural' hazards and 'disasters' to a securitisation against 'risks'
Introduction
Worldviews and patterns of interpretation: 'Disastro' and 'catastrophe'
Theory of practice: Disasters and hazards versus risks
Renaissance securitisation of risks?
Notes
2. Power, fortune and scientia naturalis: A humanist reading of disasters in Giannozzo Manetti's De terremotu
Notes
3. Thinking with the flood: Animal endangerment and the moral economy of disaster
The accusatory cow: Art, philosophy and the roots of animal endangerment
'Innocent dumb creatures': Science, scholarship and the moral economy of disaster
'The antediluvian diet': Vegetarianism, carnivorism and eco-catastrophe
Conclusion
Notes
4. Flood, fire, and tears: Imagining climate apocalypse in Scheuchzer's De portione (1707/08)
'Nothing is difficult for nature'
'Imperceptible increases'
The cosmic viewpoint
'Foolish wishes'
'For our land and the whole of Europe'
Conclusion: Scheuchzer's floods
Appendix Text of Scheuchzer's 'De portione' (trans. William Barton and Sara Miglietti)
Notes
5. Communicating research on the Great Frost in the republic of letters: From Halle to London
Introduction
Remus' and Wolff's Consideratio physico-mathematica hiemis proxime praeterlapsae
The wider contemporary reception of the Consideratio
Derham's use of the Consideratio
Conclusion
Notes
Part 2: Representations
6. What was an avalanche?: Death in the snow from antiquity to early modern times
Antecedents: Antiquity to late middle ages
The 'modern' avalanche
The snowball avalanche
Aftermath
Notes
7. Disasters and devotion: Sacred images and religious practices in Spanish America (16th-18th centuries)
The Crucifix as the main bastion against earthquakes
The Madonna and disasters in the Andes: From Guápulo to Cayma
Images of disasters in New Spain: Chaos and order
The intercession of the saints and the veneration of St Emygdius
Conclusion
Notes
8. Straightening the Arno: Artistic representations of water management in Medici Ducal and Grand Ducal Florence
Cosimo I de'Medici: Managing waterways like Hercules, Augustus and Apollo
Francesco I and Ferdinando I de' Medici: Images celebrating luxurious materials, social hierarchies and a vibrant port city
Notes
9. Responses to a recurrent disaster: Flood writings in Rome, 1476-1598
Notes
Part 3: Interventions
10. Flood, war and economy: Leonardo da Vinci and the plan to divert the Arno River
The plan to deviate the Arno against Pisa
The story of a failure
Notes
11. The making of a transnational disaster saint: Francisco Borja, patron saint of earthquakes from the Andes to Europe
A rebours: Seeking protection against earthquakes in Enlightenment Bologna
A patron saint of earthquakes is made in the New Kingdom of Granada: The evidence
The cult crosses the Atlantic: Borja's cult in Rome and the Kingdom of Naples
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Notes
12. Dikes, ships and worms: Testing the limits of envirotechnical transfer during the Dutch shipworm epidemic of the 1730s
Shipworms and envirotechnical disaster
Construction of an envirotechnical disaster
Shipworms as an existential disaster
Shipworms and maritime technical change
Shipworms and envirotechnical transfer
Diverging paths
Conclusion
Notes
Contributors
Index