Disasters and History
The Vulnerability and Resilience of Past Societies

Offers the first comprehensive overview of research into hazards and disasters from a historical perspective. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Bas van Bavel (Author), Daniel R. Curtis (Author), Jessica Dijkman (Author), Matthew Hannaford (Author), Maïka de Keyzer (Author), Eline van Onacker (Author), Tim Soens (Author)

9781108702119, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 October 2020

0 pages
23 x 15.3 x 1.3 cm, 0.4 kg

'… it is important that this book be made available to anyone who might benefit from its insights. And, indeed, it does provide insights that can be beneficial to the puzzled policymaker who is tasked with reducing disaster risk, improving disaster risk management or the post-disaster emergency phase, or with designing policies for long-term community recovery.' Ilan Noy, EH.Net

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Preface
1. Introduction: Disasters and History
2. Classification and Concepts
3. History as a Laboratory: Materials and Methods
4. Disaster Preconditions and Pressures
5. Disaster Responses
6. Effects of Disasters
7. Disaster History and/in the Anthropocene.

Subject Areas: The environment [RN]