The Frigid Golden Age
Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720

Explores the resilience of the Dutch Republic in the face of preindustrial climate change during the Little Ice Age.

Dagomar Degroot (Author)

9781108410410, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 February 2019

386 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg

'… this book offers a measured and painstaking reconstruction of some of the climate-related challenges facing Dutch society, as probably the most prosperous of the early modern period, in an age of comparatively cool and stormy weather … The book opens with a very clear explanation of the complex dynamics of climate change and climatic systems that governed prevailing winds and pressure systems in north-west Europe … Nevertheless, what this book demonstrates as effectively as any other is the overwhelming significance of the weather and the seasons in early modern European life, and for that reason alone, it deserves to be widely read and lauded.' Paul Warde, Metascience

Dagomar Degroot offers the first detailed analysis of how a society thrived amid the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling that reached its chilliest point between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age allowed it to thrive as neighboring societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation. By tracing the occasionally counterintuitive manifestations of climate change from global to local scales, Degroot finds that the Little Ice Age presented not only challenges for Dutch citizens but also opportunities that they aggressively exploited in conducting commerce, waging war, and creating culture. The overall success of their Republic in coping with climate change offers lessons that we would be wise to heed today, as we confront the growing crisis of global warming.

Introduction: crisis and opportunity in a changing climate
1. The Little Ice Age
Part I. Commerce and Climate Change: Part I. Preface
2. Reaching Asia in a stormy, chilly climate
3. Sailing, floating, riding, and skating through a cooler Europe
Part II. Conflict and Climate Change: Part II. Preface
4. Cooling, warming, and the wars of independence, 1564–1648
5. Gales, winds, and Anglo-Dutch antagonism, 1652–88
Part III. Culture and Climate Change: Part III. Preface
6. Tracing and painting the Little Ice Age
7. Texts, technologies, and climate change
Conclusion: lessons from ice and gold
Appendices.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]