Breaking the Cycles of Catastrophe: Disaster, Time, and Nation in Dutch Flood Commemoration Books, 1757-1800

Historians argue that the eighteenth-century Dutch interpreted disasters in an overarching decline narrative. As such, catastrophes were understood as signs of an escalating political, economic, and moral crisis. However, this declensionist narrative was not the only interpretative framework that people could employ for dreadful events. This article traces the temporalities in four contemporary commemoration books on major Dutch flood disasters in 1757, 1775, and 1799. Their authors located recent inundations in time by comparing them to past catastrophes and imagining a future in which floods may or may not recur. The writers of two commemoration books recognised regular cycles of catastrophe, while the authors of the other two titles discerned an increase in the number of and the damage caused by inundations. Nonetheless, most authors provided their readers hope. Through either morality or technology, the writers asserted, people could prevent future catastrophes.