Awards:
One of the top ten history books of 2018, according to the Financial Times.
Tony Barber, Europe Editor of the Financial Times:
"Degroot’s groundbreaking book presents the familiar story of the Dutch Golden Age in a refreshingly new light. The Georgetown University scholar explains how the Dutch creatively exploited the “little Ice Age” of the 17th century, building icebreakers to keep waterways open, turning frozen canals into thoroughfares and flooding farmland to thwart enemy invaders."
Winner of the 2018 Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) Choice award for best history book related to atmospheric science.
Tony Barber, Europe Editor of the Financial Times:
"Degroot’s groundbreaking book presents the familiar story of the Dutch Golden Age in a refreshingly new light. The Georgetown University scholar explains how the Dutch creatively exploited the “little Ice Age” of the 17th century, building icebreakers to keep waterways open, turning frozen canals into thoroughfares and flooding farmland to thwart enemy invaders."
Winner of the 2018 Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) Choice award for best history book related to atmospheric science.
Selected Reviews:
Dr. Roger L. Albin, Journal of World History:
"Degroot’s reconstructions are interesting, well done, and well presented."
Prof. Wolfgang Behringer, Francia Recensio:
"The climate crisis of the early modern period shows that a society can actively find useful answers to climatic challenges. Do not complain, but read: This is the right book at the right time!"
Prof. James Bergman, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Degroot’s book captured my imagination for two reasons. First, he skillfully translates regional and global patterns to local landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes. By introducing a third dimension—the atmosphere—to the study of hybrid landscapes and waterscapes, he creates an environment that is, to use a word Degroot frequently uses, dynamic in the short term and long term. The second reason Degroot’s work is so suggestive and fertile is that it examines a story of prosperity in the face of climate change. He is careful not to let his account minimize the threat of climate change in the Anthropocene—the Little Ice Age, for all the havoc it wrought, was the result of less than a degree Celsius of cooling, versus the 1.5-C or more warming we have in store. In fact, the book communicates the urgency of climate change all the more clearly by using the Dutch Republic as a case study in resilience."
"Degroot has put forward a bold contention that we have much to learn from success and prosperity in the face of uncertainty, and that we can learn from a place without resorting to sentimentality or celebration. Additionally, and most importantly, he has laid out a path toward understanding the role of climate in globalization over the longue durée, a role that is at the very heart of our political discourses on the Anthropocene."
Prof. James Bowen, European History Quarterly:
"Overall this book successfully brings together different methodological approaches, draws on a variety of source material and provides an engaging historical narrative which embraces a wide range of subject areas. It shows how between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the republic successfully coped with the challenges of climate change, achieving its apogee economically, socially and culturally regardless of extremes of temperature and precipitation. There is a helpful glossary of climate terms, several maps, an appendix outlining how temperatures and journey statistics were calculated and information about the Danish sound tolls registers, along with an extensive bibliography detailing archive sources, and online and published primary and secondary sources. Offering an exemplar of how climate and the environment more generally can be integrated into national histories, it will be of interest to historians of the Dutch Republic and Europe as well as environmental historians, particularly those interested in the relationship between weather, climate change and human society."
Prof. Nicholas Cunigan, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Rather than focus on societal vulnerabilities, Degroot explores the beneficial consequences of the Little Ice Age on Dutch business, warfare, and cultural expressions during the republic’s seventeenth-century Golden Age. This is a much-needed and welcomed departure from the typical declensionist narratives of climate history . . . . The Frigid Golden Age is essential reading for anyone interested in pursuing research in the field of climate history."
"Climate historians should and must provide examples of how past societies fared as a result of changing climate. These will include narratives of crisis, collapse, adaptation, and resiliency. Now, thanks to Degroot, we can also learn something about how societies prospered. If the Dutch Republic prospered during the Little Ice Age while much of the world descended into a global crisis, who will prosper and who will suffer today?"
Prof. Daniel Curtis, Featured Review in The American Historical Review:
'This is not only a highly coherent book, never deviating its supporting material far away from the core central arguments posited, but an extremely important book—with scholarly implications far beyond merely the history of the Dutch Republic or even the growing field of environmental history. At present this is arguably the premier book to have been produced on the historical interaction between climate, environment, weather, adaptation, and outcomes for human welfare."
Prof. Melanie A. Kiechle, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Dagomar Degroot has written a history that will let me offer my students some comfort. As it explores and explains the nuanced relationship between climate change and the success of the Dutch Republic, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 teaches us that societies can survive and even thrive in the face of climate extremes. Degroot accomplishes this feat by drawing upon textual sources common to all historians—letters, intelligence reports, diary entries, and ship logs—which he integrates with scientific reconstructions of the past. Bringing science and history together in this way enriches both fields of inquiry and is a compelling example of how humanists and scientists can learn from one another."
Katrin Kleemann, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Degroot breaks with the assumption that the Little Ice Age only spelled crisis for societies around the globe and, instead, sheds light on how some thrived . . . . [He] takes his readers on a journey that spans the globe: from the Low Countries on the North Sea, to the icy shores of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean, all the way to the warm waters around Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. The book covers climate, weather, war, trade, nutrition, transportation, ecosystems, and colonialism. He traces climate change from the global to the local level. He uses a wide range of sources: the analysis of thousands of journeys undertaken by ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the study of famous paintings and maps from the Dutch Golden Age to letters and diary entries, to name but a few."
Patrick J. Klinger, The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History:
"The extensive use of ship logs, the integration of ‘natural’ climate archives, and the emphasis on adaptation during a time of crisis makes this work a valuable addition to the story of the Dutch Golden Age. The numerous ways that Degroot utilizes ship logs, for instance, addresses key arguments from several separate historiographies. In addition, clear explanations of methods, sources, and findings make this an approachable work for non-specialists of climate or Dutch history....
....Degroot’s work provides another important example of adaptability to climatic variability during a period known for its crises. It is an important read for those interested in Dutch history and would well serve those interested in the Little Ice Age or the methodology of climate historians."
Prof. Benjamin B. Roberts, Early Modern Low Countries:
"If you hold a reflecting sphere in your hand, you will suddenly notice yourself and your surrounding environment from an entirely new and surprising perspective. In The Frigid Golden Age Dagomar Degroot does exactly that . . . . As Degroot offers historians a new point of view on the importance of climate in world history, The Frigid Golden Age will probably cause climate change of its own in the historical landscape."
Prof. Adam Sundberg, Journal of Interdisciplinary History:
"Employing an impressive range of documentary sources and drawing from the most recent work in historical climatology, this book demonstrates that climate and weather were very much a part of Dutch Golden Age success . . . . [the book shows that] The Republic thrived not only despite climatic changes but oftentimes as a result of them. Relative to their rivals, the Dutch more effectively capitalized on favorable climatic conditions and more resiliently weathered challenges. The Frigid Golden Age demonstrates that climate should play a larger role in Golden Age historiography, and the book’s interdisciplinary approach, its clear and careful methodology, and diverse use of sources establish an effective approach."
Prof. Paul Warde, Metascience:
"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. This is an important historiographical step, because it liberates the history of human action in relation to climate from having to be one of response to disaster or collapse. It normalises our lives within and through climate and changing climates. Degroot’s intention is surely not to normalise our contemporary climate emergency. Nevertheless, by showing how living with climate (as an aspect of the environment) is a central aspect of any society, he demonstrates the work that needs to be done in face of the current situation. He reminds us how our technological and social systems must constantly address climate, and he pushes historians towards taking this basic truism more seriously as a theme of research.
In taking these steps, Degroot does what historians do best; he stresses the complexity of causation, the contingency of explanations, and the need to carefully evidence what has occurred. All of these virtues are to be found in abundance in this book. This might suggest that you will be in for a rather plodding read, but The Frigid Golden Age is written with verve and narrative command, moving lightly from explaining the technical aspects of understanding weather patterns and climate shifts, to military operations, or attempts to interpret Dutch art in the light of our knowledge of the weather."
Prof. Thomas Wickman, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Dagomar Degroot’s Frigid Golden Age shows that cold temperatures could be a boon for some people in the past. This highly-original book questions a reflex among scholars to assume that chilly times were usually bad for centralized, stratified, agriculturally-based societies . . . . Degroot’s book addresses beneficial adaptation in the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and introduces nuanced and counterintuitive ways to think about early modern climate history."
"The book well may be praised most for studying climate change as experienced at sea. Degroot assiduously examines ships’ logbooks and records of sea tolls for changing volumes, calendars, and routes of navigation. Sea ice presents one formidable limit at sea in Degroot’s narrative. But the headline finding in this book is that wind patterns at sea can be historicized within the context of global climate change, and that people’s adaptations to the winds (or failures to adapt) changed history."
"Degroot narrates events vividly, but without sensationalism, and does so in the service of educating readers about climatic systems. Degroot expects all readers to become scientifically literate—and he oversees that learning process with admirable patience and skill."
"Degroot stands out to me as an author who is always teaching. It is rare in the humanities for an author to pose questions so clearly, continually lay out the data before the reader, and then assess so openly the results, whether those results prove conclusive or ambiguous. In this sense, Degroot is modelling the application of the scientific method to the work of a humanist—a characterization that best applies to chapters two to five, the core of the book. At the same time, Degroot prompts scientifically-literate readers to carefully interpret archival documents and to integrate “big data” with “qualitative accounts of short-term events on a local level” (17). He also integrates nuanced interpretations of maps and paintings, refusing to treat these sources as mere climatological indices. In unifying science and history to explain complex and unpredictable shifts in natural contexts and in human decision-making, Degroot’s chronicle shares with John McNeill’s Mosquito Empires the dual capacity to educate and surprise."
Prof. Thomas Wozniak, Journal of World History:
The book offers a completely new approach to the history of the Dutch Republic and shows that it was influenced more positively by the Little Ice Age than previously thought. The consequences of climatic change lead to a kind of pressure that developed societies can not only withstand (“resilience”) but also can stimulate new developments and the distribution of inventions, like for example the Dutch that used sailing and windmills as an answer to stronger winds. More than other regions of Europe, the Dutch Republic was threatened by the changing climate conditions due to its proximity to the sea. It used this confrontation to its advantage. This book is a starting point for all future research into the Little Ice Age and the Low Countries at its Frigid Golden Age. Overall this is a very carefully balanced book that avoids any potential pitfalls of determinism.
Prof. Anya Zilberstein, Environmental History:
"While most historians have focused on correlating early modern climate cooling with unrest, crisis, and decline across the Northern Hemisphere, The Frigid Golden Age offers a more sanguine appraisal of an aggressively commercial, modernizing nation’s adaptation to climate change, albeit at the expense of some of its own citizens and untold others. … As a historian engaged in ongoing collaboration with historical climatologists, Degroot is skillful in his interpretation of state-of-the-art climate science, some of which is presented in statistical graphs, charts, and time series that integrate documentary sources with studies of instrumental and proxy data relevant to the history of the Netherlands."
"Degroot’s reconstructions are interesting, well done, and well presented."
Prof. Wolfgang Behringer, Francia Recensio:
"The climate crisis of the early modern period shows that a society can actively find useful answers to climatic challenges. Do not complain, but read: This is the right book at the right time!"
Prof. James Bergman, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Degroot’s book captured my imagination for two reasons. First, he skillfully translates regional and global patterns to local landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes. By introducing a third dimension—the atmosphere—to the study of hybrid landscapes and waterscapes, he creates an environment that is, to use a word Degroot frequently uses, dynamic in the short term and long term. The second reason Degroot’s work is so suggestive and fertile is that it examines a story of prosperity in the face of climate change. He is careful not to let his account minimize the threat of climate change in the Anthropocene—the Little Ice Age, for all the havoc it wrought, was the result of less than a degree Celsius of cooling, versus the 1.5-C or more warming we have in store. In fact, the book communicates the urgency of climate change all the more clearly by using the Dutch Republic as a case study in resilience."
"Degroot has put forward a bold contention that we have much to learn from success and prosperity in the face of uncertainty, and that we can learn from a place without resorting to sentimentality or celebration. Additionally, and most importantly, he has laid out a path toward understanding the role of climate in globalization over the longue durée, a role that is at the very heart of our political discourses on the Anthropocene."
Prof. James Bowen, European History Quarterly:
"Overall this book successfully brings together different methodological approaches, draws on a variety of source material and provides an engaging historical narrative which embraces a wide range of subject areas. It shows how between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the republic successfully coped with the challenges of climate change, achieving its apogee economically, socially and culturally regardless of extremes of temperature and precipitation. There is a helpful glossary of climate terms, several maps, an appendix outlining how temperatures and journey statistics were calculated and information about the Danish sound tolls registers, along with an extensive bibliography detailing archive sources, and online and published primary and secondary sources. Offering an exemplar of how climate and the environment more generally can be integrated into national histories, it will be of interest to historians of the Dutch Republic and Europe as well as environmental historians, particularly those interested in the relationship between weather, climate change and human society."
Prof. Nicholas Cunigan, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Rather than focus on societal vulnerabilities, Degroot explores the beneficial consequences of the Little Ice Age on Dutch business, warfare, and cultural expressions during the republic’s seventeenth-century Golden Age. This is a much-needed and welcomed departure from the typical declensionist narratives of climate history . . . . The Frigid Golden Age is essential reading for anyone interested in pursuing research in the field of climate history."
"Climate historians should and must provide examples of how past societies fared as a result of changing climate. These will include narratives of crisis, collapse, adaptation, and resiliency. Now, thanks to Degroot, we can also learn something about how societies prospered. If the Dutch Republic prospered during the Little Ice Age while much of the world descended into a global crisis, who will prosper and who will suffer today?"
Prof. Daniel Curtis, Featured Review in The American Historical Review:
'This is not only a highly coherent book, never deviating its supporting material far away from the core central arguments posited, but an extremely important book—with scholarly implications far beyond merely the history of the Dutch Republic or even the growing field of environmental history. At present this is arguably the premier book to have been produced on the historical interaction between climate, environment, weather, adaptation, and outcomes for human welfare."
Prof. Melanie A. Kiechle, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Dagomar Degroot has written a history that will let me offer my students some comfort. As it explores and explains the nuanced relationship between climate change and the success of the Dutch Republic, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720 teaches us that societies can survive and even thrive in the face of climate extremes. Degroot accomplishes this feat by drawing upon textual sources common to all historians—letters, intelligence reports, diary entries, and ship logs—which he integrates with scientific reconstructions of the past. Bringing science and history together in this way enriches both fields of inquiry and is a compelling example of how humanists and scientists can learn from one another."
Katrin Kleemann, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Degroot breaks with the assumption that the Little Ice Age only spelled crisis for societies around the globe and, instead, sheds light on how some thrived . . . . [He] takes his readers on a journey that spans the globe: from the Low Countries on the North Sea, to the icy shores of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean, all the way to the warm waters around Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. The book covers climate, weather, war, trade, nutrition, transportation, ecosystems, and colonialism. He traces climate change from the global to the local level. He uses a wide range of sources: the analysis of thousands of journeys undertaken by ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the study of famous paintings and maps from the Dutch Golden Age to letters and diary entries, to name but a few."
Patrick J. Klinger, The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History:
"The extensive use of ship logs, the integration of ‘natural’ climate archives, and the emphasis on adaptation during a time of crisis makes this work a valuable addition to the story of the Dutch Golden Age. The numerous ways that Degroot utilizes ship logs, for instance, addresses key arguments from several separate historiographies. In addition, clear explanations of methods, sources, and findings make this an approachable work for non-specialists of climate or Dutch history....
....Degroot’s work provides another important example of adaptability to climatic variability during a period known for its crises. It is an important read for those interested in Dutch history and would well serve those interested in the Little Ice Age or the methodology of climate historians."
Prof. Benjamin B. Roberts, Early Modern Low Countries:
"If you hold a reflecting sphere in your hand, you will suddenly notice yourself and your surrounding environment from an entirely new and surprising perspective. In The Frigid Golden Age Dagomar Degroot does exactly that . . . . As Degroot offers historians a new point of view on the importance of climate in world history, The Frigid Golden Age will probably cause climate change of its own in the historical landscape."
Prof. Adam Sundberg, Journal of Interdisciplinary History:
"Employing an impressive range of documentary sources and drawing from the most recent work in historical climatology, this book demonstrates that climate and weather were very much a part of Dutch Golden Age success . . . . [the book shows that] The Republic thrived not only despite climatic changes but oftentimes as a result of them. Relative to their rivals, the Dutch more effectively capitalized on favorable climatic conditions and more resiliently weathered challenges. The Frigid Golden Age demonstrates that climate should play a larger role in Golden Age historiography, and the book’s interdisciplinary approach, its clear and careful methodology, and diverse use of sources establish an effective approach."
Prof. Paul Warde, Metascience:
"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. This is an important historiographical step, because it liberates the history of human action in relation to climate from having to be one of response to disaster or collapse. It normalises our lives within and through climate and changing climates. Degroot’s intention is surely not to normalise our contemporary climate emergency. Nevertheless, by showing how living with climate (as an aspect of the environment) is a central aspect of any society, he demonstrates the work that needs to be done in face of the current situation. He reminds us how our technological and social systems must constantly address climate, and he pushes historians towards taking this basic truism more seriously as a theme of research.
In taking these steps, Degroot does what historians do best; he stresses the complexity of causation, the contingency of explanations, and the need to carefully evidence what has occurred. All of these virtues are to be found in abundance in this book. This might suggest that you will be in for a rather plodding read, but The Frigid Golden Age is written with verve and narrative command, moving lightly from explaining the technical aspects of understanding weather patterns and climate shifts, to military operations, or attempts to interpret Dutch art in the light of our knowledge of the weather."
Prof. Thomas Wickman, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews:
"Dagomar Degroot’s Frigid Golden Age shows that cold temperatures could be a boon for some people in the past. This highly-original book questions a reflex among scholars to assume that chilly times were usually bad for centralized, stratified, agriculturally-based societies . . . . Degroot’s book addresses beneficial adaptation in the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and introduces nuanced and counterintuitive ways to think about early modern climate history."
"The book well may be praised most for studying climate change as experienced at sea. Degroot assiduously examines ships’ logbooks and records of sea tolls for changing volumes, calendars, and routes of navigation. Sea ice presents one formidable limit at sea in Degroot’s narrative. But the headline finding in this book is that wind patterns at sea can be historicized within the context of global climate change, and that people’s adaptations to the winds (or failures to adapt) changed history."
"Degroot narrates events vividly, but without sensationalism, and does so in the service of educating readers about climatic systems. Degroot expects all readers to become scientifically literate—and he oversees that learning process with admirable patience and skill."
"Degroot stands out to me as an author who is always teaching. It is rare in the humanities for an author to pose questions so clearly, continually lay out the data before the reader, and then assess so openly the results, whether those results prove conclusive or ambiguous. In this sense, Degroot is modelling the application of the scientific method to the work of a humanist—a characterization that best applies to chapters two to five, the core of the book. At the same time, Degroot prompts scientifically-literate readers to carefully interpret archival documents and to integrate “big data” with “qualitative accounts of short-term events on a local level” (17). He also integrates nuanced interpretations of maps and paintings, refusing to treat these sources as mere climatological indices. In unifying science and history to explain complex and unpredictable shifts in natural contexts and in human decision-making, Degroot’s chronicle shares with John McNeill’s Mosquito Empires the dual capacity to educate and surprise."
Prof. Thomas Wozniak, Journal of World History:
The book offers a completely new approach to the history of the Dutch Republic and shows that it was influenced more positively by the Little Ice Age than previously thought. The consequences of climatic change lead to a kind of pressure that developed societies can not only withstand (“resilience”) but also can stimulate new developments and the distribution of inventions, like for example the Dutch that used sailing and windmills as an answer to stronger winds. More than other regions of Europe, the Dutch Republic was threatened by the changing climate conditions due to its proximity to the sea. It used this confrontation to its advantage. This book is a starting point for all future research into the Little Ice Age and the Low Countries at its Frigid Golden Age. Overall this is a very carefully balanced book that avoids any potential pitfalls of determinism.
Prof. Anya Zilberstein, Environmental History:
"While most historians have focused on correlating early modern climate cooling with unrest, crisis, and decline across the Northern Hemisphere, The Frigid Golden Age offers a more sanguine appraisal of an aggressively commercial, modernizing nation’s adaptation to climate change, albeit at the expense of some of its own citizens and untold others. … As a historian engaged in ongoing collaboration with historical climatologists, Degroot is skillful in his interpretation of state-of-the-art climate science, some of which is presented in statistical graphs, charts, and time series that integrate documentary sources with studies of instrumental and proxy data relevant to the history of the Netherlands."
Advance Reviews:
Prof. John Brooke:
"Dagomar Degroot has written a powerful addition to the emerging literature on the wider human impacts of the Little Ice Age, in a book that will have a major impact on the field. His argument that the Dutch of the Golden Age responded creatively and successfully to the challenge of cold climate will have an important place in our evolved discussion of climate change in the twenty-first century."
Prof. Richard C. Hoffmann:
"Skillfully wielding diverse interdisciplinary tools, Dagomar Degroot breaks with clichés of the Little Ice Age as unrelenting social catastrophe to reveal Dutch communities mitigating negative effects of climate change while exploiting new possibilities available to the perceptive and adaptive. The Frigid Golden Age establishes a new benchmark in the environmental history of early modern Europe"
Prof. Christian Pfister:
"Degroot offers surprising insights into links between weather variations during the chilliest phase of the Little Ice Age and the Dutch Golden Age by exploring how merchants, soldiers and investors exploited new opportunities resulting from to climate change. The book is well-researched and exciting to read."
Prof. Richard Tucker:
"In The Frigid Golden Age Dagomar Degroot, a leading climate historian, presents a highly original perspective on an unusually cold era when Europe was immersed in a series of devastating wars on land and the Dutch were becoming the greatest maritime capitalist power from the Atlantic to the East Indies. In compelling prose, he expands our understanding of how climate cycles, economic and political rivalries, and environmental history interact."
"Dagomar Degroot has written a powerful addition to the emerging literature on the wider human impacts of the Little Ice Age, in a book that will have a major impact on the field. His argument that the Dutch of the Golden Age responded creatively and successfully to the challenge of cold climate will have an important place in our evolved discussion of climate change in the twenty-first century."
Prof. Richard C. Hoffmann:
"Skillfully wielding diverse interdisciplinary tools, Dagomar Degroot breaks with clichés of the Little Ice Age as unrelenting social catastrophe to reveal Dutch communities mitigating negative effects of climate change while exploiting new possibilities available to the perceptive and adaptive. The Frigid Golden Age establishes a new benchmark in the environmental history of early modern Europe"
Prof. Christian Pfister:
"Degroot offers surprising insights into links between weather variations during the chilliest phase of the Little Ice Age and the Dutch Golden Age by exploring how merchants, soldiers and investors exploited new opportunities resulting from to climate change. The book is well-researched and exciting to read."
Prof. Richard Tucker:
"In The Frigid Golden Age Dagomar Degroot, a leading climate historian, presents a highly original perspective on an unusually cold era when Europe was immersed in a series of devastating wars on land and the Dutch were becoming the greatest maritime capitalist power from the Atlantic to the East Indies. In compelling prose, he expands our understanding of how climate cycles, economic and political rivalries, and environmental history interact."