Image credits: William Jones, God’s Warning to His People of England (London, 1607).
Join us at the German Historical Institute London (or via Zoom) for a lecture by John Morgan (University of Bristol) on ‘The Politics of Flooding in Early Modern England’.
The early modern centuries featured some of the most significant and destructive floods in English history. Large events such as the 1570 flooding of eastern England and the 1607 south-west floods killed people and livestock, destroyed buildings, and generated spiritual reflection and reforming zeal. However, alongside these dramatic moments of disaster, many English communities lived with and alongside recurrent flooding, harnessing its benefits for their livelihoods. This lecture explores how flooding at various scales became politically significant as changing economic, legal, and constitutional contexts made the management of flooding a problem of growing importance.
John Emrys Morgan is a Senior Lecturer in geography at the University of Bristol. He received his PhD in history from the University of Warwick in 2016, and has published on a wide range of topics in the environmental history of early modern England, including flooding, great fires, water management, and human relationships with pigeons.
The lecture is the first in our summer series on ‘Environments of Knowledge: Climate, Risk, and Governance from the Middle Ages to the Anthropocene’. It will take place as a hybrid event at the GHIL and online via Zoom. In order to attend this event, please register via our website to take part in person or online:
https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures