Historical Disaster Experiences: Towards a Comparative and Transcultural History of Disasters Across Asia and Europe(Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context)

Historical disaster research is still a young field. This book discusses the experiences of natural disasters in different cultures, from Europe across the Near East to Asia. It focuses on the pre-industrial era and on the question of similarities, differences and transcultural dynamics in the cultural handling of natural disasters. Which long-lasting cultural patterns of perception, interpretation and handling of disasters can be determined? Have specific types of disasters changed the affected societies? What have people learned from disasters and what not? What adaptation and coping strategies existed? Which natural, societal and economic parameters play a part? The book not only reveals the historical depth of present practices, but also reveals possible comparisons that show globalization processes, entanglements and exchanges of ideas and practices in pre-modern times.

Table of Contents:

Part I: State of Research, Concepts and Methods.- Historical Disaster Experiences: First Steps towards a Comparative and Transcultural History of Disasters across Asia and Europe in the Pre-industrial Era.- Living with Hazard: Disaster Subcultures, Disaster Cultures and Risk-Mitigating Strategies.- Part II: Materiality of Disasters: Natural Impact, Social Experience.- Several Natural Disasters in the Middle East (at the Beginning of the Eleventh Century) and their Consequences.- Fanāʾ and Fasād: Perceptions and Concepts of Crises and Disasters in Fourteenth-century Egypt.- The Black Death and Human Impact on the Environment.- The day the sun turned blue. A volcanic eruption in the early 1460s and its possible climatic impact – a natural disaster perceived globally in the late Middle Ages?.- Cultural Implications of Natural Disasters: Historical Reports of the Volcano Eruption of July, 1256 A.D.- When Europe was burning. The multi-seasonal mega-drought of 1540 and the arsonist paranoia.- Part III: Heaven and Earth: Searching for Reasons.- Assur will suffer: Predicting disaster in Ancient Egypt.- ‘Natural’ Disasters in the Arabic Astro-meteorological Malhama Handbooks.- Tracing the Will of the Stars: Indian Astrology and Divination about Natural Disasters and Threats.- Explaining the Bihar Earthquake of 1934: The Role of Science, Astrology and ‘Rumours’.- Part IV: Urban Experience: Earthquakes and Fire.- The 1173/1759 Earthquake in Damascus and the Continuation of Architectural Tradition.- Living with Disaster: Aleppo and the Earthquake of 1822.- ‘The Great Fire in Cairo of 1321’ – Interactions between Nature and Society.- Perceiving Urban Fire Regimes in Europe and China, 1830s to 1870s: British Fire Insurance Businesses and the Sudden Challenge of Globalisation.- Part V: Frequent Experience and Adaptations: Floods and Landscapes of Defence.- Economic adaptation to risky environment in the late Middle Ages. The case of the ‘accrues’ of the Doubs in Chaussin(Jura, France) from c. 1370 to c. 1500.- Measuring ‘disaster’? The ‘everydayness’ of fluvial landscapes and the colonial state in Gangetic diaras, 1790s-1880s.- When the ‘Deluge’ Happened: The Flood of 1929 in the Surma-Barak Valley of Colonial Assam.- Alpine landscapes of defence – On modern-vernacular avalanche protection systems in the Swiss Alps.

Gerrit Jasper Schenk (Dr. phil.) is professor of medieval history at Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany). He has taught at the universities of Heidelberg, Stuttgart and Essen and has held fellowships from the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the German Historical Institutes (Rome, Paris). He is an associated member of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" (University of Heidelberg). His main research interests are rituals, ceremonies, pilgrimage, environmental history, historical disaster research and urban history. Most recently he has coedited books on Historical Disasters in Context (2012), Krisengeschichte(n) (2013), Disaster as Image (2014) and Mensch. Natur. Katastrophe. Von Atlantis bis heute (2014).