The
Department
of
History
Speaker
Series
presents
Dagomar
Degroot,
assistant
professor
of
history
at
Georgetown
University,
speaking
on
his
new
book, The
Frigid
Golden
Age.
Specifically
he
will
talk about
“Coping
with
Climate
Change
in
the
Seventeenth
Century.”
Beginning
in
the
thirteenth
century,
natural
forces
cooled
Earth’s
climate
in
a
“Little
Ice
Age”
that
reached
its
chilliest
point
in
the
seventeenth
century
and,
according
to
many
scholars,
destabilized
societies
around
the
world.
Yet
the
precocious
economy,
unusual
environment,
and
dynamic
intellectual
culture
of
the
Dutch
Republic
in
its
seventeenth-century
Golden
Age
allowed
it
to
thrive
as
neighbouring
societies
unravelled.
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.
Dagomar
Degroot
bridges
the
humanities
and
the
sciences
to
explore
how
societies
have
thrived
-
or
suffered
-
in
the
face
of
dramatic
changes
to
the
natural
world.
