Rising Tides: Netherlandish Engineering in a Threatening World

The popular idiom “God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland” refers to the origin story of The Netherlands as a land reclaimed from the sea. Dikes, polders, pumps, and dunes have had a marked presence in the Low Countries since the Middle Ages, rendering them symbols of national pride in land- and cityscape paintings created the founding of the Dutch Republic.

This transhistorical panel will take into consideration the Netherlandish histories of land reclamation, water management, and more broadly environmental engineering as a way to accommodate for growing populations. While landscapists Salomon and Jacob van Ruisdael, Esaias van de Velde, Meindert Hobbema, Jan van Goyen, and Aelbert Cuyp come to mind, papers need not be strictly focused on artwork from the Golden Age or restricted to painting. Presenters may also look to examples that correspond with more recent, even twentieth-century (or later) projects, such as the Zuiderzee Works of 1919, echoed in the work of De Stijl painters. Especially welcome are papers considering land interventions in the former colonial territories, from canals in Indonesia to sluices in Suriname. Seeking to engage a holistic picture of this history as the Low Countries are to enter a new phase, the papers in this panel should resonate with contemporary questions on the ravages of climate change.