Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2017
Abstract
The author discusses three basic factors which he believes had a crucial influence in the late 18th century on the creation of flood prevention in the lands of the Habsburg Empire. Specifically, these involved a new understanding of (the lack of) normality in natural phenomena, associated with the intellectual discussions that followed the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, as well as the extraordinary climatic conditions that led between 1784 and 1799 to a number of destructive floods and eventually to Enlightenment reforms in state administration, with special emphasis on the police.