Violent Waters

Name: Violent Waters
Price: 288.58 AUD
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ISBN: 9781009678902

Environmental Politics in Early Modern England

Elly Robson Dezateux (Christ Church, Oxford)

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Hardback

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English

Cambridge University Press
08 January 2026

British & Irish history; Early modern history: c 1450 to c 1700; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Management of land & natural resources; Social impact of environmental issues

Series: Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History

How were environments and politics remade by sovereigns, floods, mapmakers, migrants, rioters, and writers during wetland improvement projects in early modern England? Violent Waters examines flagship ventures which promised to transform unruly fenland fringes into orderly terrain at the heart of national power and productivity. In practice, these projects sparked constitutional controversy, new floods, and huge riots. The first state-led project in Hatfield Level brought local, national, and transnational interests into contact and conflict for almost a century. Elly Robson Dezateux traces the environmental politics that emerged as water and land were constructed and contested, both mentally and materially. These disputes pivoted on urgent questions about risk and justice, which became entangled in civil war conflict and exposed the limits of central authority and technology. Ultimately, improvement was destabilised by a lack of legitimacy and the dynamism of local custom as a method of environmental management and collective action. Wetland communities, as much as improvers and sovereigns, remade the terrain of politics and the future of the fens.

By: Elly Robson Dezateux (Christ Church Oxford)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Weight: 737g
ISBN: 9781009678902
ISBN 10: 1009678906
Series: Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
Pages: 388
Publication Date: 08 January 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Assembling environmental politics: an introduction; Part I. Scales of Action: 2. Commoning the fens: wetland politics before improvement; 3. Improving the fens: environmental reform imagined; 4. Governing the fens: consent and coercion; Part II. Making Improvement Material: 5. Space: inscribing improvement; 6. Water: risk and responsibility; 7. Land: the environmental politics of enclosure; Part III. Ripples: 8. The costs of conflict: instabilities and technologies; 9. Levelling the Level: custom, violence and sovereignty; 10. Fen plantation: refugee settlement and unsettled identities; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Elly Robson Dezateux is a historian of early modern Britain and the Atlantic world. She is a postdoctoral research fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford and an editor of History Workshop Journal. Her research examines the environmental politics generated by ambitious projects of agricultural improvement and colonial plantation.