The Chronicle as a Compass for an Uncertain Future: Searching for Patterns in Early Modern Dutch Chronicles

Dekker, T.M.A.M. (2022)

Article in monograph or in proceedings

One of the reasons why early modern people chronicled current events in their communities, was to search for patterns. Chroniclers frequently recorded odd weather patterns (scorching summers or frigid winters), famines, troop movements, wars, epidemics, prices, prodigies, monstrous births, and other premonitions to search for elements that could help them to comprehend current, and to anticipate on, future events. In this paper I will explore how chroniclers from the Low Countries constructed causal relations between various phenomena and events, and how that changed between 1500 and 1850. I will do so by combining computational and historical methods to analyse 250 early modern Dutch chronicles, focusing especially on authors of the middling sort (e.g., farmers, merchants, and local officials). As a result, we gain insight on how they tried to get grip on current events in their attempt to limit future harm.

In this paper I will focus especially on how chroniclers collected data on epidemics, meteorological phenomena, and food- and fuel prices, knowledge which they regarded as useful. Using this evidence, I will argue that throughout the period, this group continued to believe in the idea that disruptive events could have both human and natural but also supernatural origins. Both faith and reason conditioned responses to potential hazards, and the solutions chosen were discussed side-by-side, usually without an apparent sense of conflict. However, natural explanations became more complex over time, which resulted in more detailed explanations on the causes and consequences of (future) hazards. 

By focussing on the information that chroniclers regarded as useful, and studying the causal relations they constructed, we can not only reconstruct how chroniclers coped with contemporary hazards and crises, but also how they used their chronicle as a compass and anchor to get some grip on events as they sailed into an uncertain future.

• Future Thinking
• Disasters
• Dearth
• Inflation
• Epidemics
• Chronicles
• Low Countries

• All authors: Dekker, T.M.A.M.
• Date: 2022-09-01