The Struggle for the Markerwaard
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The Struggle for the Markerwaard An analysis of changing socio-technical imaginaries on land reclamation during the late 20th century in the Netherlands 1 Final research master thesis Author: Siebren Teule Supervisor: dr. Liesbeth van de Grift Research-master History Utrecht University Word-count: 36749, excluding footnotes and bibliography) Date: July 17th, 2020 Front-page images: Figure above: The monument on the Enclosure Dam, commemorating the Zuiderzee construction process. It depicts the labourers who worked on the Dam, and a now-famous phrase: A living people build their own future (‘Een volk dat leeft bouwt aan zijn toekomst’).1 Figure below: While airplanes fly across carrying banners with slogans against the reclamation, the last gap in the Houtribdijk between Enkhuizen and Lelystad is closed in the presence of minister Westerterp (TWM) on September 4th, 1975.2 1 Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Afsluitdijk_monument.jpg. 2 Photo: Dick Coersen (ANP), Nationaal Archief/Collectie Spaarnestad. 2 Acknowledgements This thesis is the final product of six months of research, and two years of exploring my own interests as part of Utrecht University’s research-master History. During the past months, I have found the particular niches of historical research that really suit my research interests. This thesis is neatly located in one of these niches. The courses, and particularly my internship at Rijkswaterstaat in the second half of 2019, aided me greatly in this process of academic self-exploration, and made this thesis possible. There are many people who aided me in this process, either by supervising me or through discussions. I want to thank my thesis-lab-group and its host for the useful discussions. I am indebted most of all to my supervisor Liesbeth van de Grift, for her critical feedback on this thesis and in particular for helping me write to the point and downsize my text. Inevitably, this thesis is also a product of the covid-19 pandemic that struck in the process of writing. Although I am lucky to count myself among those who were not personally afflicted by this disease, my research process was strongly affected through the closure of archives, unavailability of sources, and other side-effects of this crises. I wish to in particular thank Catja for pulling me through – without her, I undoubtedly would not have been able to finish this project. Siebren Teule, July 2020 3 Abstract One of the most impressive feats of Dutch hydro-engineering is the Zuiderzee reclamation project, a series of land reclamations during which four polders were created. The Netherlands turned its inland sea into a freshwater lake. However, one of the planned land reclamation projects, the Markerwaard polder, has never been realized. In its place today lies the Marker lake, a large freshwater body surrounded by an awkward silhouette of dikes and dams. Whereas the other Zuiderzee polders were reclaimed in the years between 1930 and 1970 without much controversy, the reclamation of the Markerwaard met powerful societal resistance. The future of the Markerwaard became a national debate until the reclamation was finally called off in 1990. In between 1970 and 1990, ideas on land reclamation changed drastically. In order to fully understand this change, in this thesis I argue that it is necessary to understand how ideas on environmentalism, spatial problems, and protest culture intertwined and echoed within broader Dutch society. To analyse this change, the concept of socio-technical imaginaries is particularly well- suited. In this thesis, I operationalize this concept into a framework for historical research. Using this framework, I subsequently demonstrate how the hegemonic imaginary on land reclamation projects was challenged in the early 1970s. This fuelled a major, society-wide debate on the future of the Markerwaard in the early 1980s, and a resistant imaginary rose. Elements of this resistant imaginary were incorporated in the hegemonic imaginary, which changed ideas on land reclamation. This ultimately resulted in the downfall of the Markerwaard polder. 4 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1: THE HISTORIAN AND THE FUTURE ............................................................................ 16 CHAPTER 2: RECLAIMING A SEA .................................................................................................. 27 CHAPTER 3: DAVID AND GOLIATH ............................................................................................... 41 CHAPTER 4: A CONFUSION OF TONGUES ..................................................................................... 67 CHAPTER 5: THE DOWNFALL OF THE MARKERWAARD ................................................................ 94 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 106 EPILOGUE: FROM MARKERWAARD TO MARKER WADDEN ........................................................ 112 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................... 114 5 List of abbreviations Abbreviation Full meaning (Optional) Dutch APIJL Association for the Preservation of the IJssel Lake Vereniging tot Behoud van het IJsselmeer DHR Documents of the House of Representatives IJDA IJsselmeerpolders Development Authority Rijksdienst voor de IJsselmeerpolders MHR Minutes of the House of Representatives Rijkswaterstaat (Directorate-General for Public RWS Works and Water Management) SCD Spatial Core Decision Planologische Kernbeslissing SPC Spatial Planning Council Raad van Advies voor Ruimtelijke Ordening STI Socio-technical imaginary STS Science and Technology Studies TWM Ministry of Transport and Water Management Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat WMC Water Management Council Raad voor de Waterstaat ZPD Zuiderzee Project Department Dienst Zuiderzeewerken 6 Introduction In the spring of 2019, tourists were allowed to visit the Marker Wadden nature reserve for the first time (see Figure 1).3 This man-made archipelago, located in the Marker lake, is the newest piece of land acquired by the Netherlands. The reclaimed islands can be considered as the epitome of artificially constructed nature in the country. Curiously, however, the islands should not have existed in the first place. The Marker lake was supposed to have been reclaimed as a polder called the Markerwaard over five decades ago. The Markerwaard polder was an element of the Zuiderzee reclamation project that lasted from 1918 to 1975, during which four major polders were reclaimed in the former inland Zuiderzee sea. However, when in the early 1970s the Markerwaard was about to be reclaimed, the project became contested. The Dutch government ultimately decided to discontinue the reclamation project in the wake of a societal debate that had lasted twenty years. Considering this lengthy and tense debate, it is quite remarkable that the Dutch government accepted the plans for the reclamation of the Marker Wadden archipelago at all. Figure 1: Tourists on the Marker Wadden The Markerwaard is illustrative of a larger transition that took place in the Netherlands during the last decades of the 20th century. In this transition, the Dutch perception regarding the creation and management of the environment seemingly changed, particularly as regards the question to what extent such an environment is and should be engineerable through artificial means. In this thesis I will contribute to a better understanding of this puzzling transition by historicising it. The thesis will focus on the practice of land reclamation, which until the 1970s was relatively uncontested, but became fiercely debated from that period onwards. Technologies such as land 3 Figure 1: ChristiaanPR, Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marker_Wadden_2018_05_12.jpg. 7 reclamation, I argue, are connected to a shared social and moral order on desired societies. Therefore, to fully understand the changes in the Dutch societal perception of land reclamation, discourses on desirable and undesirable futures need to be considered. In this thesis, I will do so by perform an analysis of the socio-technical imaginaries related to land reclamation. I focus on the case study of the Markerwaard, limiting myself to the societal debate in between 1970 and 1990, during which ultimately the Markerwaard reclamation project was discontinued. Historiography Several historians and other scholars have analysed to what extent the Dutch people historically considered their wet environment to be artificially engineerable. For this purpose, the relation between Dutch culture and water can be considered. This approach is often taken by anthropologists and philosophers. They frequently argue that there is something uniquely Dutch about land reclamation. Vice versa, they state, the Dutch culture has been strongly influenced through its riverine landscape and position next to the North Sea. The Dutch philosopher Lotte Jensen, for instance, has recently argued that the ‘battle against the water’ is constitutive of Dutch identity. This identity, according to Jensen, is partially made up of standard image repertoires of flooding, and a national culture of remembering flood disasters. Thus, this battle against the water has become a cultural construction.4 Artificially