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For Review Only 19 Risk of Flood and Storm Surge Manuscripts submitted to Environmental History Malaria, Water Management, and Identity in the English Lowlands ForJournal: Review Environmental History Only Manuscript ID EH-2017-120.R1 Manuscript Type: Original Article Themes: landscape and land use change, health, water Regions: Europe https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eh Page 1 of 25 Manuscripts submitted to Environmental History 1 1 2 3 Malaria, Water Management, and Identity in the English Lowlands 4 5 Picture a Dutch scene and the chances are that it will depict a flat landscape in which both a 6 7 canal and a windmill figure. This representation has become so universally associated with 8 9 the Netherlands, past and present, that it rarely needs any caption to identify its provenance: 10 the one has become identified with the other in people’s minds. Three hundred years ago, 11 12 much the same image could just as easily have characterized many parts of eastern England. 13 14 Much of the eastern seaboard lying between East Yorkshire and the Pevensey Levels in Kent 15 constituted an English Lowlands, a distinctive region characterized by large areas of marsh 16 17 and fen, and a sub-culture borne out of the vicissitudes and travails of living with the constant 18 For Review Only 19 risk of flood and storm surge. Its landscape was singled out in the national consciousness by 20 the great quantity of land reclaimed from the sea, crisscrossed by drains and dykes, and 21 22 interspersed with windmills, and by its people with their pallid complexions, strange laws and 23 24 customs, and a distinctive architecture of houses built on stilts. 25 26 This was a landscape where danger lurked not only in the unstable, frequently waterlogged 27 28 ground, where bog and quicksand might make short shrift of the unwary, but also in its airs 29 30 where the miasmas given off by rank vegetation were considered to lay low even the locals 31 with the ague or marsh fever that had popularly begun to be called after the Italian “bad air” 32 33 (mal-aria ) or malaria. Together water and air defined this English Lowlands as separate and 34 35 apart from the rest of the country. Commentators remarked on the unhealthy nature of the 36 terrain and on the strange antics and sickly appearance of its people. Then latter, prone to 37 38 wading through shallow floodwaters on stilts, were said to resemble frogs and reputed to 39 1 40 have webbed feet. Generally, people from the Lowlands were held in low esteem: Not for 41 nothing did William Shakespeare christen one of his comic masterpieces from the Twelfth 42 43 Night , the pale-faced, dim-witted, vain-glorious fop, Sir Andrew “Ague-cheek.” 44 45 For those not accustomed to its environment, even a brief sojourn there might lead to sickness 46 47 and even death. Daniel Defoe noted how eighteenth-century gentlemen from London who set 48 49 out to seek sport in the marshes “often return with an Essex ague on their backs, which they 50 find a heavier load than the fowls they have shot.”2 But this was also a changing 51 52 environment, one that underwent a profound transformation between the seventeenth and 53 54 twentieth centuries as the land was drained and its soils brought under cultivation. As the 55 waters receded so, too, did the incidence of “intermittent fever” decline. Physicians began to 56 57 note a dramatic reduction in the cases of malaria beginning in the 1830s that continued to 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eh Manuscripts submitted to Environmental History Page 2 of 25 2 1 2 3 gather pace during the second half of the century till the disease had virtually disappeared by 4 5 1900. This article examines the puzzling relationship between water, malaria, and identity in 6 the nineteenth century: how as one was drained from the land so the other apparently 7 8 disappeared from the human bloodstream, and how, in the absence of both, the English 9 10 Lowlands as a distinctive region began to fade from the national and historical consciousness. 11 12 13 14 15 The English Lowlands 16 17 Much of eastern England constitutes an English Lowlands, coastal salt marshes or inland 18 For Review Only 19 freshwater fens, protected only by dunes, shingle ridges, and earthen embankments or fields 20 that required an elaborate network of cuts, ditches, or underdraining to keep them from 21 22 inundation. They were inhabited by a population whose customs and traditions despite their 23 24 regional variations reflected a shared history of risks based on managing water and mitigating 25 flood and storm surge. As such, both landscape and people closely resembled the other 26 27 shorelines around the Wadden Sea. 3 28 29 30 Fenlands are low-lying areas of peat soils that exist extensively throughout England but are 31 especially to be found in an almost continuous swathe extending from the Lower Ouse and 32 33 the Aire valley in Yorkshire, through the Isle of Axholme and south Lincolnshire, to 34 35 Cambridgeshire and the Norfolk Broads. Reclaimed to an undetermined extent during the 36 Roman period, only the silt marshlands along the edge of the Wash and some other coastal 37 4 38 areas were extensively farmed and settled by the Middle Ages. Most of this region 39 40 constituted a sparsely inhabited, waterlogged plain apart from a number of “islands” of higher 41 elevation upon which major monastic establishments like Ely were erected.5 Its subsequent 42 43 drainage converted these fenlands into one of England’s most productive agricultural regions. 44 45 Further south, Essex, too, had extensive marshlands, particularly around the mouth of the 46 Thames estuary with its sandbanks and mudflats, as did the coasts of Kent and Sussex. Along 47 48 the south coast lie the great marshes of Romney, one of the earliest reclaimed areas in the 49 50 country, and the adjoining Rother and Pett Levels, and the great Pevensey Level. This eastern 51 coastline together with its hinterland and southern outliers, despite its variegated topography, 52 53 constituted a single identifiable region based on a shared risk of water-related hazards that 54 55 collectively can be denominated an English Lowlands (see Figure 1). The constant exposure 56 of this region to flood and storm necessitated a particular adaptation to the environment over 57 58 the centuries. 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eh Page 3 of 25 Manuscripts submitted to Environmental History 3 1 2 3 [INSET Figure 1: The English “Lowlands”] 4 5 The great enterprise was the draining of the Fen Country starting in the seventeenth century, 6 7 though much mooted over the preceding hundred years. 6 The Fens are a large, extremely flat 8 9 plain bordering on the Wash and encompassing over 3,000 square kilometers. Evidence of 10 former great sea defenses suggests these lands had been partially drained in an earlier age if 11 12 not by the Romans at least some time during the late Saxon period. 7 Whatever its origins, this 13 14 and other works had mainly fallen into decay by the seventeenth century and much of the 15 region had reverted to river marsh and tidal silt shrouded, according to contemporary reports, 16 17 in almost perpetual mists and miasmas, and prone to widespread flooding. 8 Increasingly 18 For Review Only 19 favorable economic conditions and a steadily rising population provided both the capital and 20 incentive to effect the wholesale reclamation of these fenlands, and persuade the Crown, local 21 22 landowners, and both domestic and foreign investors of the profits that might be had from 23 24 their drainage. Between 1630 and 1652, 380,000 acres (153,780 hectares) were drained 25 through a judicious mixture of constructing new cuts, enlarging existing drains, and building 26 27 a number of sluices. 9 28 29 30 However, financial difficulties to do with maintenance, technical problems to do with 31 subsidence (peat shrinkage), and outfall due to discharge rates into the Wash constantly 32 33 threatened the whole project with ruin. The more the water was drained, the faster the peat 34 10 35 dried out and shrank, blowing away in the wind or disintegrating through bacterial action. 36 In some areas, the frequency and severity of flooding actually intensified and, in others, lands 37 38 that had previously been dry were now seasonally inundated. Much of the newly reclaimed 39 40 land reverted to fens within thirty years and flooding remained a serious issue right into the 41 eighteenth century. 11 Gradually over the centuries, however, much of eastern England was 42 43 transformed from wetlands into a landscape of cultivated fields, crisscrossed by drainage 44 45 ditches and embanked rivers, its monotonous flatness punctuated by windmills slowly turning 46 in the freshening sea-breeze. 47 48 49 And just as the peoples of the English Lowlands transformed the landscape around them over 50 time into something more “improved” for human purposes, so the variegated environment 51 52 molded the social and political structures of these communities in similar though distinctive 53 54 ways. A whole corpus of local rights and customs evolved to regulate this environment and 55 meet the exigencies of fen and marsh life that even in the thirteenth century was described as 56 57 having been practiced since “time out of memory.” A reliance on an infrastructure of dykes 58 59 60 https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eh Manuscripts submitted to Environmental History Page 4 of 25 4 1 2 3 and drains that required constant maintenance, repair, and extension required group effort and 4 5 fostered communitarian forms of governance.
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