The Water City
The Political Epistemology of Hydrogeological Praxis

Every time that high sea tides flood the city of Venice we are forcefully reminded of the responsibility that humans share for the rise in global temperatures and sea levels. An inquiry into the geo-environmental practices and politics of Venice offers a paradigmatic case study to reflect on the intwined history of humans and their environment. Ongoing research into sustainability and geo-anthropology has emphasized the importance of evaluating alternative historical paths to achieve a dynamic balance between humankind and nature. As the research on the Anthropocene conducted at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science demonstrates, the history of science can diagnose the problems facing our societies and play a substantial role in finding a cure. The specific contribution of the partner group The Water City will be to historically comprehend geo-environmental politics, and the city of Venice was chosen as an ideal site for this both historically and symbolically. 

The research focus of early-modern Venice is a promising point of departure for concrete studies on geo-environmental history in the longue durée, and the consolidation of a historical line of inquiry into hydrogeological praxis in line with the most pressing questions of today’s Anthropocene debates on the anthropic transformation of the earth system. It offers an opportunity to establish new inter-disciplinary collaborations and comparative cross-cultural studies, and constitutes an example of how historical sources can help extract useful data for hydrogeological history.

Archival documentation of the environmental politics of Venice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is vast and well preserved in the Venetian archives (in primis, the State Archive of Venice), in the local libraries, and in the libraries of Veneto region. It calls for in-depth investigations in relation to questions of climate change and geo-environmental management. These materials are of great scholarly interest, as a means of reconstructing the scientific knowledge and practices that made the exchange between the water-civilization and its territory possible. In addition, the archival documents contain large amounts of data about the rise of sea levels in the past which need to be assessed through an interdisciplinary collaboration between historians of science and geologists.

Moreover, this project will involve an intense dialogue between archaeologists and historians of art and architecture, because the environmental history of the lagoon of Venice cannot be understood without the support of scholars in these disciplines; the enmeshment of human action and natural forces reemerges again as a central, mediating theme. Comparative historical and cross-cultural cases will be taken into account, as well, through exchanges with German, American and Indian scholars working on kindred projects.