CMEMS: Battling the Sky: A Spatial History of the Hail Cannon

CMEMS: Battling the Sky: A Spatial History of the Hail Cannon
Date
Wed May 13th 2020, 12:00 - 1:30pm
Event Sponsor
Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Location
Zoom

Battling the Sky: A Spatial History of the Hail Cannon

In eighteenth-century Europe, hailstorms and other extreme weather events posed an existential danger. Rural communities devised varied strategies to dispel storm clouds and defend their crops. Shooting the clouds with cannons and rifles was believed to be a particularly effective solution. However, the practice engendered heated debates among scholars and neighboring communities that accused each other of making things worse by sending storms their way. This talk will discuss how combining printed and manuscript sources with meteorological and climate data can allow us to develop a spatial history of aerial conflict before the age of aviation.

 

Luca Scholz is a scholar of early modern and digital history whose work combines social, legal and intellectual history with geospatial and computational methods. Luca holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute, a joint MA in History from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and the University of Heidelberg, as well as BA in Economics from the latter university. His first book, “Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire”, was recently published with Oxford University Press. After holding a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University for the last three years, he recently joined the faculty of the University of Manchester (UK) as Lecturer in Digital Humanities.

The Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies will continue the Wednesday lunch-talks series via Zoom at 12:00 noon (Pacific Standard Time). Email bazzif [at] stanford.edu (bazzif[at]stanford[dot]edu) for the Zoom link.