ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the impact of the 1872 November storm on Danish and German societies through a vulnerability approach. It focuses on three themes: processes of urbanization, gendered vulnerability and scientific transformations in the fields of meteorology and flood protection. The chapter links the historical empirical material to the disaster pressure and release model throughout. It looks at processes of urbanization and infrastructural development. The chapter identifies that among the root causes of the catastrophe of 1872 in the Baltic Sea were the political and economic transformations of nineteenth-century Europe, such as the rise of capitalist market-based liberalism following the dismantling of absolutist rule, which encouraged entrepreneurialism and decentralized growth. It concludes with a discussion of how the integration of the themes in the disaster pressure and release model can open up various perspectives for understanding Northern European coastal societies at the time.
