Warned by the past: How Dutch media commemorate the 1953 North Sea Flood as a future climate catastrophe

Abstract

The North Sea Flood of 1953 was the largest disaster to hit the Netherlands in the twentieth century. In 2023, 70 years after the catastrophe took place, Dutch media outlets commemorated the flood. Yet, their representations of the dreadful disaster were not only about the past; they also projected the catastrophe onto futures shaped by sea level rise and exacerbating weather conditions. This article analyses how Dutch journalists appropriated a historical disaster to tell stories about the current-day climate crisis and, meanwhile, “anchored” fearful futures in collective memory. The disaster in 1953 showed the havoc that such a flood could wreak again – a disaster journalists now present as a warning against future inaction in the face of rising risks. The lessons they drew from the disaster, however, differed substantially. Journalists embedded the catastrophe in broader historical water narratives that shape the current Dutch discourse on sea level rise. In doing so, some stressed technological optimism, while others emphasised that the Dutch should take a humbler stance towards the forces of nature. Using the same historical catastrophe, different journalists drew very different interpretations and hence conveyed diverse conclusions to their audiences.