Sea Level - (Oceans in Depth) by Wilko Graf Von Hardenberg (Hardcover)

About the Book

"What do we mean when we talk about sea level? How and why did people begin to measure it? With Wilko Graf von Hardenberg as our guide, we follow these questions and more to the muddy littoral spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and through the expansion of European colonial empires and the science funding boom of the Cold War. This book is the first history of sea level as a concept and of its theoretical and practical uses. It breaks new ground by offering an innovative outlook on how human societies worldwide have revisited and reinterpreted the relationship between land and sea in modern times. What is more, as a conceptual history of one of the most widely used baselines of environmental change, Sea Level provides a much-needed historical contextualization of anthropogenic sea level rise and its impact on the global coast. By narrating how sea level has morphed from a stable geodetic baseline to a marker of anthropogenic change, von Hardenberg sheds new light on the Anthropocene itself"--

Book Synopsis

Traces a commonplace average--sea level--from its origins in charting land to its emergence as a symbol of global warming.

News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and coastal communities. The baseline for these measurements--sea level--may seem unremarkable, a long-familiar zero point for altitude. But as Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveals, the history of defining and measuring sea level is intertwined with national ambitions, commercial concerns, and shifting relationships between people and the ocean.

Sea Level provides a detailed and innovative account of how mean sea level was first defined, how it became the prime reference point for surveying and cartography, and how it emerged as a powerful mark of humanity's impact on the earth. With Hardenberg as our guide, we traverse the muddy spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and the Himalayan foothills. Born out of Enlightenment studies of physics and quantification, sea level became key to state-sponsored public works, colonial expansion, Cold War development of satellite technologies, and recognizing the climate crisis. Mean sea level, Hardenberg reveals, is not a natural occurrence--it has always been contingent, the product of people, places, politics, and evolving technologies. As global warming transforms the globe, Hardenberg reminds us that a holistic understanding of the ocean and its changes requires a multiplicity of reference points.

A fascinating story that revises our assumptions about land and ocean alike, Sea Level calls for a more nuanced understanding of this baseline, one that allows for new methods and interpretations as we navigate an era of unstable seas.

Review Quotes

"Von Hardenberg's book is a perfect illustration of the complexity of the historical interplay with oceanography providing significant contributions to the evolution of land mapping and ocean charting, the significance of which may not even be known by numerous research scientists." -- "Ocean Yearbook"

"An astute analysis of the idea of mean sea level that links multiple stories and centuries, from the Enlightenment to the present."-- "H-Oceans"

"By combining scientific, historical, and political analyses, Sea Level provides a comprehensive understanding of sea-level rise as both a physical phenomenon and a sociopolitical issue. It challenges readers to think beyond scientific data and to recognize the cultural, historical, and political dimensions of sea-level rise, encouraging a more holistic approach to understanding and addressing the climate crisis."-- "Environmental History"

"Sea level, Hardenberg convincingly demonstrates, is not and never has been a natural or physical plane or index; instead, it is a construct, 'a product of technically and culturally determined assumptions, ' frequently involving political and imperial motivations. . . . As the engagement with climate change in the final chapters suggests, Sea Level will be of interest to scholars of the environment and of disaster studies, but its tracing of changing scientific ideas definitely deserves attention from historians of science, especially historians of geology and ocean sciences, and of metrology and related technologies, particularly in imperial contexts. The general reader (or student) may want to keep a notebook handy to track the cast of characters, but the book's readable prose and enlightening connections will make it worth their while to do so." -- "British Journal for the History of Science"

"Brilliant . . . all adults should read and understand Sea Level. Highly recommended." -- "Choice"

"Those whose interests encompass one or more of the Earth sciences, as well as those who study the history of science--particularly its applications and intersections with politics and commerce--should add this new book to their reading list, as should all who would simply like to acquire a better understanding and informed perspective on the terminology, techniques, and overall understanding of one of the more commonly referenced measurement values cited in the present-day discussions and debates about climate change." -- "The Well-Read Naturalist"

"As this readable and thoughtful book explains, making sense of sea level was a matter of measurement. Von Hardenberg traces the ways in which philosophers, map-makers and bureaucrats from the eighteenth century onwards grappled with the problems of measuring elevation. . . . This is the story of how sea level was transformed from a local to a universal reference."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"Hardenberg's history illustrates how values of the zero-level reference plane varied from country to country, depending not only on varying geography but also on how national priorities for the allocation of research resources affected the choice and extent of the data sets obtained." -- "Natural History"

"Like the metre, the minute, or the meridian that runs through Greenwich, England, 'sea level' is best thought of as a social and historical construct, the result of an inherently arbitrary decision taken by generations of people doing their best to make sense of a strange and chaotic world. Von Hardenberg's history is a story not of the way sea level has changed over time but, rather, of the ways in which humans have understood, and made use of, sea level as a concept, a marker of where we stand in the world." -- "New Yorker"

"Sea Level is a delightfully compacted study, refreshingly free of the kind of doomsaying that usually accompanies this subject. And the sotto voce warning about hobbling science with the politics of the moment is unfortunately pointed."-- "Open Letters Review"

"Sea Level is a powerful reminder that examining the history of scientific values can shed light on both the structure of modern science and its impact on the near future. This book is concise, well written, and informative, and it is a strong example of what ocean history has to offer."-- "Science"

"Traversing major debates within the history of science, Hardenberg offers his readers an interdisciplinary account of the abstraction and mathematization of the global coastlines. He tells this story from a unique vantage point located in the present climate politics. Thoroughly researched, highly original, and robustly argued, this book is a pleasure to read."--Debjani Bhattacharyya, author of Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta

About the Author

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is the principal investigator of the research project The Sound of Nature: Soundscapes and Environmental Awareness, 1750-1950 at Humboldt University in Berlin. He is the author of A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and Conflict on the Gran Paradiso, 1919-1949 and the coauthor of Mussolini's Nature: An Environmental History of Italian Fascism.