Jan Haspeslagh = username 157.193.5.81 = IP address Fri, 26 Apr 2013 20:56:27 = Date & Time Environment and History 19 (2013): 209–232 © 2013 The White Horse Press. doi: 10.3197/096734013X13642082568651 Flood Security in the Medieval and Early Modern North Sea Area: A Question of Entitlement? TIM SOENS Department of History University of Antwerp Prinsstraat 13 (D313), B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium Email: tim.soens@ua.ac.be ABSTRACT Starting in the later Middle Ages, the coastal wetlands along the southern North Sea area were increasingly hit by a series of catastrophic storm surges. Deeply rooted in the collective memory of coastal society, these food disasters are mostly discussed as products of meteorological disturbances, environmen- tal vulnerability or technological failure. In this article, an alternative reading is proposed, drawing attention to massive distortions in the social allocation of food protection in the later Middle Ages, which help to explain the increased frequency of storm disasters. Building on Amartya Sen’s original entitlement approach, it is argued that the right of coastal peasants to food security often witnessed severe setbacks preceding many food disasters, caused by adverse economic conditions, but also by an increasing violation of their entitlement to food protection mainly by non-peasant groups, backed by an expanding state power. KEYWORDS Environmental disaster, water management, food risk, entitlement INTRODUCTION: EXPLAINING THE AGE OF STORMS IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES All over the North Sea Area the later Middle Ages saw repeated food disasters and massive land losses in coastal wetlands: in England, the Low Countries, Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia thousands of hectares of re- claimed land and hundreds of villages were lost to the sea. For instance, in the Scheldt Estuary in the present-day province of Zeeland (The Netherlands),