One of Diamond’s success stories was Holland, of which more than half the land area is below sea level: the result of a process of reclamation that has been going on for a millennium. (“The Lord made the world,” it is said, “but the Dutch made Holland.”) He argued that the need for social cooperation generated by the constant process of keeping the salt water out had generated a society not merely environmentally conscious, but also strongly consensus-oriented.
That led me to ask a question which I’m hoping some reader can answer: To what extent did both the habits and the specific institutions developed by the need to defend the polders against the sea contribute to the origin and the success of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish crown in the Sixteenth Century, leading to the formation of the Dutch Republic?