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Recent policy debates on climate change have started highlighting the importance of adaptation of societies to new conditions projected by climate scientists. Previously, mitigation had been almost the sole focus of policy-makers for fear of creating a moral hazard when concentrating more strongly on adaptation. Yet, with many of the climatic changes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected occurring faster than scientists predicted, adaptation has reentered the debate as an imperative. In this context, in which adaptation-a process often unfolding on deep timescales-becomes prescriptive, it is crucial to look at the historical development of adaptive practices over the long term in order to appreciate the complexity of their evolution. This paper is a hybrid between a summary of a research project and a review of the most crucial literature on which it was based. The point of departure of this study was Hurricane Katrina, which, after it had flooded New Orleans on August 29, 2005, raised the question, how such a disaster could have happened in one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world. I then rewind to the foundation of the city in 1718 and work my way along case studies through three centuries of hurricane history in New Orleans. The red thread is the concept of adaptation. I review the definition of adaptation provided by the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC from a historian's point of view and suggest a slight change of perspective. Knowledge as a precondition for adaptation, contingency, path-dependence, political vulnerability, and the interplay of cultural, legal, and political factors emerge as crucial characteristics in the historical evolution of adaptive practices throughout the almost 300-year period of study.

Through the lens of the Swiss Reinsurance Company's (today Swiss Re) nineteenth century correspondence, the Swedish and international (re-)insurance industry's risk management after the devastating fire of Sundsvall, Sweden on June 25, 1888 unfolds. The article focuses on the Swiss Reinsurance Company's post disaster 'risk-shaping' and the formation of reinsurance lobby-groups in the aftermath of the disaster. It argues that even the insurance industry's concept of 'objective risk' is not static but fluid and open to negotiation within the insurance system. Since the insurance industry works on the interface between the natural and the built environment it can influence directly how societies interact with nature. The article argues furthermore, that perceiving fire merely as a man-made hazard without considering its 'natural' context falls short of an accurate analysis, in particular concerning 'catastrophic loss' (i.e. large-scale loss) affecting (re-)insurers' geographical risk distribution.

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