The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850

by Brian Fagan

  9. Lucas, op. cit. (1930), 359.

  10. Both quotes in this paragraph from Jordan, The Great Famine, 147. Abbott Gilles le Muisit: Henri Lemaitre, ed., Chronique etAnnales de Gilles le Muisit, abbe de Saint-Martin de Tournai (1272-1352) (Paris: Ancon, 1912).

  11. Guillaume de Nangis quoted from Henry S. Lucas, "The Great European Famine," 359.

  PART Two COOLING BEGINS

  The excerpt from the Second Towneley Shepherd's Play is from John Spiers, Medieval English Poetry: The Neo-Chaucerian Tradition (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 337. For the construction of the cycle itself, see John Gardner, The Construction of the Wakefield Cycle (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974).

  The quote by Jan de Vries is from his "Measuring the Impact of Climate on History: The Search for Appropriate Methodologies," in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, Climate and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 22.

  CHAPTER 3

  The quote by Francois Matthes is from his "Report of Committee on Glaciers," Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 21 (1940): 396-406.

  1. Francois Matthes, "Report of Committee on Glaciers," Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 20 (1939): 518-523. For a general essay on climate change, the interested reader can do no better than George Philander's Is the Temperature Rising? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). See also Hubert Lamb's monumental Climate Present, Past, and Future, 2 vols. (London: Methuen, 1977).

  2. Quotes in this paragraph from Hubert Lamb and Knud Frydendahl, Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles and Northwestern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 93. I. B. Gram-Jenson, Sea Floods (Copenhagen: Danish Meteorological Institute, 1985) is a short, more technical work on the subject from the Danish perspective. See also A. M. J. De Kraker, "A Method to Assess the Impact of High Tides, Storms and Sea Surges as Vital Elements in Climatic History," Climatic Change 43(1) (1999): 287-302.

  3. Quoted from Jordan, The Great Famine, 24.

  4. Christian Pfister, "The Little Ice Age: Thermal and Wetness Indices, in Rotberg and Rabb, Climate and History, 85-116.

  5. A brief summary of tree-ring curves can be found in Keith R. Briffa and Timothy J. Osborn, "Seeing the Wood from the Trees," Science 284 (1999): 926-927.

  6. Wallace S. Broecker, "Chaotic Climate," Scientific American, January 1990: 59-56, discusses the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt.

  7. For deep water production theories, see Wallace S. Broecker, Stewart Sutherland, and Tsung-Hung Peng, "A Possible 20th-Century Slowdown of Southern Ocean Deep Water Formation," Science 286 (1999): 1132-1135.

  CHAPTER 4

  The excerpt from Kongugs Skuggsjd (The King's Mirror) is from Kirsten Seaver, The Frozen Echo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 112.

  1. See ibid., also Fitzhugh and Ward, eds., Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. The lavishly illustrated Fitzhugh and Ward volume, published to coincide with a major museum exhibit, is a superb compilation of essays on all aspects of Viking and Norse archaeology and history for the general reader. There are excellent articles on recent archaeological finds at both Norse settlements.

  2. Seaver, The Frozen Echo, 237.

  3. This passage draws on Lamb and Frydendahl, Historic Storms. 4. Seaver, The Frozen Echo, 104.

  5. A seminal, multidisciplinary paper on Norse abandonment of the Western Settlement and Nipaatsoq can be found in L. K. Barlow et al., "Interdisciplinary Investigations of the end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland," The Holocene 7(4) (1997): 489-500.

  6. Joel Berglund, "The Farm Beneath the Sand," in Fitzhugh and Ward, Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, 295-303.

  7. The literature on cod is enormous. Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (New York: Walker, 1998). Harold A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries: The History of an International Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954) is still authoritative.

  8. Discussion in Grove, op. cit. (1988), Chapter 12.

  9. Mark Kurlansky's The Basque History of the World (New York: Walker, 1999) discusses the Basque expansion.

  10. E. M. Carus Wilson, "The Iceland Trade," in Eileen Power and M. M. Postan, eds., Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1933), 180.

  11. Herring fisheries are discussed by Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude's definitive The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy 1500-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

  12. Doggers: see Wilson, "The Iceland Trade," also Sean McGrail, Ancient Boats in N. W. Europe: The archaeology of water transport to A.D. 1500 (New York: Longmans, 1987), a useful summary of early seafaring. For medieval shipping, see Richard W. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1980), and the same author's Ships and Shipping in the North Sea and Atlantic, 1400-1800 (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Variorum, 1997). I am grateful to Professor Unger for background information on Dutch doggers.

  13. Wilson, "The Iceland Trade," 180. 14. Ibid.

  15. Albert C. Jensen, The Cod (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1972), 87. 16. Ibid., 89.

  CHAPTER 5

  The quote by Fernand Braudel is from his The Structures of Everyday Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 49.

  1. For this chapter, I have drawn extensively on Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's classic Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000, translated by Barbara Bray (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971). The Semur-en-Auxois window is described there and is well worth a visit.

  2. My account of French peasant life is derived from Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The French Peasantry 1450-1600, translated by Alan Sheridan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

  3. Analyses of the Black Death abound. A good account used here: Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York: Free Press, 1983). See also William H. McNeill, Plagues and People (New York: Anchor Books-Doubleday, 1977); Graham Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984) argues that the Black Death that hit England may in fact have been the first, and lethal, appearance of anthrax and not bubonic plague. Contributors to Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., History and Hunger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) discuss the complex relationship between food production, population, and disease. The graphical presentations between pages 305 and 308 are especially valuable.

  4. Gottfried, The Black Death, 58-59.

  5. Ibid., 67.

  6. Ibid., 70. Such processions were already commonplace in earlier centuries.

  7. Lamb, Climate Present, Past, and Future, 479.

  8. Ladurie, The French Peasantry 1450-1600, 48.

  9. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, discusses wine harvests in depth.

  10. Ibid., 66-67.

  11. Gilles de Gouberville is well portrayed by Ladurie, using primary sources in his The French Peasantry 1450-1600, 199-230. The brief quotes in this section come from this work.

  12. Quoted by Ladurie, The French Peasantry 1450-1600, 229.

  13. The discussion of glacial history which follows is drawn from Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, which is based primarily on historical sources, and on Grove, op. cit. (1988).

  14. Ladurie was unable to establish the modern equivalent for journaux of land.

  15. Christian Pfister et al., "Documentary Evidence on Climate in SixteenthCentury Central Europe," Climatic Change 43(1) (1999): 55-110.

  16. Behringer, Wolfgang, "Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities," Climatic Change 43(1) (1999): 335-351.

  17. Quotes and analysis from Lamb and Frydendahl, Historic Storms, 38-41.

  18. Lamb, op. cit. (1977), 478.

  19. W. G. Hoskins, "Harvest fluctuations and English economic history 1620-1759," Agricultural History Review 68 (1968): 15-31.

  20. Proverbs 11:26. />
  21. David W. Stahle et al., "The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts," Science 280 (1998): 564-567. I am grateful to Dr. David Anderson for letting me read his unpublished paper "Climate and Culture Change in Prehistoric and Early Historical Eastern North America" (1999), from which the comment about English and Spanish is taken.

  PART THREE THE END OF THE "FULL WORLD"

  The quote by Francois Matthes is from his "Report of Committee on Glaciers" (1939): 520.

  CHAPTER 6

  The French government official at Limousin is quoted in Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 177.

  1. Ladurie raises this point in his Times of Feast, Times of Famine, whereas Lamb's thesis is closely argued in his Climate, History and the Modern World.

  2. The best general source on the agricultural revolution in Britain is Mark Overton's Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For references on France and Ireland, see Chapters 9 and 11.

  3. Quoted from Richard Verstegan's A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (Antwerp: 1605) in Lamb, Climate Present, Past, and Future, 463.

  4. I am grateful to Professor Prudence Rice for the opportunity to consult her unpublished paper "Volcanoes, earthquakes, and the Spanish colonial wine industry of southern Peru" (1999), upon which this passage is based. For ancient volcanoes generally, see G. Heiken and F. McCoy, eds., Volcanic Disasters in Human Antiquity (Washington, D.C.: Geological Society of America Special Paper, 2000), also T. Simkin, and K. Fiske, Krakatau: the Volcanic Eruption and its Effects (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1993).

  5. Shanaka L. De Silva and Gregory A. Zielinski, "Global Influence of the A.D. 1600 eruption of Huanyaputina, Peru," Nature 393 (1998): 455-458.

  6. K. R. Briffe et al., "Influence of volcanic eruptions on Northern Hemisphere summer temperature over the past 600 years," Nature 393 (1998): 450-455.

  7. F. G. Delfin et al., "Geological, 14 C and historical evidence for a 17th century eruption of Parker Volcano, Mindanao, Philippines," Journal of the Geological Society of the Philippines 52 (1997): 25-42.

  8. This section is based in part on Overton, op. cit. (1996), and on Robert TrowSmith, Society and the Land (London: Cresset Press, 1953). I also drew heavily on A. H. John, "The Course of Agricultural Change 1660-1760," in L. R. Presnell, ed., Studies in the Industrial Revolution (London: Athlone Press, 1960), 125-155. For the Netherlands, see de Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy.

  9. Quotes from Charles Wilson, England's Apprenticeship 1603-1763, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1984), 27.

  10. Quoted from Walter Blith, The English Improver (1649) by Wilson, ibid., 28.

  11. Trow-Smith, Society and the Land, 96.

  12. Overton, op. cit. (1996), 203.

  13. The literature on enclosure is enormous and confusing to the lay person. Overton, op. cit. (1996) provides basic references and the general reader is advised to start there. Some other sources I found useful: Robert C. Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England 1700-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and J. A. Yelling, Common Field and Enclosure in England 1450-1850 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1977). For parliamentary enclosure, see Chapter 8.

  14. Redcliffe N. Salaman's The History and Social Influence of the Potato, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) is the fundamental source on the history of this all-important vegetable.

  15. Ibid., 86.

  16. Ibid., 104-105.

  IT Ibid., 115.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Old Farmers Almanac 174 (1766, p. 47) is quoted from John D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).

  1. Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World provided the data for this passage.

  2. Ibid., 218.

  3. A discussion of global glaciation, including New Zealand, can be found in Grove, op. cit. (1988).

  4. Quoted by Grove, op. cit. (1988), 380-381.

  5. Lamb, Climate Present, Past, and Future, 526. I also drew on this work for the data on faunal migrations that follows.

  6. This section is based on John A. Eddy, "The Maunder Minimum: Sunspots and Climate in the Reign of Louis XIV," in Geoffrey Parker and Lesley M. Smith, eds., The General Crisis of the 17th Century, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1997), 264-298. Quotes are from this paper. For more on sunspots, see G. Reid and K. S. Gage, "Influence of Solar Variability on global sea surface temperatures," Nature 329 (6135): 142-143.

  7. Eddy (op. cit.), in Parkey and Smith (1997), 267.

  8. Since 1710, the amount of solar activity has risen, but modern readings are confusing, as the 14C concentration in the atmosphere has risen sharply since the late nineteenth century due to the combustion of fossil fuels and human activity, which has introduced much higher levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.)

  9. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 160.

  10. Quotes in this paragraph from ibid., 170.

  11. Ibid., 173.

  12. Ibid., 174.

  13. Ibid., 177.

  14. Quotes in this paragraph from ibid., 181.

  15. Grove, op. cit. (1988), 188.

  16. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 187.

  17. Ibid., 196.

  18. Grove, op. cit. (1988), 88.

  19. Grove, op. cit. (1988), 89.

  CHAPTER 8

  Nathanial Kent's General View of the Agriculture of the County of Norfolk (1796) is quoted in Mark Overton, op. cit. (1996), 166.

  1. The Great Fire of London is easily accessible to the general reader. John E. N. Hearsley, London and the Great Fire (London: John Murray, 1965) is a widely read source, which I drew on here. Pepys quotes are from page 15.

  2. Ibid., 141.

  3. Robert Latham and Linnet Latham, eds. A Pepys Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 158.

  4. Ibid., 159.

  5. Hearsley, London and the Great Fire, 149.

  6. Lamb and Frydendahl, Historic Storms, 50.

  7. Ibid., 38.

  8. Guy de la Bedoyere, ed., The Diary of John Evelyn (Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press, 1995), 267.

  9. Lamb, Climate Present, Past, and Future, 488; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Regime, translated by Mark Greengrass (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 210.

  10. D. P. Willis, Sand and Silence: Lost Villages of the North (Aberdeen, Scotland: Center for Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen, 1986), offers a brief description of the Culbin disaster. Quote from page 40.There is some debate as to the exact nature of the Culbin disaster, with some experts questioning whether it would be possible for a single storm to accumulate so much sand. See J. A. Steers, "The Culbin Sands and Burghead Bay," Geographical Journal 90 (1937): 498-523, and accompanying debate. I have chosen to use the more dramatic scenario here.

  11. Willis, Sand and Silence, 37.

  12. Daniel Defoe, A Collection of the Most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters ... , 2d ed. (London: George Sawbridge, 1704), 66.

  13. Ibid., 75.

  14. Ibid., 94.

  15. Quoted by Lamb and Frydendahl, Historic Storms, 60.

  16. Lamb, Climate Present, Past, and Future, 485.

  17. See, for example, discussion in ibid., 485 if.

  18. John D. Post, Food Shortage, Climatic Variability, and Epidemic Disease in Preindustrial Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) provided much of the material for this section. Quote from page 58. See also F. Neman, Hunger in History: Food Shortages, Poverty and Deprivation (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990). 19. Ibid., 60.

  20. Post, Food Shortage, Climatic Variability, and Epidemic Disease, 62.

  21. Ibid., 63.

  22. Ibid., 73-74.

  23. Ibid., 279.

  24. Ibid., 295.

  25. Ibid., 210-211.

  26. B
y coincidence, after writing this passage, I came across Charles More's The Industrial Age: Economy and Society in Britain 1750-1995, 2d ed. (London and New York: Longman, 1997), which contains a discussion of the same painting in the context of agriculture. Interesting that it evoked the same reaction in an archaeologist and a historian!

  27. John Walker, British Economic and Social History 1700-1977, 2nd ed. revised by C. W. Munn (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1979), 79. For discontent in Britain, see Frank O. Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Public Disorder in Regency England (London: Oxford University Press, 1934). A more complex discussion: E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Longmans, 1965).

  28. Arthur Young is so important that he has generated a historical literature in its own right, some of which wonders just how thorough an observer he was. His two-volume A Course in Experimental Agriculture, published in London in 1771, is his masterpiece.

  29. Parliamentary enclosure has spawned a huge literature. A good beginner's guide: Michael Turner, Enclosures in Britain 1750-1830 (London: Macmillan, 1984).

  30. Trow-Smith, Society and the Land, 103.

  31. Ibid., 101.

  32. Ibid., 41.

  33. Ibid., 138.

  34. Discussion of this complex issue in Wilson, England's Apprenticeship 1603-1763, Chapter 1.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jules Michelot is quoted in Ralph W Greenlaw, ed., The Economic Origins of the French Revolution: Poverty or Prosperity? (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1958), 3.

  1. Hippolyte A. Taine, LAncien Regime, translated by John Durand, vol. 1 (New York: Henry Holt, 1950), 338.

  2. Data on wine harvests comes from Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, Chapter 11, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Micheline Baulant, "Grape Harvests from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth Centuries," in Rotberg and Rabb, Climate and History, 259-268. For the complexities of studying wine harvests, see Barbara Bell, "Analysis of Viticultural Data by Cumulative Deviations," in Rotberg and Rabb, Climate and History, 271-278.

  3. A special issue of the journal Climatic Change, 43(1) (1999), surveys the latest research in climatic history in Switzerland and parts of Central Europe. See also Christian Pfister, Klimageschichte der Schweiz 1525-1860, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1992), and the same author's Wetternachhersage. 500 Jahre Klimavariationen and Naturkatastrophen (1496-1995) (Berlin: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1999). Of particular interest in the special volume are: Christian Pfister and Rudolf Brazdil, "Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe and Its Social Dimension: A Synthesis," Climatic Change 43 (1) (1999): 5-53; also Pfister et al., "Documentary Evi dence on Climate." For Alpine glacier fluctuations, see H. Holzhauser and H. J. Zumbuhl, "Glacier Fluctuations in the Western Swiss and French Alps in the 16th Century," Climatic Change 43 (1) (1999): 223-237.