Thewaning of the little ice age: Climate change in early modern europe

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 44, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 301-325

  Kelly, Morgan ^a   Ó Gráda, Cormac ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84892996990     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/JINH_a_00573     Document Type: Article

References (144)

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4. Jean M. Grove's useful The Little Ice Age (London, 1988) appeared as Little Ice Ages: Ancient and Modern (London, 2004).
5. This journal has a long tradition of publishing work on climate history. The special issue, "History and Climate: Interdisciplinary Explorations," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, X (1980), 583-858
6. Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (New York, 1988), for a skeptical survey.
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15. Glaser and Riemann describe years as good, average, or bad.
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21. Although tree rings might seem like a more systematic source, annual-growth rings only reflect weather for trees at the edge of their geographical ranges that are under stress from cold or arid conditions, which is not the case for most of Europe. Van Engelen et al., "Millennium."
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23. Kelly and ó Gráda, "Change Points and Temporal Dependence in Reconstructions of Annual Temperature: Did Europe Experience a Little Ice Age?" working paper 2012/10 (University College Dublin Centre for Economic Research, 2012), available at www.ucd.ie/economics/research.
24. Kelly and ó Gráda, "Change Points and Temporal Dependence"
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26. Alex J. S. Gibson and T. Christopher Smout, Prices, Food, and Wages in Scotland, 1550-1780 (New York, 1995), 170-171.
27. The most widely used series of temperature reconstructions for the northern hemisphere-Mann et al., "Proxy-Based Reconstructions of Hemispheric and Global Surface Temperature Variations over the Past Two Millennia," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, CV (2008), 13252-13257-finds that the mid-seventeenth century stands out as a local maximum of temperature rather than the supposed Parkerian minimum. In assessing local conditions, these hemispheric reconstructions are, however, problematical for two reasons: first, the low correlation of weather across even small geographical areas (an unusually cold period in one place can be normal or warm in other areas), and, second-as indicated in Blakeley B. McShane and Abraham J. Wyner, "A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures over the Last 1000 Years Reliable?" Annals of Applied Statistics (forthcoming)- the poor statistical fit of weather proxies (usually tree rings) to instrumentally recorded temperature, raising questions about the validity of climate reconstructions based on physical records. These criticisms do not apply to the documentary-based reconstructions used herein.
28. Glaser and Riemann, "Thousand Year Record"
29. Kelly and ó Gráda, "Change Points and Temporal Dependence."
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39. Estimates of temperature range from the modest 0.1-0.2°C implied by several meteorological reconstructions, through the 1.7°C employed by Richard H. Steckel in a recent anthropometric analysis, to the "about 7°C cooler than during the Medieval Warm Period" claimed by Brian Fagan.
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49. Parker, "Crisis and Catastrophe"
50. David D. Zhang et al., "The Causality Analysis of Climate Change and Large-scale Human Crisis," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2011), available at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/09/29/1104268108]. Compare Tainter, Collapse of Complex Societies, 44-50.
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54. Lamb, Climate, History
55. Fagan, Little Ice Age
56. Steckel,"Health and Nutrition," 243.
57. John H. Round, "Essex Vineyards in Domesday," Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, VII (1903), 249-251
58. Henry C. Darby, The Domesday Geography of Eastern England (New York, 2007; orig. pub. 1951), 372.
59. J. E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1885), I, 18
60. Christopher Dyer, "The Value of Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem for Economic and Social History," in Michael Hicks (ed.), The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem: A Companion (Woodbridge, 2012), 98
61. Frederic W. Weaver and Charles H. Mayo (eds.), Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset (London, 1912), 73
62. Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London, 1994), 107. According to the Oxford Latin Dictionary (New York, 1982), II, 2081, "Vivarium" could also mean a game enclosure or "a place where living creatures are kept."
63. Yves Renouard, "The Wine Trade of Gascony in the Middle Ages," in Rondo Cameron (ed. and trans., with the assistance of Franklin F. Mendels and Judith P. Ward), Essays in French Economic History (Homewood, Ill., 1970), 67. Verjuice is a flavor-enhancing, acidifying liquid made from a variety of white grape.
64. John Willoughby, "Power Ingredients: Verjuice Makes Sour Grapes a Good Thing," New York Times, 27 Oct. 2010.
65. Morgan O'Doherty, "Remarks on Henderson the Historian," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, XVI (1824), 6
66. Renouard, "Wine Trade"
67. Henry J. Chaytor, The Troubadours and England (Cambridge, 1923), 26-27
68. Margery K. James, "The Fluctuations of the Anglogascon Wine Trade during the Fourteenth Century," Economic History Review, IV (1951), 170-196
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70. Compare Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c. 1200-1520 (New York, 1989), 58, 62
71. Alec R. Myers, London in the Age of Chaucer (Norman, 1972), 192
72. Richard Unger, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 2004), 74-77.
73. A quarter litre of beer cost a denier, whereas a pinte (roughly 1 litre) of wine cost 1 to 2 deniers. http://medieval.mrugala.net/Commerce%20et%20l'argent/Prix%20au %20moyen%20age%20-%20ordre%20chronologique.htm.
74. Lamb's linking of Germany's decline in grape cultivation to the lia does not readily square with the dynamism of German viticulture after the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, even in such northern regions as the Ahr valley.
75. Jancis Robinson (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Wine (New York, 2006; orig. pub. 1994), 304-308.
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78. John E. Thornes, Constable's Skies: A Fusion of Art and Science (New York, 1999), 160-162
79. Jenny L. Chapman and Michael J. Reiss, Ecology: Principles and Applications (New York, 1999), 98
80. Fagan, Little Ice Age, 48
81. Jonathan Jones, "Into the White," The Guardian, 18 Dec. 2006
82. Wikipedia, "Little Ice Age" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age).
83. Breugel's masterpiece also features in the text and on the dust jacket of Behringer's interesting Cultural History of Climate (New York, 2009).
84. Van Engelen, Buisman, and IJnsen's data are available at www.knmi.nl/kd/metadata/nederland_wi_zo.html.
85. The highly derivative character of Bruegel the Younger's work renders it unlikely to represent contemporary climatic conditions.
86. William J. Burroughs, "Winter Landscape and Climate Change," Weather, XXXVI (1981), 352-357
87. Hans Neuberger, "Climate in Art," Weather, XXV (1970), 46-66.
88. Burroughs, "Winter Landscape"
89. Robinson, "Ice and Snow," 37-41.
90. Robinson, "Ice and Snow," 38, 39-40.
91. Thomas H. McGovern, "Climate Correlation and Causation in Norse Greenland," Arctic Anthropology, XXVIII (1991), 77.
92. Dale Mackenzie Brown, "The Fate of Greenland's Vikings," Archaeology, February 28, 2000, available at http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
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96. Alastair G. Dawson et al., "Greenland (GISP2) Ice Core and Historical Indicators of Complex North Atlantic Climate Changes during the Fourteenth Century," The Holocene, XVII (2007), 427-434
97. Orri Vésteinsson, McGovern, and Christian Keller, "Enduring Impacts: Social and Environmental Aspects of Viking Age Settlement in Iceland and Greenland," Archaeologia Islandica, II (2002), 98-136
98. Joel Berglund, "Did the Medieval Society in Greenland Really Fail?" in Patricia A. McAnany and Norman Yoffee (eds.), Questioning Collapse (New York, 2010), 45-70, blames a combination of climatic and institutional factors.
99. Ian S. Simpson et al., "Soil Limitations to Cultivation in Premodern Iceland," Human Ecology, XXX (2002), 423-444
100. Richard F. Thomasson, "A Millennium of Misery: The Demography of the Icelanders," Population Studies, XXXI (1977), 410.
101. Lynnerup, "Palaeodemography of the Greenland Norse," Arctic Anthropology, XXXIII (1996), 133
102. Andrew J. Dugmore, Keller, and McGovern, "Norse Greenland Settlement: Re°ections on Climate Change, Trade, and the Contrasting Fates of Human Settlements in the North Atlantic Islands," Arctic Anthropology, XLIV (2007), 12-36.
103. The Nørlund quotation (1928) derives from Lynnerup, Greenland Norse, 120.
104. Gustav Utterström, "Climatic Fluctuations and Population Problems in Early Modern History," Scandinavian Economic History Review, III (1955), 3-47
105. Harry A. Miskimin, The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460 (New York, 1975), 59.
106. Fagan, Little Ice Age, 113
107. Lamb, Climate, History, 232.
108. Alexander Apostolides et al., "English Gross Domestic Product: Some Preliminary Estimates" (2008), Tables 4A, 4B, 15, available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/broadberry/wp/pre1700v2.pdf]
109. Bruce M. S. Campbell and ó Gráda," Harvest Shortfalls, Grain Prices, and Famines in Preindustrial England," Journal of Economic History, LXXI (2011), 859-886.
110. Grove-in "The Little Ice Age in the Massif of Mont Blanc," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, XL (1966), 129-143-was one who followed Matthes' lead in reconstructing historical glacier lengths.
111. Maurizio d'Orefice et al., "Retreat of Mediterranean Glaciers since the Little Ice Age: Case Study of Ghiacciaio del Calderone, Central Apennines, Italy," Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, XXXII (2000), 197-201
112. Oerlemans, Glaciers and Climate Change
113. McCormick et al., "Climate Change," 213-214
114. Ahlmann,"Present Climatic Fluctuation"
115. Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast.
116. We are grateful to Johannes Oerlemans and Paul Leclerq for the data described in Figure 6. Oerlemans, Glaciers and Climate Change.
117. Samuel U. Nussbaumer, Heinz J. Zumbuehl, and D. Steiner, "Fluctuations of the Mer de Glace (Mont Blanc area, France) AD 1500-2000: An Interdisciplinary Approach Using New Historical Data and Neural Network Simulations," Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialbiologie, XL (2005/2006), 1-183.
118. Gunnar Østrem and Nils Haakensen, "Glaciers of Europe: Glaciers of Norway," in Richard S. Williams and Jane G. Ferrigno (eds.), Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World, Fact Sheet 2005-3056, available at http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3056.
119. Compare Zemp et al., "Extending Global Monitoring."
120. Atle Nesje and Stein Olaf Dahl, "The 'Little Ice Age'- Only Temperature?" The Holocene, XIII (2002), 139-145.
121. Matthews and Briffa, "'Little Ice Age.'"
122. Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast. The distinction between popular accounts that continue to insist on a connection between temperature and glacier length and the more nuanced specialist literature (for example, Matthews and Briffa, "'Little Ice Age'") is well worth making. We are grateful to a referee for insisting on this point.
123. Oerlemans, "Extracting a Climate Signal."
124. Zemp et al., "Extending Global Monitoring."
125. Lamb, Climate, History
126. Fagan, Little Ice Age, 197
127. Manley, "Central England Temperatures."
128. Van Engelen, Buisman, and IJnsen, "Millennium." TEMP lacks some observations for the early years.
129. Louis Simond, Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 and 1811 by a French Traveller (Edinburgh, 1815), II, 262-263.
130. Patricia Pierce, Old London Bridge: The Story of the Longest Inhabited Bridge in Europe (London, 2001).
131. Luke Howard, The Climate of London, Deduced from Meteorological Observations, Made at Different Places in the Neighbourhood of the Metropolis (London, 1818-1820), 2 v.
132. Marcel Lachiver, Les années de misère: la famine au temps du Grand Roi (Paris, 1991)
133. John D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis of the Western World (Baltimore, 1977)
134. ó Gráda, Famine: A Short History (Princeton, 2009), 17-18
135. Campbell, "Nature as Historical Protagonist: Environment and Society in Pre-Industrial England," Economic History Review, LXIII (2010), 281-314
136. Utterström, "Climatic Fluctuations"
137. Karen Cullen, Famine in Scotland: The "Ill Years" of the 1690s (Edinburgh, 2010), 31-53
138. Pfister and Rudolf Brádzil, "Social Vulnerability to Climate in the 'Little Ice Age': An Example from Central Europe in the 1770s," Climate of the Past Discussions, II (2006), 123-155, available at http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/2/123/2006/cpd-2-123-2006-print.pdf
139. Kelly and ó Gráda, "Change Points and Temporal Dependence"
140. Parker, "Crisis and Catastrophe," 1074.
141. William F. Ruddiman, "The Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis: Challenges and Responses," Reviews of Geophysics, XLV (2007), RG4001.
142. Robert Dull et al., "The Columbian Encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt Land Use Change, Fire, and Greenhouse Forcing," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, C (2010), 755-771, available at http://westinstenv.org/wp-content/Annals_2010_Dull_et_ al.pdf
143. Massimo Livi Bacci, Conquest: The Destruction of the American Indios (Malden, Mass., 2008), implies that population decline and resultant reforestation were less drastic than assumed in these studies.
144. Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, 119.