The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (3 page)

The Little Ice Age is a narrative history of climatic shifts during the past
ten centuries and some of the ways in which people in Europe adapted to
them.

The book is divided into four parts. Part One describes the Medieval
Warm Period, roughly A.D. 900 to 1200. During these three centuries,
Norse voyagers explored northern seas, settled Greenland, and visited
North America. William the Conqueror invaded England and the pious embarked on a frenzy of cathedral building. The Medieval Warm Period
was not a time of uniform warmth, for then, as always since the Great Ice
Age, there were constant shifts in rainfall and temperature, at least one
caused by a great volcanic eruption in the tropics during the year 1258.
Mean European temperatures were about the same as today, perhaps
slightly cooler.

Tree rings and ice cores tell us that Little Ice Age cooling began in
Greenland and the Arctic in about 1200. As the Arctic ice pack spread
southward, Norse voyages to the west were rerouted into the open Atlantic, then ended altogether. Storminess increased in the North Atlantic
and North Sea. Colder, much wetter weather descended on Europe between 1315 and 1319, when thousands perished in a continent-wide
famine.

By 1400, the weather had become decidedly more unpredictable and
stormier, with sudden shifts and lower temperatures that culminated in
the cold decades of the late sixteenth century. Fish were a vital commodity in growing towns and cities where food supplies were a constant concern. Dried cod and herring were already the staples of the European fish
trade, but changes in water temperatures forced fishing fleets to work
further offshore. Part Two, "Cooling Begins," tells how the Basques,
Dutch, and English developed the first offshore fishing boats adapted to
a colder and stormier Atlantic, vessels like the English dogger, capable of
venturing far offshore in the depths of February gales to catch fish near
Iceland and eventually on Newfoundland's Grand Banks. The cod trade
led fleets across the Atlantic and helped sustain the first North American
colonists.

In the sixteenth century, Europe was still a rural continent, with the
most rudimentary of infrastructures and a farming population that lived
from harvest to harvest. Monarchs everywhere wrestled with the problem
of feeding their people at a time when climatic misfortune was attributed
to divine vengeance and human sin. The colder weather of the late sixteenth century particularly threatened communities in the Alps, where
glaciers advancing down mountain valleys destroyed entire communities
and overran their fields. Northern Europe suffered through exceptional
storminess. The great gales of August 1588 destroyed more of the Spanish
Armada fleet than the combined guns of English warships.

Part Three, "The End of the `Full World'," tells the story of a gradual
agricultural revolution in northern Europe that stemmed from concerns
over food supplies at a time of rising populations. The revolution involved intensive commercial farming and the growing of animal fodder
on previously (allowed land. It began in Flanders and the Netherlands in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, then spread to England in Stuart
times-a period of constant climatic change and often intense cold.
Many English landowners embraced the new agriculture as larger enclosed farms changed the face of the landscape and new crops like turnips
provided protection for herds and people against winter hunger. The increased productivity from farmland made Britain self-sufficient in grain
and livestock and offered effective protection against the famines of earlier times.

In France, however, the nobility had little concern for agricultural productivity. Despite some centers of innovation, France remained agriculturally backward in the midst of a deteriorating climate that made bad
harvests more frequent. By the mid- to late eighteenth century, when
much of Europe was growing larger quantities of produce, most French
farmers were exceptionally vulnerable to food dearths resulting from
short-term climatic shifts. Millions of poor farmers and city dwellers lived
near the edge of starvation, as much at the mercy of the Little Ice Age as
their medieval predecessors. But it was not until the politicization of the
rural poor after the poor harvest of 1788 that reform began with the
French Revolution.

When Mount Tambora in southeast Asia erupted in 1815, it created
the famous "year without a summer" and widespread hunger. Cool, unpredictable weather continued into the 1820s and 1830s, when the first
signs of agricultural problems surfaced in Ireland. During the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the Irish had embraced the potato as a dietary
staple. By the early nineteenth century, Ireland exported her oats to England, and her poor lived almost exclusively on potatoes. With the
inevitability of Greek tragedy, blight savaged the potato crop after 1845.

Part Four, "The Modern Warm Period," covers the end of the Little Ice
Age and the sustained warming of modern times. The mass emigration
fostered by the Irish famine was part of a vast migration from Europe by
land-hungry farmers and others not only to North America but much further afield, to Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa. Millions
of hectares of forest and woodland fell before the newcomers' axes between 1850 and 1890, as intensive European farming methods expanded
across the world. The unprecedented land clearance released vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering for the first time
humanly caused global warming. Wood also fueled the early stages of the
Industrial Revolution in the United States, adding to rising levels of
greenhouse gases. Global temperatures began to rise slowly after 1850.
They climbed more rapidly in the twentieth century as the use of fossil
fuels proliferated and greenhouse gas levels continued to soar. The rise
has been even steeper since the early 1980s, with record-breaking summer
heat and mild winters during the 1990s. The Little Ice Age has given way
to a new climatic regime, marked by prolonged and steady warming, with
no signs of a downturn. At the same time, extreme weather events like
Category 5 hurricanes and exceptionally strong El Nifios are becoming
more frequent.

The lessons of the Little Ice Age are twofold. First, climate change does
not come in gentle, easy stages. It comes in sudden shifts from one regime
to another-shifts whose causes are unknown to us and whose direction
is beyond our control. Second, climate will have its sway in human
events. Its influence may be profound, occasionally even decisive. The
Little Ice Age is a chronicle of human vulnerability in the face of sudden
climate change. In our own ways, despite our air-conditioned cars and
computer-controlled irrigation systems, we are no less vulnerable today.
There is no doubt that we will adapt again, or that the price, as always,
will be high.

The great French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie once remarked
that there were two kinds of historians: parachutists and truffle hunters.
The parachutist observes the past from afar, slowly floating down to
earth, while the truffle hunter, fascinated by treasures in the soil, keeps a
nose close to the ground. Some of us are by temperament parachutists in
everyday life. Many others are truffle hunters, with fine minds for detail.
We bring this baggage with us when we study the past. I burden under
the impedimenta of a parachutist in this book, which glosses over many
passionate historical controversies. In writing it, I have relied on the advice of many colleagues, who are far more learned in the business of history than I. It is impossible to acknowledge everyone's help here. I hope
that those not mentioned below will accept the homage of a neophyte
historical parachutist.

The Little Ice Age has involved navigating a highly complex, diffuse literature in many disciplines and interviews with scholars with many specialties. I never expected to explore the esoteric byways of Hudson's Bay
Company history, European oil paintings, the North Atlantic Oscillation,
and Dutch sea defenses, but the journey has been exceptionally rewarding. My special thanks to my historian colleague at Santa Barbara, Sears
McGhee, who jump-started me into the complex literature of European
history and gave me much sage advice. Professor Theodore Rabb kindly
read a rough draft of the hook and made invaluable suggestions. I am
grateful to David Anderson, William Calvin, Jan De Vries, Peter Gruntfuttock, John Hurst, Phil Jones, Terry Jones, William Chester Jordan,
George Michaels, Tom Osborn, Christian Pfister, Prudence Rice, Chris
Scarre, Alexa Schloe, Andrew Selkirk, Crispen Tickell, William Truckhouse, Richard Unger, Charlie Ward, and many others for advice, en couragement, and references. As always, Steve Cook and Shelly
Lowenkopf were pillars of encouragement when the going got rough and
I found myself batting my head against literary walls. Our weekly coffee
drinking is a true learning experience.

My greatest debt is to my editor, William Frucht of Basic Books. He has
been a wonderful sounding board, ruthless critic, and vital catalyst for
what has turned out to be an engrossing and extremely demanding project. I am in awe of his perceptions and superb editorial skills. Jack Scott
designed and drew the illustrations with his usual skill. My agent Susan
Rabiner has encouraged me at every turn. And, finally, a word of thanks to
my family for their patience, and to our cats, who have, as usual, sat on my
keyboard with unerring accuracy at just the wrong moments. I fervently
hope this is a sign of approval, even if flicking tails suggest otherwise.

All measurements in this book are given in metric units. A meter is
slightly longer than a yard, and sixteen kilometers is roughly ten miles.
Water freezes at 0' Centigrade and boils at 100`C. An ideal temperature
to be outdoors is about 25'C (77° Fahrenheit).

Place names are spelled according to the most common usages. Archaeological sites and historical places are spelled as they appear most
commonly in the sources used to write this book.

Nonmeteorologists and nonsailors should note that wind directions
are described, following common maritime convention, by the direction
they are coming from. A westerly wind blows from the west. Ocean currents, however, are described by the direction they are flowing toward.
Thus, a westerly wind and a westerly current flow in opposite directions.

WARMTH AND
ITS AFTERMATH