The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (41 page)

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. By 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.

4. Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine, 79.

5. Quoted from Henry Heller, Labour, Science and Technology in France,
1500-1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 67. I also drew on this
book for the discussion of Olivier de Serres.

6. Ladurie, The Ancien Regime, was the source for this discussion.

7. Davies, Europe: A History, 615.

8. Ladurie, The Ancien Regime, 215.

9. Lamb, Climate Present, Past, and Future, 452.

10. Post, Food Shortage, Climatic Variability, and Epidemic Disease, 211.

11. General discussion in my Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Collapse of Civilizations (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

12. Ladurie, The Ancien Regime, 306ff.

13. Arthur Young, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789,
edited by C. Maxwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 279.

14. Ibid., 28.

15. Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789, translated by Joan White (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1973), 8.

16. Ibid., 10.

17. Charles A. Wood, "The Effects of the 1783 Laki Eruption," in C. R. Harington, ed., The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816 (Ottawa: Canadian
Museum of Nature, 1992), 60.

18. In writing this section, I drew on J. Newmann, "Great Historical Events That
Were Significantly Altered By the Weather: 2. The Year Leading to the Revolution of
1789 in France," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 58(2) (1977):
163-168.

19. Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789, 18.

20. Oliver Browning, ed., Diplomatic Dispatches from Paris, 1784-1790, vol. 2
(London: Camden Society, 1910), 75-76.

21. Ibid., 82.

22. The origins of the French Revolution have been thwart with controversy
since the event occurred. William Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, 3rd ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) is an admirable starting point for the English-speaking reader and contains a discussion of the widely differing theoretical
viewpoints. I drew on it here. See also Gary Kates, ed., The French Revolution: Recent
Debates and New Controversies (London and New York: Routledge, 1998). Both
these volumes have excellent bibliographies, which include comprehensive French
sources.

23. Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution, 154.

24. Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, 133.

CHAPTER 10

The resident of Surakartais quoted in Michael R. Rampino's "Eyewitness Account of the Distant Effects of the Tambora Eruption of April 1815," in Harington,
ed., The Year Without a Summer?, 13.

1. The Mount Tambora disaster is well described for a popular audience by
Henry Stommel and Elizabeth Stommel, Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, The
Year Without A Summer (Newport, R.I.: Seven Seas Press, 1983). Quote is from
pages 7-8. For more technical papers, see Harington, The Year Without a Summer?
2. Stommel and Stommel, Volcano Weather, 56.

3. The Times, London, July 20, 1816.

4. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, 41.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 44.

7. Ibid., 99.

8. Ibid., 97.

9. Ibid., 89.

10. Stommel and Stommel, Volcano Weather, 30. See also Patrick Hughes, American Weather Stories (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1976).

11. Stommel and Stommel, Volcano Weather, 30.

12. Ibid., 42.

13. Ibid., 72.

14. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, 125.

15. Ibid., 128.

16. Ibid., 131.

CHAPTER 1 1

The excerpt is from Austin Bourke's "The Visitation of God':? The Potato and the
Great Irish Famine, edited by Jacqueline Hill and Corma 6 Grada (Dublin: Lilliput
Press, 1993), 18.

1. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London, 1776), quoted by Peter Mathias,
The First Industrial Nation: The Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (London:
Methuen, 1990), 174.

2. Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, is the source for this
passage.

3. Bourke, The Visitation of God? Both quotes from page 15.

4. Christine Kinealy, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 43.

5. Bourke, The Visitation of God? 18. The quote is from the Irish Agricultural
Magazine, 1798: 186.

6. Bourke, The Visitation of God?, 20.

7. Quoted in ibid., 24.

8. William D. Davidson, "The History of the Potato and Its Progress in Ireland,"
Journal of the Department ofAgriculture, Dublin 34 (1937): 299.

9. Bourke, The Visitation of God?, 24.

10. Ibid., 17.

11. The literature on the great Irish potato famine is enormous and polemical; the nonspecialist navigates it at his or her peril. Cormac 0. Grada, Ireland
Before and After the Famine. Explorations in Economic History, 1800 to 1925
(Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1988) is a comprehensive
analysis in a broad context. Christine Kinealy's A Death-Dealing Famine is an
excellent and dispassionate summary. Austin Bourke's Visitation of God is definitive. Cecil Woodham-Smith's eloquent and thoroughly researched The Great
Hunger, Ireland 1845-1849 (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) was vilified by
many academic reviewers, but is now regarded in a somewhat more sympathetic
light and still remains an excellent account for the general reader. Arthur
Gribben, ed., The Great Famine and the Irish Diaspora in America (Amherst,
Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) explores many aspects of the
famine. For mass emigration, the following are useful, among many others:
William F. Adams, Ireland and Irish Emigration to the New World from 1815 to
the Famine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932) and Timothy Gwinnane,
The Vanishing Irish (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).