How climate influences history
I am always fascinated by how weather has played such a role in so much of history. Fires and storms continue to make the daily news, and looking back in history it has always been that way.
Today, it鈥檚 the fires on our hillsides in the west and the storms rolling through our midsection. No area is spared, and worldwide problems exist and have always caused death and destruction.
A dry summer in 1788 in France followed by storms devastated the wheat crop and eventually led to the Bread Riots and the start of the French Revolution. London, England, has never forgotten the summer of 1666 when an unusually strong weather system followed the bubonic plague that had killed at least 57,000. The plague finally subsided thanks to a cold dry winter in 1665. The dry weather lasted into the summer with little or no rain and when a small fire started on Sept. 2, it quickly engulfed much of the city. Dry winds from the large weather system fanned the flames and when it finally burned itself out, 13,000 homes and buildings were destroyed and 100,000 people out of a population of 600,000 were homeless. A regulation required that all buildings to be rebuilt be constructed of brick or stone.
Throughout Europe, the years from 1560 to 1600 were colder and stormier than usual producing highly fluctuating food prices. As climatic conditions deteriorated, a lethal mix of misfortunes descended on a growing European population. Crops failed and farm animals succumbed to disease and death. Famine followed bread riots, and general disorder brought fear and distrust.
Witchcraft accusations soared as people accused their neighbors of fabricating bad weather. Sixty-three women were burned to death in Wisensteig, Germany, at a time of intense debate over the authority of God over the weather.
Witchcraft accusations reached a height in England and France in the severe weather years of 1587 and 1588. This coincided with the coldest and most difficult years of the Little Ice Age.
Prior to the cooler weather, Europe enjoyed a period of rather benign weather known as the Medieval Warm Period. Many years passed with good and plentiful harvests. Summers were warmer and May frosts in much of Europe were virtually unknown between 1100 and 1300. This was also a time when the warmer weather permitted the Norse people to travel to Greenland and established colonies and in Europe some of the great cathedrals were constructed when the weather was more pleasant.
On the other side of the world, the colonists at Jamestown, Virginia, had the bad luck to arrive at the height of the driest period in over 700 years. Of the original colonists who came in 1607, only 38 were alive a year later. No fewer than 4,800 of the 6,000 settlers who arrived between 1607 and 1625 perished; many from malnutrition caused by water and food shortages during these dry years.
The reason most people in the early Southeastern part of America spoke English rather than Spanish was a result of another drought that forced the Spanish colonists who settled at Santa Elena on the South Carolina coast to abandon their settlement and move to Saint Augustine, Florida. Tree rings along the Blackwater and Nottowy rivers in Virginia document the severe drought cycle from 1560 to 1612. The settlement on Roanoke Island in North Carolina also disappeared during the drought of 1587-89. No trace of them has ever been found.
Information for this column was taken from the book 鈥淭he Little Ice Age鈥� by Brian Fagan.