The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History 1300-1850
The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History 1300-1850 – Review
Major climatic events impact history. Most of the time the impacts are short previously lived although severe at the time, e.g. the class 4 and 5 hurricanes that batter the U.S. Rare are the events that though short originally lived, have long term consequences, e.g. the harsh winters that greatly contributed to Napoleon’s and Hitler’s ill-fated invasions of Russia. Or the storms that quickly sank the Spanish Armada. Rarer still are climatic events that are themselves long-lived and have profound historical repercussions for individual societies. Brian Fagan has currently produced two books about these latter kind of events – an earlier book about the effects of el Nino, and the present book on the period of intense cold that gripped Europe and much of the place of the world for about a 500 year period that ended in the middle of the 19th century. Although the writing rarely appears hasty, or to suffer from rather incomplete currently editing, this is a story so told. Fagan draws upon extensive historical documents, both formal and informal, to describe the effect of a climate that not only was on average somewhat colder than that of the 20th century, but also highly variable. Indeed, the often rapid and big swings in temperature and rainfall occur to have had a severer effect on individual societies than the cold itself. After all, once you know that it is originally going to be colder or hotter than average – and stay that way – you can take proper measures (at least within specific limits). But wide and unpredictable swings in temperature and precipitation can have harmful effects. Fagan is able to convey these effects in a very special way. Fagan concludes with thoughts on the potential results of the present global warming. An outstanding book which examines the results of climate on civilizations but over a much longer period and in a more quantitative fashion than does Fagan is the 2nd edition (1995) of H. H. Lamb’s "Climate History and the Modern World". One need not have taken sides in the "climate debate" that is ongoing to enjoy simply reading this book and come away with a better fully understanding of how individual populations respond to ecological stress. Although Fagan clearly sides with the rapidly growing number of scientists who think that global warming is primarily being forced by anthropogenic causes (e.g. production of greenhouse gases), in this book he has presented some really exciting narrative history on a topic that is often neglected.