The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
Despite the title, this is not so much a book about the Little Ice Age as a series of chapters on the theme of the role of the climate on human history and in particular the history of North Western Europe which are framed around roughly the period of Little Ice Age. Therefore what is given in this book is not really a coherent historical narrative, as such, but a series of chapters covering events and themes such as the Great Medieval Famine of 1315-1317, the expansion of glaciers in the Early Modern Alps, the growing cycle of Medieval peasants, the years preceding the French Revolution, 1814 ‘the year without a summer’ and the Irish Famine of 1844-1848. What unites this is all these are analysed through the lens of the global cooling of the period. The message is clear the climate is a very important determinant on historical events, with the obvious implication that it will continue to do so in the future in an era with greater warming.This is obviously an important message but unfortunately it happens to be one of [i]those[/i] books. Historians and environmental scholars have studied the role of climatic events in history for a long time, it is nothing new. Yet the author likes to maintain that this is a new and special approach, a new way of looking at history. Perhaps that is true for the ‘educated lay reader’ (does such a beast really exist?) who is clearly the audience of this work, but it is frustrating to someone with some familiarity with the material. All this would be forgivable if it not for the gaffes that pepper the text which would embarrassing for any history student (The Glorious Revolution was a democratic revolution? Enclosure was a willed process? What?) and the caricature of Medieval and Early Modern peasant life displayed at times. When a book tries to make a historical argument that claims some originality, these sort of things are hard to overlook. I’m no climatologist so I can’t properly judge what is being claimed there, but I see those with more expertise than I have questioned some of the claims made. I can’t say I’m surprised.Which is not to say that there is nothing of merit here; Fagan writes clearly and passionately on the topic and he is good on relating environmental trends to each other and rooting them in ordinary life. Probably the strongest part of the book is his descriptions of the effects of climate change on ordinary existence throughout history and relating the seemingly inconsequential differences in climate as happen on a yearly basis to people’s patterns of life. There is nothing new in this either, but it is well expressed and put clearly. There are also some interesting statistics on weather patterns and he is persuasive (although I didn’t need persuasive) on the need to understand them in order to gain a better historical understanding. However, where he falls down is trying to connect environmental changes to actual events such as the French Revolution. Here, despite his protests, he becomes a bit too much of an environmental determinist and his explanations become glib. It’s one thing to link climatic changes to famines in an agricultural society where one bad harvest could mean months of hunger and two bad harvests in a row could mean death but it is another thing to link these to vast socio-political events. Yes, conditions were bad in 1788, but they were even worse in 1709 or 1740, so why no revolution then? Here I’m afraid Fagan sacrifices historical explanation in favour of his own narrative. An important thing for a historian would be to understand the [i]relative[/i] role that climate plays in an event, perhaps we are sometimes too caught up in the notion of ‘cause’ to see this. Finally, some of Fagan’s choices of topics seem a bit unusual. The Irish Famine of 1840s was exacerbated by bad weather, yes, but primarily it is a matter of a potato blight and government mismanagement (which he doesn’t gloss over, so why mention it in the book?). Chapters repeat themselves on peasant life. It’s not clear to me what precise point he wishes to make in regards to dedicating a chapter to the spread of glaciers, although this chapter was not without interest. In short, it needed more of a thread than ‘hey look, some interesting environmental phenomena happened in the late medieval and Early Modern period and here are a few arbitrarily chosen examples’. Overall, disappointing.
For whatever reason, the Medieval Warming Period and Little Ice Age are an interesting topic to me, so when I saw this book on the shelf at Barnes and Nobles, I figured it would be an informative read.It was an interesting read. I liked getting the big picture of these two climate periods, and Fagan's writing kept me going on. His list of the powerful storms and the political and social chaos often associated with unstable weather was eye-opening and sobering. I also liked how Fagan showed how the weather had an impact on society, like in the Vikings sailing across the Atlantic to Greenland and North America because of the warm weather or how the unstable weather was one of the factors in the French Revolution. However, that being said, I had issues with some of Fagan's conclusions. His whole view on global warming and how the modern era is warm because of "the promiscuous use of fossil fuels" is rather shaky and comes across as being sensationalist and not truly looking at the evidence; not to mention the fact that he only goes up to 1999 and a lot has changed since then. Even then, the problem is that we cannot compare temps between our modern day and the Medieval Warming period because they didn't have thermometers, satellites, or all of our fancy technology, and we only have bits and pieces of the MWP, not enough to definitively say "this is how warm it really was." But also, Fagan fails to take into account that we don't even understand the weather very well. No one knows what causes the North Atlantic Oscillation to fluctuate over the years, and we are still struggling to understand the connection between the sun and the weather; so some of Fagan's statements come across as being too definitive and fail to leave room for "we don't know, so this is speculation."Another problem was that sometimes Fagan seemed to contradict himself or go against something he said a few pages earlier. For example, when he was talking about how some European countries like England and The Netherlands changed their farming techniques and built different buildings to withstand the changes of the Little Ice Age, a few pages later he would then mention how many people died of starvation and cold in that same time period. Perhaps he meant to say that these deaths were caused because the changes were still taking place, but it came across as confusing and self-contradicting.I liked how Fagan took all the evidence of these two climate periods and put it together, but his conclusions were rather shaky. If he had been more consistent and more willing to leave room for speculation (I've seen other authors leave room for speculation while offering up evidence to let the reader decide, and it has come across very well), this could have been a really good book.
What do You think about The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (2001)?
I like to think that I know a lot about history. Periodically, authors like Brian Fagan teach me how much more there is to know. This book is bursting with information about how the Medieval period I thought I understood,was formed and influenced by factors I didn't know or didn't understand. Let's start with style. Fagan is a dynamic writer. He moves his narrative along swiftly and surely like a championship skier on a difficult downhill. We get the thrills and not the spills. When I say thrills, I mean it. He makes history vivid and lively, taking us into the lives of ordinary people. He patiently reduces complex and difficult ideas into baby-step illustrations that non-scientists can understand, but he doesn't talk down to his readers. It takes real skill to write a book for the general reading public. We aren't specialists, but we don't want to have the author treat us like morons either. Fagan manages this feat with grace and wit. Fagan tells us of a Europe that had benefited from several hundred years of clement weather, expanding agriculture and having more children as a result. By the late 1200's, the land had reached its carrying capacity. The continent was set for disaster and sadly it got one. The weather began to change. Later historians and Climatologists would call it the Little Ice Age, but the folk of the times called it floods, ice, famine and the wrath of God. Crops failed several times in the fist half of the 1300's and then in 1347, the hammer came down. A dreadful disease,(they called it a pest)spread pitilessly and surely through an already weakened populace. People watched in horror as their friends and families sickened and died so swiftly that they might be well at breakfast and dead before nightfall. To repeat a famous phrase, a third of the world died.Changes in climate set us up for changes in the way we live in the world. What we eat, wear, do for a living, enjoy in our leisure time, all these depend on weather, and weather is climate made local and intimate. The world Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about was ancestral to the world we live in. Climate is vital and we ignore it at our peril. Brian Fagan has a lot to teach us and we NEED TO LISTEN!
—Libby
This book should not have taken me nearly three weeks to read, but it was a bit dry and I was really busy, so I wasn't motivated to make time to read. It was actually quite interesting, dealing with the effect that climate has on historical events. The period from the early 1300's to the late 1800's was markedly colder than the preceding centuries, thus becoming known to some as the Little Ice Age. Colder weather and extreme weather events put a strain on food production and shipping, among other things, and played a role in many well known historical events, including the French Revolution and the Irish Potato Famine. It is a very different approach to history, and will probably forever change the way I look at history, considering the physical climate as well as the social and political climate when looking at the causes of events. What ruined this book for me is the fact that the author felt the need to spend the last chapter commenting on the current climate change situation. This is a history book, and his opinion of current events has no place in it.
—Gail Amendt
I am typically a fan of Fagan's work and have enjoyed some of his books in the past, this one however, fell flat for me. While the subject matter was obviously well researched I found many of the connections drawn between different periods and different geographic areas shaky and not particularly beneficial to the continuity of the overarching subject matter. I realize that the little ice age had many contributing factors and took place over a large span of time however, it was very easy to forget that each individual example actually tied in to the others. I felt like many of his historical examples could have spent more time actually building to his conclusion on climate change instead of just explaining the obvious (for example that food prices had a large impact on society)though now I know more about Cod fishing than I ever thought I would. There are portions of the book that are absolutely fascinating and that I enjoyed immensely, yet unfortunately for each of those sparks of genius is a portion of text that you have to just simply slog through. The history and agricultural information was interesting and clearly well researched however I was hoping for more climatological data. Most of the global climate patterns are attributed to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) though it seems that he is being much more definitive with the data than is fair since it seems to be more speculation than anything. Interesting read, three stars for great research, but I didn't really like it.
—L.
