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Early Modern Europe

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

The most intensive research in historical climatology has concentrated on Europe in the early modern period (c.1500–1800), and established many of the methods and procedures that have become standard in this discipline. This chapter reviews the source material, methodology, and results of climate reconstructions from the archives of societies for each region of Europe during this period, which overlaps with the Little Ice Age (LIA). These reconstructions demonstrate that the LIA was by no means uniformly cold across the continent. Nevertheless, during these centuries Europe experienced numerous decades of frequent and severe temperature and precipitation anomalies, with significant human impacts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bell and Ogilvie, 1978; Ingram et al., 1981; Pounds 2009, 5–6.

  2. 2.

    Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a, 2001b.

  3. 3.

    Kington, 2010, 53.

  4. 4.

    Bergthórsson, 1969; Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a, 2001b; Ogilvie, 2010.

  5. 5.

    Scott, 2015.

  6. 6.

    Matthes et al., 1939. For a discussion of the meaning and development of the term, see Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a, 2001b.

  7. 7.

    Solomina et al., 2008, 1–9. A detailed comprehensive review of Holocene glaciation is provided by Grove, 2004.

  8. 8.

    Oerlemans, 2001.

  9. 9.

    Oerlemans, 2005.

  10. 10.

    Lavigne et al., 2013.

  11. 11.

    Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a.

  12. 12.

    Ogilvie, 2010.

  13. 13.

    Ahmed et al., 2013; Neukom et al., 2014; Wilson et al., 2016; Miller et al., 2012.

  14. 14.

    Holzhauser and Magny, 2005; Nussbaumer et al., 2007; Holzhauser, 2010.

  15. 15.

    Wanner et al., 2008, and references quoted therein.

  16. 16.

    Wanner et al., 2000.

  17. 17.

    Messerli et al., 1978.

  18. 18.

    Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a, 2001b; White, 2014.

  19. 19.

    Jones and Lister, 2002.

  20. 20.

    Przybylak et al., 2010.

  21. 21.

    Tarand and Nordli, 2001; Jevrejeva, 2001; Leijonhufvud et al., 2010.

  22. 22.

    https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/icarus (last accessed April 28, 2017); Murphy et al., 2018.

  23. 23.

    Romania: Teodoreanu, 2011; Cernovodeanu and Binder, 1993. Slovenia: Zwitter, 2013, 2015. Greece: Xoplaki et al., 2001.

  24. 24.

    On climatic evidence for the early modern Ottoman Empire, see White, 2011.

  25. 25.

    Rácz, 1999; Kiss, 2009, focuses on longer-term phenological and hydrological documentary proxy evidence.

  26. 26.

    Vesajoki and Tornberg, 1994; Holopainen and Helama, 2009. See also Nordli et al., 2007.

  27. 27.

    Tarand and Kuiv, 1994; Tarand et al., 2013.

  28. 28.

    The systematic documentation of instrumental measurements began in Uppsala (Sweden) in 1739 and a few years later in Turku (Finland) and Stockholm (Myllyntaus, 2009, 79 and references quoted therein). Utterström, 1955, 3–47.

  29. 29.

    Ogilvie, 1991, 2005; Hartman et al., 2017.

  30. 30.

    See e.g., Ogilvie, 1991.

  31. 31.

    Ogilvie, 1995, 2010 (and references quoted therein); Miles et al., 2014.

  32. 32.

    See e.g., Jónsson and Garðarsson, 2001.

  33. 33.

    Glaser, 2008.

  34. 34.

    Glaser et al., 2010.

  35. 35.

    Pfister, 1975, 1984, 1999, 2015.

  36. 36.

    See Brázdil et al., 1995–2015. For articles, see e.g., Brázdil et al., 2012.

  37. 37.

    Buisman and van Engelen, 1996–2015.

  38. 38.

    For a synthesis, see Guidoboni et al., 2010.

  39. 39.

    Camuffo and Enzi, 1995; Camuffo, 1987; Camuffo et al., 2010, 2014. For an example from southern Italy, see Diodato, 2007.

  40. 40.

    Grove and Conterio, 1995. For examples of Ottoman sources see, e.g., Stavrides, 2012.

  41. 41.

    Among his publications, see Le Roy Ladurie, 1971. See also Le Roy Ladurie et al., 2011; Le Roy Ladurie, 2004.

  42. 42.

    For phenological studies, see e.g., Daux et al., 2012 (but the widely cited series by Chuine et al., 2004 is flawed for reasons discussed in Chap. 6); Pichard and Roucaute, 2014.

  43. 43.

    Pichard and Roucaute, 2014. Pichard’s data are available online on the HistRhone database at: https://histrhone.cerege.fr/.

  44. 44.

    Lamb, 1977.

  45. 45.

    Kington, 2010, presents a rough overview of climate and weather in the British Isles during 1–1599 and much more detail during 1600–2000, including an extended list of sources.

  46. 46.

    Manley, 1974.

  47. 47.

    Machado et al., 2011; Barriendos, 2005, 2009; Alberola Romá, 2014. In Portugal the klimhist project from 2012 to 2015 (http://clima.ul.pt/kh-tasks) generated several case studies and the following surveys: Santos et al., 2015a, 2015b.

  48. 48.

    Camuffo and Bertolin, 2012.

  49. 49.

    Jones, 2001.

  50. 50.

    Pichard and Roucaute, 2014; Brönnimann, 2015; Bergström and Moberg, 2002; Camuffo, 2002; Camuffo et al., 2016.

  51. 51.

    Auer et al., 2007.

  52. 52.

    Vinther et al., 2006.

  53. 53.

    Wales-Smith, 1971; Wigley et al., 1984; Murphy et al. 2018.

  54. 54.

    Slonosky, 2002; Camuffo, 1984.

  55. 55.

    The series from Geneva and Bern (since 1760) in the Euro-Climhist database (Module Switzerland) http://www.euroclimhist.unibe.ch/en/is not homogenized; Tarand, 1993; Pfister, 1975; Gimmi et al., 2007.

  56. 56.

    Rodrigo and Barriendos, 2008.

  57. 57.

    Dobrovolný et al., 2015; Santos et al., 2015b; Pauling et al., 2006.

  58. 58.

    E.g., Degroot, 2015.

  59. 59.

    Luterbacher et al., 2007; Xoplaki et al., 2005.

  60. 60.

    Luterbacher et al., 2010, 2016.

  61. 61.

    On the anomalous weather of 1540, see Wetter et al., 2014.

  62. 62.

    See also Pfister, 1984.

  63. 63.

    Luterbacher et al., 2004.

  64. 64.

    Luterbacher et al., 2016.

  65. 65.

    Xoplaki et al., 2005; Luterbacher et al., 2004.

  66. 66.

    Luterbacher et al., 2010; Mellado-Cano et al., 2018.

  67. 67.

    E.g., Luterbacher et al., 2001; Slonosky and Jones, 2001; Cornes et al., 2013.

  68. 68.

    Barriopedro et al., 2014.

  69. 69.

    Myllyntaus, 2009.

  70. 70.

    Vesajoki and Tornberg, 1994.

  71. 71.

    Dybdahl, 2012.

  72. 72.

    Frich and Frydendahl, 1994.

  73. 73.

    Lappalainen, 2014.

  74. 74.

    Post, 1985.

  75. 75.

    Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a, 2001b; Ogilvie, 2010; Hartman et al., 2017.

  76. 76.

    Ogilvie, 1995, 2010.

  77. 77.

    Ogilvie and Jónsson, 2001a, 2001b.

  78. 78.

    Demarée and Ogilvie, 2001.

  79. 79.

    Ogilvie, 2010.

  80. 80.

    Pfister, 1999, 68–69; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  81. 81.

    Dobrovolný et al., 2015; Pfister and Brázdil, 1999, Fig. 2.

  82. 82.

    Pfister, 1996.

  83. 83.

    Pfister, 1999, 106–07; Buisman and van Engelen, 1996–2015; Brázdil et al., 2013, 123.

  84. 84.

    Pfister, 1999, 106–07.

  85. 85.

    Brázdil et al., 2013.

  86. 86.

    Pfister, 1999; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  87. 87.

    Appleby, 1978; Le Roy Ladurie, 2004.

  88. 88.

    Brázdil et al., 2013.

  89. 89.

    Pfister, 1984, 119.

  90. 90.

    Fernandez-Armesto, 1988, 237.

  91. 91.

    Lamb and Frydendahl, 1991, 40; Pfister 1984, 145.

  92. 92.

    Pfister, 1996; Campbell, 2010.

  93. 93.

    Ogilvie, 2010.

  94. 94.

    Glaser, 2008; Le Roy Ladurie, 2004; Buisman and van Engelen, 1996–2015; Pfister, 1984.

  95. 95.

    Pfister, 1999; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  96. 96.

    Pfister, 1999; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  97. 97.

    For the grape harvests Daux et al., 2012; for the alpine snowfalls Pfister, 1999.

  98. 98.

    Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  99. 99.

    Pfister, 2005, 63–65.

  100. 100.

    Lachiver, 1991; Monahan, 1993; Garnier, 2010.

  101. 101.

    Post, 1985; Engler et al., 2013.

  102. 102.

    Ogilvie, 1995.

  103. 103.

    Pfister, 1999; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  104. 104.

    Pfister, 1999; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  105. 105.

    Pfister, 1999; Dobrovolný et al., 2015.

  106. 106.

    Camuffo et al., 2014.

  107. 107.

    Roberts et al., 2012.

  108. 108.

    Rodrigo et al., 1999. Broken down seasonally, it appears the winters and springs were exceptionally rainy, but summers dry—compare Rodrigo and Barriendos, 2008, and Creus-Novau et al., 2005. See also lake-level and lake sediment data for southern and eastern Spain in Roberts et al., 2012, and Oliva et al., 2014.

  109. 109.

    Barriendos and Martin-Vide, 1998; Glaser et al., 2010; Ruiz et al., 2014. Bullón, 2008, creates a temperature index based on written evidence and finds that temperatures of the 1590s were low, but not exceptionally so. This may be because the temperatures of the preceding decades were already unusually low, and so the cold was not especially noted.

  110. 110.

    Ruiz-Labourdette et al., 2014; Saz Sanchez et al., 2001; Domínguez-Castro et al., 2008.

  111. 111.

    Genova, 2012; Cabrera de Cordoba, 1857, 57, 166, 205–06; Font Tullot, 1988, 75–82.

  112. 112.

    White, 2011 and sources therein.

  113. 113.

    Camuffo et al., 2015.

  114. 114.

    Camuffo et al., 2015; White, 2011.

  115. 115.

    Grove and Conterio, 1995.

  116. 116.

    White, 2011.

  117. 117.

    Xoplaki et al., 2001.

  118. 118.

    Hughes, 2014.

  119. 119.

    Dunning, 2001.

  120. 120.

    Borisenkov, 1995.

  121. 121.

    Przybylak et al., 2010, 2014.

  122. 122.

    Braudel, 1995, 285.

  123. 123.

    He discusses his own and other scholars’ early work in the field in Le Roy Ladurie, 2013.

  124. 124.

    Wigley et al., 1981; Hulme, 2011.

  125. 125.

    Hulme, 2011.

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Acknowledgments

R. Brázdil acknowledges the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic within the National Sustainability Program I (NPU I), grant no. LO1415.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  2. Institute of Geography, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

    Rudolf Brázdil

  3. Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

    Rudolf Brázdil

  4. Department of Geography, Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change, Centre of International Development and Environmental Research, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

    Jürg Luterbacher

  5. Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland

    Astrid E. J. Ogilvie

  6. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Astrid E. J. Ogilvie

  7. Department of History, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

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  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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Pfister, C., Brázdil, R., Luterbacher, J., Ogilvie, A.E.J., White, S. (2018). Early Modern Europe. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_23

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