The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850

After the amazing warm period of the 13th century, climate change had a profound effect on human behavior and well-being. Brian Fagan takes us step by step through the cold, unsettled, rainy, dry, hot and otherwise completely unpredictable years of the Little Ice Age, when the subsistence farmers of Europe and elsewhere suffered repeated bad harvests and terrible privations. He is blunt, and after the description of life in the 1300s and 1400s, I was consumed with empathy for these people who had to live through such uncertain times.

Starting in the early 1300s, weather became increasingly destructive to farming, with repeated cold spells, drenching rains and unexpected droughts. Fagan takes us all the way through to the 1800s and the show more blistering Irish famine that pushed so many to emigrate or die. In between, he notes the persistent rain in the 14th and 15th centuries that turned farmlands and pasturelands to seas of mud and certainly contributed to the outcomes of battles (for instance, Agincourt) as well as privation. He notes calamity in the New World as well, as early settlers in North America fought to live through one of the coldest winters of the age, the Incan Empire and other indigenous societies were ruined by drought, volcanic eruptions blocked the sun, and the Thames froze solid.

And of course, he ends the age with our own interference in climate. This book, published in 2000, is cautious about laying all the global warming at our feet, citing other contributing possibilities. But his description of one possible outcome is literally chilling, as fresh water melt covers the north end of the Gulf Stream and shuts off the downwelling of that great warm river in the sea. Once we scorch the Earth, another Ice Age may come again. show less

This book was a serious disappointment. I assumed I would like this book. The best thing I can say about it is that it is very readable. However it is seriously marred by the author’s inconsistencies and the way he cherry-picks data to fit his thesis, both using and misusing historical data, or hiding data by over-dramatazation of isolated events that blur the big picture. Of course this makes for a readable book. Fagan tells a great story, and there are some truths here, but although I can’t call this fiction, it blurs too many lines. I wish it were better. He is not wrong. But he is not right either.

My wife and I have been ‘radicalized’ over the past decade when it comes to man-made climate change: we hardly use our care anymore, we fly as little as possible, we have extra insulated our homes, invested in solar panels and a home battery, eat mostly vegetarian, and even participate in demonstrations to encourage politicians to adopt a more decisive environmental policy. We believe that, based on the scientific insights of the IPCC, there should be no more discussion about the need for a drastic approach worldwide; the only thing that should be debated is the problematic social repercussions of a climate policy. In other words, we are anything but climate deniers.
However, I can get really angry when the climate case is pleaded show more with wrong or false arguments, and when, from a woke-like reflex, everything is attributed to “global warming”. To me, it’s not done to attribute every heavy storm or flood, drought or heat period to climate change; that’s just not scientific. And I’m particular sensitive to the misuse of the past in the service of the climate cause. Especially the abundant literature of the last decade about the Little Ice Age, is guilty of this. This book, by archaeologist-anthropologist Brian Fagan, is a manifest expression of that. The list of things that irritated me whilst reading is too long to discuss in detail here (I run through some of them in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3677412612). Fagan is a good storyteller, that much is clear, and this book offers interesting reading, I will not dispute that. And neither does his warm plea at the end to take the current climate crisis seriously and to take appropriate measures. But the theme would be better served with a more kosher approach to history. show less

The book is essentially a very detailed description of the effects of climate change brought about by natural forces such as volcanoes, sunspots, and the North Atlantic Oscillation in Britain and northern Europe. As describe by the author, the Little Ice Age "was an irregular seesaw of rapid climatic shifts, driven by complex and still little understood cycles of intensely cold winters and easterly winds, then switched abruptly to years of heavy spring and early summer rains, mild winter, and frequent Atlantic storms or to periods of droughts, light northeasterlies, and summer heat waves that baked growing crops in an endless zigzag of climatic shifts, few lasting more than a quarter of a century" and lasted 500 years from King Charles show more I to 1918. The author accessed hundreds of written material sources and with his writing skills created an engaging read on how people, communities, and countries were adversely affected. It was a very good read until he segued to man made climate change which would have best been told in another book. show less

Though I often did not follow his technical ideas, I still gave this book 5 stars because, after the many books I've read about history, none of them credited climate for its huge effects. Only individual weather events on occasion, like the Russian winter that defeated Napoleon and Hitler. But not climate. This was the first that went into any depth. It was like a giant puzzle piece finally falling into place.

Of course everyone knows about the potato blight in Ireland, but I'd never read so much detail about it.

Also, in "John Adams," when Abigail joins her husband in Paris and is shocked at all the beggars... this book explains it.

My only suggestion to the author would be to provide a comparison scale for Celsius and Fahrenheit show more temperatures for us U.S. readers. My calculator was never close at hand, so I had to assume that 38C is pretty hot. Now that I've looked it up, the author was shocked at temp's over 38C which is only about 100F -- that temp is pretty common in the summer where I live.

I see this author has written many other books. I will look for them. show less

Fascinating, prescient, thorough. Great read. Limited to primarily Northern Europe due to available resources and records, but that does not limit its validity. I hope it is widely read because we may very well be facing a repeat if we are not careful. The effects of climate change are unknown and remain unknown.

On several occasions between 1695 and 1728, inhabitants of the Orkney Islands off Northern Scotland were startled to see an Inuit in his kayak paddling off their coasts. On one memorable occasion, a kayaker came as far South as the river Don near Aberdeen. These solitary Arctic hunters had probably spent weeks marooned on large ice floes.

Between the relative stability of the mediaeval and modern warm periods, came hundreds of years of climatic instability. The climate seesawed randomly between hot summers, cold winters, late frosts, cool summers, drought, famines due to excessive rainfall, land lost to encroaching glaciers sea surges or sand, and lots of volcanic activity. A fascinating study of how climate change affected everyday show more life, social change and historical events in Europe and the rest of the world. show less