Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre‐industrial England

Abstract

This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice-cores. It demonstrates that in pre-industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short-term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert with biological agencies) exercised a powerful influence upon the balance struck between population and available resources via their effects upon the reproduction, health and life expectancy of humans, crops, and livestock. Prevailing socio-economic conditions and institutions, in turn, shaped society's susceptibility to these environmental shocks and shifts.B raudel opened his great trilogy, Civilisation and capitalism, 15th-18th century, by likening the rhythm of population change over the pre-industrial centuries to a series of tides, whose 'alternate demographic ebb and flow . . . make almost everything else seem secondary'. 2 The marine analogy is powerful but paradoxical: the causes of oceanic tides are so well understood that their ebb and flow may be predicted with precision, whereas the mechanisms responsible for these human tides remain enigmatic. Even counting, measuring, and dating the latter can be a considerable challenge given the difficulty of observing population trends before the advent of explicit demographic evidence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For earlier periods Braudel's 'alternate demographic ebb and flow' can usually only be inferred from an array of 1 This lecture is dedicated to the memory of two distinguished medievalists who both died in 2007, their work incomplete: Professor Larry Epstein and Professor Harold Fox. I am grateful to Professor Richard Smith for the invitation to give it. The final version of the lecture was written during a period of research leave spent at the Malcomson cast an expert eye over the text and provided advice and encouragement at a critical stage. Three referees and the editors offered suggestions which proved helpful in translating the text from the medium of a lecture into that of an article. Finally, particular thanks are due to Mike Baillie, Professor Emeritus of Palaeoecology, The Queen's University of Belfast, for many stimulating conversations and for providing data and advice on dendrochronology. He nevertheless bears no responsibility for the views expressed in the following pages.2 Braudel, Civilization and capitalism, p. 31.

Filling the Eastern European gap in millennium-long temperature reconstructions

“…Lacking sufficient domestic capacities for storage and international linkages for trade, English cereal yields were vitally affected by climatic fluctuations with declines in summer temperature being particularly devastating. Recent literature in economic history has sharpened our understanding of the role of adverse climate and subsequent crop failures in partially explaining the two great demographic catastrophes of the 14th century, namely the Great Famine of 1315-1317 and the Black Death of 1347-1351 (47,48). Cumulatively, these two events and similar recurrences led to a 60% decline in English population by 1450, a process that has long been known to have contributed to the phenomena of lost villages and urban decline (49).…”

Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World

“…Bruce M. S. Campbell (2010aCampbell ( , 2010bCampbell ( , 2016 suggests that "exogenous environmental factors may have played a greater and more direct role in causing the crisis of the fourteenth century than most conventional accounts of the period admit" (2010a, p. 31). This crisis includes not only the most terrible human epidemic ever, but also a prior epizootic, the "cattle plague" of 1314-1321.…”

Social-ecological Resilience and Biodiversity Conservation in a 900-year-old Protected Area

“…The Medieval period, for example, experienced major crises in public health, including the European Famine of 1315-21 and the Black Death of 1346-53, which led to widespread human mortality and socioeconomic instability (Campbell 2010). These events were succeeded by a period (1550-1850) of significant climate change referred to as the "Little Ice Age", characterized by lower winter temperatures throughout northwest Europe (Brazdil et al 2005).…”

“…These events were succeeded by a period (1550-1850) of significant climate change referred to as the "Little Ice Age", characterized by lower winter temperatures throughout northwest Europe (Brazdil et al 2005). Campbell (2010) has highlighted the role of positive and negative feedback mechanisms between natural and human processes that underpinned the major socioeconomic impacts of these events, such as the development of immunity and quarantine systems in the case of the Black Death. Their specific impacts on the New Forest are not well documented, although there is possible evidence of abandonment of agricultural land following the Black Death ).…”