Bloom and the Little ice Age

Little Ice Age

In the winter of 1620 a person could cross from Asia to Europe across the Bosphorus on foot and not exactly on a bridge. At that time no bridge had been built over the Bosphorus. It could be done for a couple of months because the Bosphorus froze. In the even harsher winter of 1657, the Sund Strait between Sweden and Denmark also froze over. It was not a superficial layer. It froze long enough for the Swedish army to march from Skåne to Copenhagen. In 1683, the winters were already so cold that from December to February it was not possible to navigate the River Thames in London. Instead of barges, horse-drawn carriages and sleighs circulated. Sometimes it was so thick and firm that Londoners held street markets in the middle of the frozen riverbed.

These extraordinary frosts occurred during the so-called "Little Ice Age", a global climate anomaly that occurred between the years 1400 and 1850. At its peak, the Little Ice Age left Europe and much of the world converted into a refrigerator, but we don't really know why. It is believed that it was due to the combined effects of low solar activity, the so-called "Maunder minimum", a series of changes in ocean currents and ash from several volcanic eruptions that, dispersed in the atmosphere, blocked radiation. solar.

Climatologists began studying the Little Ice Age about 60 or 70 years ago, focusing on the movements of glaciers and peering into the interior of trees. At the same time, historians began to speak of a "general crisis" in the mid-17th century. The crisis was substantiated by a set of almost simultaneous mutinies and wars: the Thirty Years' War, the English Civil Wars, the Fronde revolt in France, revolts against the Spanish monarchy in Portugal, Catalonia, and Naples, a political crisis in the Ottoman Empire and the violent transfer of power in China between the Ming and Qing dynasties. For a long time, historians tried to relate these chain disorders to a set of social, economic, or political conditions that were already present in Europe and China in the 17th century, but they did not look too closely at the climate.

That ended a few years ago. The Little Ice Age and the crisis of the 17th century are now interpreted more broadly. And it is no coincidence that this is the case. We are in a time of widespread climate panic, in which we assume imminent environmental ruin. Perhaps that is why, for some time now, the climatic alterations of the past have fascinated us. A few years ago, the famous British historian Geoffrey Parker published an essay titled "Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the 17th century" in which he claimed that the cooling of the climate was one of the causes that explain the abnormal political unrest in Europe and China of the time. The book was widely commented on, it sold a lot and today his thesis is commonplace.

The Mutiny of Nature

So much so that new books have been arriving on the subject. One of them is “The Mutiny of Nature”, by the German historian Philipp Blom. Like Parker, Blom blames global cooling for the political, social, and economic problems of this period. He does it, yes, in many fewer pages. Parker's has about 1,500 pages, but Blom needs less than 300. His thesis is similar and, why deny it, it is perfectly plausible. The cooling shortened the growing season by several weeks and caused droughts and frosts that wiped out entire crops. The frozen rivers could not move the mills, causing bread to become scarce in the cities. In the fragile societies of the modern era, two consecutive crop failures caused famines, and famines brought epidemics.

It is no coincidence that this chain of misfortunes led to riots or wars over scarce resources. Not to mention the unpaid mercenaries who prowled around in search of food. In the famine that preceded the fall of the Ming dynasty, a little rice could be exchanged for two children. The crisis in the Ottoman Empire, which resulted in the assassination of two sultans, was caused in part by the inability of the monarchs to provide Constantinople with the 500 tons of daily bread it needed. The Spanish Habsburgs, who faced revolts in Catalonia and Portugal, also faced two devastating outbreaks of plague in their two main cities: Seville in 1649 and Naples in 1656.

Throughout the book, Blom details the torments that European monarchies (and Europeans themselves) had to go through throughout this unfortunate century. Of course, according to the author, the suffering was not in vain. The climate crisis, he says verbatim, "caused great social and economic dynamism led by a rising middle class, through stronger trade, empirical knowledge, literary expansion, expanding markets and intellectual renewal." The Little Ice Age, harrowing as it was, "transformed the West and shaped the present."

The impact of cooling and widespread misery, Blom argues, forced a reconceptualization of nature and a new realistic and empirical approach to human society. Thus, the scientific and philosophical systems that would shape the Enlightenment. Economic disaster and social dislocation, according to this account, broke down centuries-old hierarchies and rewarded societies that proved most skillful and inventive. Adapting to the climate crisis also required ending the privileged status of Christianity, ushering in a secularized society that prioritized political stability and wealth over piety. The Little Ice Age is, according to Blom, a period of adaptation that ended in victory.

Blom paintings

Well, that's it for the main thesis. Now, I have to take out the scalpel and do the autopsy. Blom paints all of this as a heroic story, perhaps intended to cheer us up amid the pessimism created by the climate obsession of our day. Unfortunately, I believe his thesis is more fable than fact. Assuming, rather than proving, that the environmental crisis fostered intellectual innovation, Blom engages in a series of puzzling digressions. He devotes dozens of pages to the English astronomer John Dee or the essayist Michel de Montaigne who have little or no bearing on the book's subject. But, nothing, he continues his business justifying these very long parentheses by showing occasional comments from these two guys about the weather.

“Nature's Mutiny” is full of those dead ends. Blom tells short stories about the tulip bubble in Holland, Jesuit education, or the false Jewish Messiah of the 17th century. Certainly very interesting topics but they do not have much to do with the climate. But he insists that global cooling offers something like a unified theory of modernity. It is certain that the long, frigid winters and failed crops caused riots and wars, but it is not so clear to me that this gave rise to things like “the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and capitalism” as the author claims. Not for nothing, but because these three processes had already begun before, between the 15th and 16th centuries.

Then there is something else. Blom insists again and again that global cooling encouraged thinkers to discard "theological" accounts of the cosmos for new "economic" and "philosophical" explanations. Well, that is the classic "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, that is, since the works of Newton, Voltaire, or Adam Smith arrived in the 18th century, the cause of their existence must be sought in the previous century. And no, this is not the case as soon as one opens the lens and acquires a broader overview of Western history.

So why does he seem so convinced, assertive, and vehement even though the holes in his theory are so obvious? We find that in the conclusion. Blom concludes by striving to draw lessons from the Little Ice Age that apply to our era of global warming. But, interestingly, he does not suggest a free, spontaneous, market-driven adaptation that would allow us to once again triumph over nature. His book presents a peculiar paradox: the innovative market societies that, according to his story, emerged stronger from the Little Ice Age and gave birth to an industrialized consumer society with an insatiable thirst for fossil fuels. Then the Little Ice Age began the era of Global Warming.

Theology of the Market

At this point, he begins to preach about capitalism, which, according to him, 400 years ago was our salvation, but now brings us an imminent catastrophe. He launches himself against the "theology of the market", somewhat ridiculously attributing this supposed new religion of greed to the old "structures" of Christian theology. It says verbatim: “Christian princes conquered and oppressed others in the name of the true faith,” “and enlightened businessmen and politicians felt authorized to do the same in the name of rationality and progress” to conclude that the free market is the new “gospel” and that “how current climate change will affect societies today will depend largely on whether the answers are essentially theological or evidence-based.”

You don't have to be a wild libertarian to find this interpretation unconvincing. The scapegoating of religion is far-fetched. The suggestion that to combat climate change we must reject the market economy does not have a single piece of evidence to support it. Blom asks readers to banish the typically Christian or capitalist “idea of subjugating the Earth” and to consider themselves “a species of primates” seeking simple “survival in a material universe.” That's all it is. I wonder why if what he wanted was to attack Christianity and "now obsolete neoliberal economics", he has written such a specific historical essay. For that endeavor, he would have solved it with a different book, but not using the Little Ice Age as an alibi. Readers interested in the subject will be much better served by Geoffrey Parker.