Famines During the ʻLittle Ice Ageʼ (1300-1800)

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vi

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Famines: At the Interface of Nature and Society

      • Dominik Collet, Maximilian Schuh

      Pages 3-16

3. Interdisciplinary Approaches

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. The European Mortality Crises of 1346–52 and Advent of the Little Ice Age

      • Bruce M. S. Campbell

      Pages 19-41

   3. Combining Written and Tree-Ring Evidence to Trace Past Food Crises: A Case Study from Finland

      • Heli Huhtamaa

      Pages 43-66

4. Socionatural Entanglements

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 67-67

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   2. Two Decades of Crisis: Famine and Dearth During the 1480s and 1490s in Western and Central Europe

      • Chantal Camenisch

      Pages 69-90

   3. Climate and Famines in the Czech Lands Prior to AD 1500: Possible Interconnections in a European Context

      • Rudolf Brázdil, Oldřich Kotyza, Martin Bauch

      Pages 91-114

   4. Food Insecurity and Political Instability in the Southern Red Sea Region During the ‘Little Ice Age,’ 1650–1840

      • Steven Serels

      Pages 115-129

5. Coping

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131

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   2. The Role of Climate and Famine in the Medieval Eastern Expansion

      • Andreas Rüther

      Pages 133-147

   3. Famines in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Test for an Advanced Economy

      • Guido Alfani

      Pages 149-169

   4. Bread for the Poor: Poor Relief and the Mitigation of the Food Crises of the 1590s and the 1690s in Berkel, Holland

      • Jessica Dijkman

      Pages 171-193

   5. Educationalizing Hunger. Dealing with the Famine of 1770/71 in Zurich

      • Andrea De Vincenti

      Pages 195-208

6. Perceiving and Remembering

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 209-209

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   2. Starvation Under Carolingian Rule. The Famine of 779 and the Annales Regni Francorum

      • Stephan Ebert

      Pages 211-230

   3. Staging the Return to Normality. Socio-cultural Coping Strategies with the Crisis of 1816/1817

      • Maren Schulz

      Pages 231-254

   4. Remembering Hunger. Museums and the Material Culture of Famine

      • Andrea Fadani

      Pages 255-269

This highly interdisciplinary book studies historical famines as an interface of nature and culture. It will bring together researchers from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities. With reference to recent interdisciplinary concepts (disaster studies, vulnerability studies, environmental history) it will examine, how the dominant opposition of natural and cultural factors can be overcome. Such an integrated approach includes the "archives of nature" as well as "archives of man". It challenges deterministic models of human-environment interaction and replaces them with a dynamic, historicising approach. As a result it provides a fresh perspective on the entanglement of climate and culture in past societies.

• Climate Change
• Environmental history
• Famine
• Human-Environment interaction
• Hunger Perception
• Paleoclimatology
• climate change impacts

• Heidelberg Center for the Environment, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

  Dominik Collet, Maximilian Schuh

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