Global Crisis Read online

  Copyright © 2013 Geoffrey Parker

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parker, Geoffrey, 1943–

  Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century/Geoffrey Parker.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-300-15323-1 (cloth: alkaline paper)

  1. History, Modern—17th century. 2. Military history—17th century. 3. Civil war—History—17th century. 4. Revolutions—History—17th century. 5. Climatic changes—Social aspects—History—17th century. 6. disasters—History—17th century. I. Title.

  D247.P37 2012

  909'.6—dc23

  2012039448

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated in admiration to all those who fight multiple sclerosis

  ‘It was so harsh a winter that no-one could remember another like it … only after Easter could the peasants go to their fields and begin to farm’

  (Hans Heberle, Zeytregister [Diary], Ulm, Germany, 1627)

  ‘The times here are so miserable that never in the memory of man has the like famine and mortality happened’

  (East India Company officials, letter, Surat, India, 1631)

  ‘Those who live in times to come will not believe that we who are alive now have suffered such toil, pain and misery’

  (Fra Francesco Voersio of Cherasco, Diario del contagio [Plague Diary], Italy, 1631)

  ‘There have been so many deaths that the like of it has never been heard in human history’

  (Hans Conrad Lang, Tagebuch [Diary], South Germany, 1634)

  ‘Jiangnan has never experienced this kind of disaster’

  (Lu Shiyi, Zhixue lu [Diary], South China, 1641)

  ‘Among all the past occurrences of disaster and rebellion, there had never been anything worse than this’

  (County Gazetteer, Yizhou, North China, 1641)

  ‘The whole monarchy trembled and shook, since Portugal, Catalonia, the East Indies, the Azores and Brazil had rebelled’

  (Viceroy don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Mexico, 1641)

  ‘[These] days are days of shaking and this shaking is universal: the Palatinate, Bohemia, Germany, Catalonia, Portugal, Ireland, England’

  (Jeremiah Whitaker, Ejrenopojos [The peacemaker], England, 1643)

  ‘This seems to be one of the epochs in which every nation is turned upside down, leading some great minds to suspect that we are approaching the end of the world’

  (Nicandro [The victor], pamphlet, Madrid, Spain, 1643)

  ‘'Tis tru we have had many such black days in England in former ages, but those parallel'd to the present are to the shadow of a mountain compar'd to the eclipse of the moon’

  (James Howell, Collected letters, England, 1647)

  ‘There was great hunger throughout the Christian world’

  (Inscription, Old Sambor Cathedral, Ukraine, 1648)

  ‘The pryces of victuall and cornes of all sortes wer heigher than ever heirtofore aneyone living could remember … The lyke had never beine seine in this kingdome’

  (Sir James Balfour, ‘Some shorte memorialls and passages of this yeire’, Scotland, 1649)

  ‘If one ever had to believe in the Last Judgment, I think it is happening right now’

  (Judge Renaud de Sévigné, letter, Paris, France, 1652)

  ‘The elements, servants of an irate God, combine to snuff out the rest of humankind: mountains spew out fire; the earth shakes; plague contaminates the air’

  (Jean-Nicolas de Parival, Abrégé de l'histoire de ce siècle de fer [Short history of this Iron Century], Brussels, South Netherlands, 1653)

  ‘A third of the world has died’

  (Abbess Angélique Arnauld, letter, Port-Royale-des-Champs, France, 1654)

  ‘I no sooner perceived myself in the world but I found myself in a storm, which hath lasted almost hitherto’

  (John Locke, ‘First Tract on Government’, London, 1660)

  ‘Because of the dearth sent to us by God, we wanted to sell our property to our relatives, but they refused, and left us to die from hunger’

  (Gavril Niţă, Moldavian peasant, 1660)

  ‘Transylvania never knew such misery as this last year’.

  (Mihail Teleki, Chancellor of Transylvania, Journal, 1661)

  ‘So many prophets and prophetesses arose in all the cities of Anatolia that everyone believed wholeheartedly that the End of Days had come … These were indeed miraculous occurrences and wonders, the like of which had never happened since the day the world was created’

  (Leib ben Oyzer, Beschraybung fun Shabsai Zvi [Description of Shabbatai Zvi], on events in the Ottoman empire in 1665–6)

  ‘The world was aflame from the time I was 15 [1638] to the time I was 18’

  (Enomoto Yazaemon, Oboegaki [Memoranda], Saitama, Japan, 1670)

  ‘Since [1641] I am not afraid of seeing dead people, because I saw so many of them at that time’

  (Yao Tinglin, Linian ji [Record of successive years], Shanghai, China, c. 1670)

  ‘Many people held their lives to be of no value, for the area was so wasted and barren, the common people so poor and had suffered so much, that essentially they knew none of the joys of being alive … Every day one would hear that someone had hanged himself from a beam and killed himself. Others, at intervals, cut their throats or threw themselves into the river’

  (Huang Liuhong, Fuhui quanshu [Complete book concerning happiness and benevolence], about events in Shandong, China, c. 1670)

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Prologue: Did Someone Say ‘Climate Change'?

  Introduction: The ‘Little Ice Age’ and the ‘General Crisis’

  PART I. THE PLACENTA OF THE CRISIS

  1 The Little Ice Age

  2 The ‘General Crisis’

  3 ‘Hunger is the greatest enemy’: The Heart of the Crisis

  4 ‘A third of the world has died’: Surviving in the Seventeenth Century

  PART II. ENDURING THE CRISIS

  5 The ‘Great Enterprise’ in China, 1618–84

  6 ‘The great shaking’: Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1618–86

  7 The ‘Ottoman tragedy’, 1618–83

  8 The ‘lamentations of Germany’ and its Neighbours, 1618–88

  9 The Agony of the Iberian Peninsula, 1618–89

  10 France in Crisis, 1618–88

  11 The Stuart Monarchy: The Path to Civil War, 1603–42

  12 Britain and Ireland from Civil War to Revolution, 1642–89

  PART III. SURVIVING THE CRISIS

  13 The Mughals and their Neighbours

  14 Red Flag over Italy

  15 The ‘dark continents’: The Americas, Africa and Australia

  16 Getting it Right: Early Tokugawa Japan

  PART IV. CONFRONTING THE CRISIS

  17 ‘Those who have no means of support’: The Parameters of Popular Resistance

  18 ‘People who hope only for a change’: Aristocrats, Intellectuals,
Clerics and ‘dirty people of no name’

  19 ‘People of heterodox beliefs … who will join up with anyone who calls them’: Disseminating Revolution

  PART V. BEYOND THE CRISIS

  20 Escaping the Crisis

  21 From Warfare State to Welfare State

  22 The Great Divergence

  Conclusion: The Crisis Anatomized

  Epilogue: ‘It's the climate, stupid’

  Chronology

  Acknowledgements

  Note on Conventions

  Note on Sources and Bibliography

  Abbreviations Used in the Bibliography and Notes

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  Plates

  1. Johannes Hevelius, Sunspot observations in Danzig, 1642–4. Source: Hevelius, Selenographia (Danzig, 1647), fig. 3. The Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

  2. Leonhard Kern, Scene from the Thirty Years War, 1640s. Source: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (KK 4363).

  3. King Charles I exchanges his worldly crown for a crown of thorns, 1649. Source: Eikōn Basilikē, 1649, frontispiece by William Marshall. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (RB 121950).

  4. Zacharias Wagenaer, Drawing of the city of Edo on 4 March 1657 after the fire, 1651. Source: Edo-Tokyo Museum, Tokyo.

  5. Yang Dongming, Jimin tushuo [Album of the Famished], 1688. Source: By kind permission of Henan Provincial Museum.

  6. A letter left with an abandonned baby, 1628. Source: AHN Consejos, 41,391, unfol.

  7. Weather in China, 1640 and 1641. Source: Zhongguo Jin-wubai-nian Hanlao Fenbu Tu-ji, 91.

  8. A Chinese male undergoes ‘tonsorial castration’, 1843. Source: Rev. G. N. Wright, China, III, 50. © The British Library Board (Maps 10.bb.31).

  9. ‘The Wine Jew’, Germany, 1629. Source: Germanisches Nationalmuseum (HB 2057, Kapsel 1279).

  10. The salt register for Calle Fuencarral, Madrid, 1631. Source: BNE Ms 6760. Courtesy of the Biblioteca National de España.

  11. Spanish stamp duty (Papel Sellado). Source: Hispanic Society of America, Altamira Papers.

  12. A consulta signed by Philip IV, 7 December 1640. Source: AGS GA 1331, unfol., Philip IV's rescript to a consulta from the Junta de Ejecución, 7 December 1640. España, Ministerio de Cultura, Archivo General de Simancas.

  13. Wenceslaus Hollar, The British Civil Wars and the Revolt of Bohemia, 1632. Source: Wenceslaus Hollar, Map of Civil War England and a View of Prague, 1632. Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  14. ‘The Arch-Prelate of St Andrews in Scotland reading the new service book in his pontificalious assaulted by men & women, with crickett tooles sticks and stones’, 1637. Source: Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

  15. Wenceslaus Hollar, The earl of Strafford's impeachment in Westminster Hall, 1641. Source: The Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

  16. ‘Now are ye wilde Irisch as well as wee’, 1655. Source: Anon., The Barbarous and Inhumane Proceedings Against the Professors of the Reformed Religion (London, 1655), 13. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California (RB 16167).

  17. Yang Dongming, Jimin tushuo [Album of the Famished], 1688. Source: By kind permission of Henan Provincial Museum.

  18. Micco Spadaro, The revolt of Masaniello, c. 1647. Source: Museo di San Martino, Naples. Photo Scala, Florence. Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.

  19. ‘The figure of the Indians’ fort or Palizado in New England And the marer of the destroying it by Captayne Underhill And Captayne Mason’, 1637. Source: John Underhill, Nevves from America (1638). Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-32055.

  20. Portion of a map of Edo, Japan. Source: University of Texas Libraries.

  21. Micco Spadaro, The Execution of Don Giuseppe Carafa, c. 1647. Source: Museo di San Martino, Naples. Photo Scala, Florence. Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.

  22. ‘Smoking kills’, 1658. Source: Jakob Balde, Die trückene Trünckenheit (Nuremberg, 1658), frontispiece.

  23. Frontispiece to Grimmelshausen, Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus (The Adventurous Simplicissimus), 1668. Source: akg-images.

  24. Johan Niewhaf, Tiencenwey, 1656. Source: Nieuhof, Die Gesantschaft der Ost-Indischen Geselschaft, Heidelberg University Library, A4820, pull-out 28.

  25. A general Bill for this present year, 1665. Source: Guildhall Library, London. Courtesy of the London Metropolitan Archives.

  26. Jan van de Heyden, A fire engine in action during a major freeze, Amsterdam, 1684. Source: Beschryving der nieuwlyks uitgevonden en geoctrojeerde slang-brand-spuiten en haare wyze van brand-blussen, tegenwoordig binnen Amsterdam in gebruik zijnde (Amsterdam, 1672), figure 16.

  27. Renatus Cartesius, c. 1720. Source: Pieter van der Aa, XX icones clarissimorum medicorum Philosophorum Liberales Artes Profitentium Aliorumque (Leiden, c. 1720). Landesbibliothek Oldenburg.

  28. ‘A Scheme At one View representing to the Eye the Observations of the Weather for a Month’, 1663. Source: Sprat, History, I, 179. © The British Library Board (740.c.17).

  Figures

  1. The Global Crisis.

  2. Sunspot cycles, volcanic anomalies, and summer temperature variations in the seventeenth century. Source: Eddy, ‘The “Maunder Minimum”’, 290, figure 11–6; Vaquero, ‘Revised, sunspot data’, figure 2; and Atwell, ‘Volcanism’, Figures C5 and E3.

  3. Estimated heights of French males born between 1650 and 1770. Source: Komlos, ‘Anthropometric history’, 180, Fig. 16.

  4. Frequency of wars in Europe 1610–80

  5. Farms in south-east Scotland abandoned in the seventeenth century. Source: Grove, Little Ice Age, 409.

  6. The ‘dampening effect’ of London on England's overall demographic growth. Courtesy of Sir Tony Wrigley.

  7. The fires of Istanbul 1600–1700. Source: Atasoy and Raby, Iznik, 16–17.

  8. The double-cropping cycle in Liangan southeast China. Source: Marks, Tigers, 203.

  9. A simple model of early modern economic systems. Courtesy of Kishimoto Mio.

  10. The social structure of Navalmoral, Spain, in the early seventeenth century. Source: Weisser, Peasants, 38–42.

  11. The Mediterranean plague epidemic of 1648–56. Courtesy of Jorge Nadal.

  12. Mortality in Barcelona, 1650–4. Source: Betrán, La peste, 73.

  13. Burials in Berkshire, England. Source: Dils, ‘Epidemics’, 148.

  14. A subsistence crisis: Geneva 1627–32. Source: Perrenoud, La population de Genève, 443.

  15. Children abandoned at the Foundlings Hospital of Milan. Source: Hunecke, Die Findelkinder von Mailand, 218 and 221.

  16. Ming China in the seventeenth century.

  17. Disasters and diseases cripple Ming China, 1641. Source: Dunstan, ‘Late Ming epidemics’, map 6; von Glahn, Fountain of fortune, xiii.

  18. East Asian temperatures, 800–1800. Courtesy of Keith Briffa and Tim Osborn.

  19. The Russian empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

  20. The climatic zones of the Ottoman Empire. Source: Hütterroth, ‘Ecology’, 20.

  21. Tax yields in the Balkans, Anatolia and Syria, 1640–1834. Source: McGowan, Economic life in Ottoman Europe, 113.

  22. The Ottoman empire at war, 1630–1700. Source: Mantran, Istanbul, 260.

  23. The rhythm of pamphlet publication in Germany, 1618–50.

  24. The depopulation of Germany during the Thirty Years War, 1618–48. Source: Franz, Der dreissigjähriger Krieg, 4th edn, 8.

  25. The revolt of Portugal, 1637. Source: Schaub, Le Portugal, 491.

  26. Catalonia in revolt, May 1640. Source: Atles d'Història de catalunya, 157.

  27. The subsistence crisis in Madrid, 1647–8. Source: Larquié, “Popular uprisings,” 97.

  28. The ‘Green Banner’ revolts in Andalusia, 1647–52. Source: Domínguez Ortiz, Alteraciones andaluzas, 51.

  29. Baptisms in Castile, 1600–1700. Source: Nad
al, ‘La población española’, 53–4.

  30. Seventeenth-century France. Source: Bonney, Political change, 345.

  31. Receipts from the taille by the French treasury, 1600–47. Source: Bonney, The rise of the fiscal state, 141.

  32. Pamphlet publication in seventeenth-century France. Source: Duccini, 'Regard’, 323.

  33. Monthly production of Mazarinades, May 1649–July 1653. Source: Carrier, La presse, I, 275.

  34. War, climate and mortality in Ile-de-France during the seventeenth century. Source: Garnier, ‘Calamitosa tempora, 9, figure 4.

  35. Plan of the Palace of Westminster, England. Source: Jones and Kelsey, Housing Parliament, ix.

  36. Periodicals and newspapers published in England, 1620–75. Source: Crane and Kaye, A census, 179–81.

  37. Publications in seventeenth-century England. Source: Cressy, England on edge, 293.

  38. The redistribution of confiscated Irish land, 1653–60. Source: Bottigheimer, English money and Irish land, 215.

  39. The Mughal annual ‘radius of action’. Source: Gommans, Mughal warfare, 108.

  40. Drought and the seventeenth-century crisis in Indonesia. Source: Reid, ‘The crisis’, 213.

  41. The kingdom of Naples in revolt, 1647–8. Source: Hugo, Naples, 93.

  42. Trade between Seville and America, 1500–1650. Source: Romano, Conjonctures opposées, 162.

  43. The southward advance of the Sahara from 1630. Source: Brooks, Landlords and strangers, 10.

  44. Drought and disease in west-central Africa, 1560–1710. Source: Miller, ‘The significance of drought’, 21.

  45. Famine and drought in Chad, Senegambia and the Niger Bend, 1500–1710. Source: Nicholson, ‘Methodology’, 45.

  46. Slaves captured and shipped from Africa, 1600–1700. Courtesy of David Eltis.