The diffusion of maize in the Cantabrian region and its economic and demographic consequences during the Ancient Regime

AbstractThe cultivation of maize for human consumption started to spread through the Cantabrian region around the end of the sixteenth century. The adoption of the new crop was encouraged by the advent of the Little Ice Age, and the resulting crisis of subsistence, which forced Cantabrian peasants and farmers to search for alternatives to wheat. The importance of maize increased steadily and by the nineteenth century it had become the most important crop grown in the region. This had a number of economic and demographic consequences. In particular, it allowed peasants to produce a surplus that enabled them to become more involved in local and regional markets, providing an essential profit for otherwise precarious farm economies; and it encouraged such markets to become more integrated and more flexible in character. This article explores these issues by focusing on the case of Gipuzkoa, an area with a large amount of previously unused documentary sources.

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Reading and Writing History in Sixteenth-Century France: The Case of La Legende des Flamens (1522)

Irish Journal of French Studies ◽

10.7173/164913316820201616 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 59-85

Author(s):

Catherine Emerson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Trinity College ◽

Reading And Writing ◽

Trinity College Dublin ◽

Documentary Sources ◽

Lost Work ◽

Historical Writings ◽

The Way

A rare copy of a first edition of La Légende des Flamens, now in Trinity College Dublin, reveals a number of facts about its position in that library, probably a mid-nineteenth-century acquisition but acquired in the context of existing similar holdings of medieval and early modern French historical writings. Unlike these writings, however, the text takes an explicitly anti-Flemish and pro-French royalist stance. Criticism levelled at the two most recently deceased popes — or at the English — may explain why the author has decided to remain anonymous, or the text may have been conceived as a compilation of documentary sources without need for an author. This article examines the way that the text deploys sources, including a lost work by Giles of Rome, and draws some conclusions about the situation of the author of the text. Publisher François Regnault is considered as a possible author.

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The onset of the Little Ice Age in Andalusia (southern Spain): detection and characterization from documentary sources

Annales Geophysicae ◽

10.1007/s00585-995-0330-6 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 330-338 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

F. S. Rodrigo ◽

M. J. Esteban-Parra ◽

Y. Castro-Diez

Keyword(s):

Little Ice Age ◽

Climate Changes ◽

Southern Spain ◽

Ice Age ◽

Rainfall Regime ◽

Change Analysis ◽

Documentary Data ◽

Documentary Sources ◽

Abrupt Changes ◽

Ordinal Index

Abstract. In this work the onset of the "Little Ice Age" period in Andalusia (southern Spain) is analysed from documentary data, focusing attention on the evolution of the climate during the 16th and 17th centuries. It is shown that changes in the rainfall regime have been more important than those in the temperature in studying the Andalusian climate change. Analysis of the total annual precipitation is carried out by codifying the documentary data and establishing an ordinal index. Several statistical methods are used to detect and characterize climate changes in the region. The results suggest a fluctuating evolution, without trends or abrupt changes, with a prevailing wet period from 1550 to 1650 AD. Cycles of ~17, 3.5 and 2.1 years are detected. Some possible causal mechanisms are suggested.

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The Little Ice Age in Japan. Climatic Reconstruction in Central Japan during the Little Ice Age based on Documentary Sources.

Journal of Geography (Chigaku Zasshi) ◽

10.5026/jgeography.102.2_152 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 102 (2) ◽

pp. 152-166 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Mitsuharu MIZUKOSHI

Keyword(s):

Little Ice Age ◽

Ice Age ◽

Central Japan ◽

Climatic Reconstruction ◽

Documentary Sources

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Reconstruction of Little Ice Age Events in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Géographie physique et Quaternaire ◽

10.7202/032619ar ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 17-28 ◽

Cited By ~ 46

Author(s):

B. H. Luckman

Keyword(s):

Rocky Mountains ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

Ice Age ◽

Future Research ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

Tree Line ◽

Canadian Rocky Mountains ◽

13Th Century ◽

Documentary Sources ◽

Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

ABSTRACT The well-developed moraines of the Little Ice Age represent the most significant regional Holocene glacial event in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The application of dating techniques (documentary sources, dendrochronology, lichenometry and radiocarbon dating) appropriate to this timeframe are briefly reviewed and summary data from 33 glaciers are presented. Three main periods of moraine development are recognised (i) 1500-1700 A.D., represented by small fragments of poorly dated moraines, (ii) early 1700's when about one-third of the glaciers show a maximum advance, (iii) mid-to-late-nineteenth century when major readvances built moraines close to or beyond (i) and (ii). In addition to these periods, 14C dates from overridden trees indicate a 12th/13th century glacial advance to within 400 and 1400 m of the Little Ice Age Maximum positions at Robson and Kiwa (Premier Range) Glaciers respectively. Prior to this advance a period of warmer conditions is inferred between ca. 700-1100 A.D. from the presence of large, 14C-dated snags at tree-line near the Athabasca Glacier, including a 1000 14C yr-old larch (probably Larix lyallii) about 90 km northwest of its present limit. Tree-line may have readvanced at the Athabasca site between ca. 1300-1700 A.D. but receded again during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Future research should be directed towards using the relatively long tree-ring records (500-1000 yrs, with cross-dating) of this area for climatic reconstructions.

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At the edge: High Arctic Walrus hunters during the Little Ice Age

Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0003598x00068423 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 85 (329) ◽

pp. 960-977 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Bjarne Grønnow ◽

Hans Christian Gulløv ◽

Bjarne Holm Jakobsen ◽

Anne Birgitte Gotfredsen ◽

Laura Hauch Kauffmann ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

Marine Mammals ◽

High Mobility ◽

High Arctic ◽

Ice Age ◽

Processing Plant ◽

Arctic Zone ◽

East Greenland ◽

North East

A multi-disciplinary study of settlement in north-east Greenland found that life in this High Arctic zone was actually favoured by the climate brought in by the Little Ice Age (fifteenth–nineteenth century). Extensive ice cover meant high mobility, and the rare polynyas — small patches of permanently open coastal water — provided destinations, like oases, where huge numbers of migrating marine mammals and birds congregated. One such place was Walrus Island on Sirius Water, a veritable processing plant for walrus, where every spring Thule people stocked up meat supplies that would get the rest of the region through the winter. It was a further drop in the temperature in the mid nineteenth century that led to the region being abandoned.

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Perfect Medicine

Asian Medicine ◽

10.1163/15734218-12341278 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 15-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Dagmar Wujastyk

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Thirteenth Century ◽

South Asian ◽

Seventh Century ◽

Ayurvedic Medicine ◽

Human Consumption ◽

Indian Medical ◽

Asian Medicine

This article gives an overview of the earliest uses of mercury in classical South Asian medicine up to the nineteenth century, tracing and discussing important stages in the development of mercury processing. The use of unprocessed mercury might date back to the period when the oldest Indian medical compendia, theCarakasaṃhitāand theSuśrutasaṃhitā, were composed. It is certain that medical compounds containing apparently unprocessed mercury were used by the time the works ascribed to Vāgbhaṭa, theAṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitāand theAṣṭāṅgasaṃgraha,were written (c. early seventh centuryce). However, with one notable exception, it was only from the thirteenth century onwards that ways of processing mercury were developed or adopted from alchemical sources in ayurvedic medicine. Elaborate procedures were applied for the ‘purifying’ and calcining of mercury and for extracting mercury from cinnabar. Through these procedures, mercury was meant to be perfected, i.e. made safe for human consumption as well as efficacious as a remedy. By the sixteenth century, the use of processed mercury had become standard in ayurvedic medicine for a great number of diseases, and processed mercury was considered extremely potent and completely safe: a perfect medicine.

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Greenhouses, hot water bottles, cycles and the future of New Zealand climate

Proceedings of the New Zealand Grassland Association ◽

10.33584/jnzg.2009.71.2772 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 61-67

Author(s):

W.P. De Lange

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Thermal Energy ◽

Infrared Radiation ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

Hot Water ◽

Ice Age ◽

The Sun ◽

Weather Patterns ◽

Time Periods ◽

Almost All

The Greenhouse Effect acts to slow the escape of infrared radiation to space, and hence warms the atmosphere. The oceans derive almost all of their thermal energy from the sun, and none from infrared radiation in the atmosphere. The thermal energy stored by the oceans is transported globally and released after a range of different time periods. The release of thermal energy from the oceans modifies the behaviour of atmospheric circulation, and hence varies climate. Based on ocean behaviour, New Zealand can expect weather patterns similar to those from 1890-1922 and another Little Ice Age may develop this century.

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