The significance of climate and solar variability on historical European grain prices

Author(s):  
Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist ◽  
Peter Thejll ◽  
Bo Christiansen ◽  
Andrea Seim ◽  
Claudia Hartl ◽  
...  

<p>Grain was the most important food source for a majority of the population in early modern Europe (<em>c</em>. 1500–1800). The price level and volatility had huge societal effects: high prices tended to increase mortality, decrease fertility as well as affect overall consumption patterns. To what extent climate variability influenced the long-term grain price evolution in early modern Europe has for a long time been a matter of debate. Recent advances in high-resolution palaeoclimatology and historical climatology have made it possible to reassess the grain price–climate relationship in time and space with unprecedented detail (Esper <em>et al</em>. 2017). We analyse the climate signal in 56 multi-centennial long series of annual prices of barley, oat, rye, and wheat across Europe. The grain price–climate relationship in regional clusters of grain price data is analysed using both tree-ring based temperature reconstructions, documentary-based temperature reconstructions, tree-ring based drought reconstructions, and early temperature and precipitation instrumental data, considering possible different climate responses in each grain type and different seasonal targets. In addition, we systematically investigate whether, and to what extent, the imprints of variations in solar forcing, including possible lag effects, can be detected in the grain prices.</p><p>We find a highly significant and persistent negative temperature–price relationship (i.e., cold = high prices and vice versa) across all of Europe and for all four grain types using both temperature reconstructions and instrumental temperature data. Excluding the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and the period following the French Revolution (1789), this relationship is as strong as <em>r</em> = –0.41 between the annual average of all the 56 included European grain price series and the reconstructed June–August temperature for the previous year. The correlations to drought and precipitation are, on the other hand, mainly insignificant and inconsistent in time and space. The evidence for the existence of the effect of solar forcing variations on early modern European grain prices is not strong, although we can detect statistically significant grain price–solar forcing relationships for certain regions. In conclusion, we find much stronger evidence than hitherto reported for long-term temperature imprints on historical grain prices in Europe, implying that temperature variability and change have been a more important factor in European economic history, even in southern Europe, than commonly acknowledged.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Reference:</strong></p><p>Esper J., <em>et al</em>., 2017. Environmental drivers of historical grain price variations in Europe. <em>Clim. Res</em>. 72: 39–52.</p>

1972 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo M. Cipolla

In recent years the study of the ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ has become a very fashionable subject. Everett M. Rogers stressed the fact that his book on the ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ was based on 506 diffusion studies published in the last decades. Of course quantity is not necessarily synonymous with quality and brilliant ideas are not a function of the number of titles printed. The first of the major conclusions reached by Rogers after perusing the 506 diffusion studies is that ‘innovativeness of individuals is related to a modern rather than a traditional orientation’. One may doubt whether such an extraordinary conclusion was worth the input of energy and goodwill that allegedly went into its production, but there is no doubt that innovations and their diffusion are a topic of major relevance in the study of social development. Innovations are to history what mutations are to biology. Actually, innovations show a remarkable tendency to cluster in time and space, and this incidentally suggests that attention should not be devoted exclusively to the eccentric individual genius of the innovators, but should also be extended to the anonymous forces of the environment.


1979 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Appleby

In early modern Europe the major concern of many people was getting enough food to stay alive. The “problem of subsistence” varied considerably, however, between one country—or one region—and another. England, for instance, was free of major subsistence crises during the later seventeenth century, when France was hard hit by repeated and deadly famines. In this essay I shall point out some of the differences between these two countries that might explain the success of one and the failure of the other to feed its people.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-49
Author(s):  
Don Herzog

This chapter discusses the origins of the concept of sovereignty. It pinpoints sovereignty's troubled origins in early modern Europe. Here, sovereignty was an intelligible, intelligent response to the savage strife of the wars of religion. It even fueled actual programs of state-building. And it reconfigured people's understanding of their problems and possibilities, including (not just for instance) what was at stake in dueling. The chapter contends that it was not just a morsel of discourse, still less a stray bit of metaphysics or ontology merrily blundering its way across time and space, or still worse located outside them, with scant regard for the political problems of the day.


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