England to Egypt, 1350-1500: Long-term Trends and Longdistance Trade

Abstract

It has been observed that a very long period of comparatively warm climate, prevailing over the entire temperate zone of the earth from the ninth to the thirteenth century approximately, was broken by a spell of cold and wet climate, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The message is written in the annual growth rings of the Californian trees and the tidal marks of the Caspian Sea, documented by the frequent recurrence of solid freezing in the Baltic Sea and the Suwa Lake of Japan, testified by failing harvests and retreating vineyards or corn fields in England and Poland. Farther south, it is true, changes seem to be less dramatic; here, there is no such disaster as the transformation of Greenland into a desert, and indeed increased rains may favour hitherto ill-suited crops, such as rice in the Po valley and sugar in the Greek islands; but excessive precipita­ tions eroded the deforested highlands, and erected bars which prevented the flow of rivers into the sea. We are less informed on the subtropical and tropical regions, but there are indications that the Sahara, India, and per­ haps Central America were afflicted by the opposite excess: there was unusual dryness, which caused serious famines, just as the unusual cold unleashed severe dearths in Northern Europe. Hunger also occurred in the middle area, but it was partly offset by the greater facility the ports of the Mediterranean had to import foodstuffs from surplus producing regions. As a matter of fact, there is no change of climate that has adverse effects in every region, but any change is everywhere a disturbing factor until agri­ cultural methods adjust to it.

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