Nature's Mutiny
How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
“A sweeping story, embracing developments in economics and science, philosophy and exploration, religion and politics. . . . Beautifully clear.”— John Lanchester, The New Yorker
Hailed as an “arresting” (Lawrence Klepp, New Criterion) account, Nature’s Mutiny chronicles the great climate crisis of the seventeenth century that totally transformed Europe’s social and political fabric. Best-selling historian Philipp Blom reveals how a new, radically altered Europe emerged out of the “Little Ice Age” that diminished crop yields across the continent, forcing thousands to flee starvation in the countryside to burgeoning urban centers, and even froze London’s Thames, upon which British citizens erected semipermanent frost fairs with bustling kiosks, taverns, and brothels. Highlighting how politics and culture also changed drastically, Blom evokes the era’s most influential artists and thinkers who imagined groundbreaking worldviews to cope with environmental cataclysm.
As we face a climate crisis of our own, “Blom’s prodigious synthesis delivers a sharply-focused lesson for the twenty-first century: the profound effects of just a few degrees of climate change can alter the course of civilization, forever” (Laurence A. Marschall, Natural History).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An epic bout of global cooling sparked the rise of capitalism and rationality, according to this weakly argued environmental history. Journalist Blom (Fracture) probes Europe's response to a prolonged cooling period from 1570 to 1690, an era of harsh winters and chilly, damp summers that saw frequent crop failures, famines, and witch burnings as authorities sought supernatural scapegoats for bad harvests. (On the plus side, London held Frost Fairs on the frozen-over Thames, with ox roasts and bawdy entertainments.) The deep freeze prompted a new genre of winter landscape painting and Shakespeare's line "the winter of our discontent," Blom contends, along with profound economic changes: agricultural innovations; systems of market-oriented land management that raised farm productivity but dispossessed peasants; and a new international grain trade centered in Amsterdam, which became the open-minded, capitalistic nursery of the Enlightenment. He devotes much space to colorful profiles of free-thinking philosophers and scientists, from Giordano Bruno to Baruch Spinoza, who were ostracized, exiled, or executed for questioning religious dogma. Blom's arguments are intriguing but often tenuous, especially when he asserts a causative connection between the weather and particular ideas. While the arguments may not be airtight, this wide-ranging and affectionate portrait of 17th-century Europe has a poetic appeal. Photos.
