There are major natural disasters every year. In the last year alone we have had the major earthquake in Nepal just in the last couple days and a historic epidemic of Ebola. It’s too soon to tell how these latest disasters will seen by history and effect historical interpretations. This year there are three natural disaster anniversaries that stand out from the rest not just due to their mortality but also because of their impact on how we interpret the past.
Just a few weeks ago there was a minor splash in the news to mark the 200th anniversary of the eruption of Tambora on April 5, 1815. The photo to the right is the caldera of Tambora taken from space. As tragic as the thousands of deaths directly related to the eruption are, 1815 is best known as the ‘year without a summer’, a volcanic winter. It is impossible to know how many deaths resulted from crop failures and unseasonable weather. As the most recent volcanic winter, 1815 is an important because we have the most reliable scientific data, economic data, and descriptions of the effects on health and culture from people in all walks of life all over the globe. I don’t know as much about Tambora and its after effects as I would like, so I’m planning on reading The Year Without a Summer by historian William Klingman and meteorologist Nicholas Klingman (2013). If I like it, maybe you will hear more about it later this year.
Great Plague of London, 1665
This year is also the 350th anniversary of the Great London Plague that was followed closely by the Great London fire. Despite its reputation, the great plague of London was not the last major plague of Europe by a long shot.
The 1665 plague of London claimed up to 100,000 lives, about as many as died in the Marseille plague of 1720-3. Fifty years later, a similar size plague struck Moscow under Empress Catherine the Great. Yet, the London Plague is the one that gets the most attention.
A great deal of the notoriety of the Great Plague of London comes from the amount and quality of resources available in English. Daniel Dafoe immortalized the plague in his novel, Journal of a Plague Year written in 1722. A savvy author, Dafoe timed it to take advantage of plague fears in southern Europe, concurrent with the plague in Marseille. It is testament to the Dafoe’s skill as a writer than his novel is often taken as historical evidence. I think I’ll mark the anniversary by reading Defoe’s classic.
The London plague has also been magnified by it linkage with the great fire of London in 1666. The relationship between the fire and the plague has been controversial. It has been sometimes assumed that the fire ended the plague, but the plague was winding down before the fire began. However, it is likely that the fire removed the environment that had supported the plague preventing its return; over 80% of the citizens of London were left homeless. Restoration of the capital city after the great fire also immortalized 1665-6 in the history of London.
Great European Famine, 1315
A less combustible but perhaps equally deadly anniversary this year is that of the Great Famine of 1315 that effected most of continental Europe. Seven hundred years ago the famine began and, while its hard to estimate famine mortality over three to seven years, perhaps up to 15% of Northern Europeans died. It began with soaking and then flooding rains that destroyed winter crops for two years with yields of wheat and rye in England and Wales 60% below normal in 1316, and again in 1321 with similar drops in yield. Also beginning in 1315 the great bovine pestilence, possibly rinderpest, begins in Central Europe and spread across the continent: France and Germany, the Low Countries, Denmark and England by 1319. In just one year, England and Wales lost approximately 62% of all bovines (Slavin 2012). The loss of dairy and beef was compounded by the fact that oxen provided the vast majority of traction and fertilizer. With similar losses across Europe, it took nearly 25 years to return cattle numbers to the pre-epizootic levels.
There was no respite for the 14th century. The childhood survivors of the famine and food shortage were the adults who were cut down by the Black Death in the 1340s. What effect malnutrition had on their developing immune system is a line of inquiry being explored by anthropologists Sharon DeWitte and historian Philip Slavin (2013). Let us not forget, it still got worse, between the crop failures and panzootic of 1315 and the Black Death in 1346 , the Hundred Years’ War begins in 1337.
Devaux, C. A. (2013). Small Oversights That Led to the Great Plague of Marseille (1720-1723) Lessons From the Past. Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 14(C), 169–185. doi:10.1016/j.meegid.2012.11.016 (for comparisons to other epidemics)
Slavin, P. (2010). The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century Reassessed: Between Ecology and Institutions — Evidence from England (1310-1350). EHA Paper, 1–14.
Slavin, P. (2012). The Great Bovine Pestilence and its economic and environmental consequences in England and Wales, 1318–501. The Economic History Review, 1–28.
Dewitte, S., & Slavin, P. (2013). Between Famine and Death: England on the Eve of the Black Death—Evidence from Paleoepidemiology and Manorial Accounts. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1–25.