The Little Ice Age
The widespread revolts and revolutions which were springing up from the Atlantic to the Ukrainian steppes and Muscovy, known as the crisis of the 17th century, were a reaction against oppressive economic conditions and the despotism which prevailed in Europe.
There was also the unusual climate, which brought on more than a century of cool weather, poor crops, and famine.33 The global cooling of the planet during 1580-1715, known as the Little Ice Age, has been well established on the basis of old records, observations, as well as measurements of the suns activity. It is thought that the average summer temperature dropped by lo C, which decreased the growing period in western Europe by several weeks, and prevented grain farming at higher altitudes of500 feet above sea level. The suns intensity continued to decline, until it reached a minimum during 1645-1715, the so-called Sporer-Maunder Minimum.34 We now know that the sun exhibits cyclical behavior and no doubt had also played a role in the great migrations of the chariot people several thousand years before.35Throughout the 17th century, crops continued to fail, resuiting in famines during particularly bad years, which were accompanied by steep increases in the price of grain. Thus in Hungary wheat yields fell by some 70 percent between 1570 and 1670 and we know that wheat production fell in Poland and Spain. There was an estimated 20 percent reduction in the European population, and it was during the Sporer-Maunder Minimum that the entire Norse settlement in Greenland vanished. The reaction of the powerful landowners, particularly in Eastern Europe, was to increase production, take over more peasant land, and introduce serfdom where none existed before. What had been barely tolerable became unbearable, as large sections of the population sank into abject poverty while a minority enjoyed great wealth.
The Little Ice Age was accompanied by revolutionary fighting and civil wars in Europe, and also had a direct effect on events in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. The nobility, en- serfing free peasants, burdened them with more fees and “taxes” and more corvee labor. This was particularly true of the great magnates who also began to raid and take over the lands and villages of the small nobility—a more profitable use for their private armies than fighting Tatar raiders. The legal system and the courts were totally ineffectual since whoever had the greater military force was above the law, even with respect to the royal courts. Others had little option but to offer properties as collateral for loans, or to sell their lands to the powerful magnates who were amassing great fortunes. This was especially true of the small Greek Orthodox nobility of Rus, who became estranged from Catholic rule and provided much leadership for Khmelnitsky s army.
As economic recessions and depressions continued, particularly during the crisis of 1619-22 the shortages grew worse and much of western Europe, such as famine-prone Scotland, became dependent on east European grain. WhenJames VI of Scotland became James I of England he used his new powers to establish Scottish settlements in Ulster (northern Ireland) to alleviate the famines, but to little avail. In the last decade of the 17th century there were seven crop failures and more people died than during the Black Death of 1348-50. The grain trade established with the Baltic ports in the mid-16th century continued and some 30,000 Scots took up residence along the Baltic Sea. The economic depressions, particularly the one beginning about 1619-20, are also indicated by the number of Dutch ships which entered the Baltic through the Sound between Denmark and Sweden. Although this does not indicate total grain shipments, the Dutch vessels were the main carriers of grain throughout western Europe and the Mediterranean region.