Where men no more may reap or sow : the Little Ice Age : Scotland 1400-1850 / Richard D. Oram.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oram, Richard D., author.

Series:

An Environmental History of Scotland Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Climatic changes--Scotland--History.

Climatic changes.

Human beings--Effect of climate on--Scotland.

Human beings.

Climate and civilization--Scotland.

Climate and civilization.

Environmental sciences--Scotland--History.

Environmental sciences.

Human ecology--Scotland.

Human ecology.

Geology--Scotland.

Geology.

Meteorology--Scotland.

Meteorology.

Landscape ecology--Scotland.

Landscape ecology.

Scotland--Environmental conditions--History.

Scotland.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (550 pages) : color illustrations, color maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh: Birlinn, Limited, 2024

Summary:

"Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland explores the interaction of human populations with the land, waters, forests and wildlife.This volume spans 450 years that saw profound transformation in Scotland's environment. It begins in the fifteenth century, when the 'Golden Age' of the early 1200s was but a fading folk memory in a land gripped by the gathering grimness of a 'little ice age'. Colder, wetter, stormier weather became the new normal, interspersed with brief episodes of warmer but still moist conditions, all of which brought huge challenges to a society on the knife-edge of subsistence. Viewing the religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the cycles of disease and dearth that were ever-present into the later 1700s, the book explores the slow adoption and application of the ideas of 'Improvement' and the radical disruption of Scotland's environment that ensued. Reformation, revolution and rebellion were the background noise to efforts to subsist and succeed through a hostile age, in which Scotland's environment was an adversary to be tamed, mastered and made 'polite'. As the last, bitter decades of the 'little ice age' were ground out in foreign wars, forced clearances and potato famines, Scotland prepared itself to embrace the Industrial Age."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

A new normal? : subsisting at the margins in the early "Little Ice Age"

Turning up the heat : fuel, wood and food supply in the fifteenth century

An age of shocks and transitions c. 1500-1700

Beasts and birds, trees and peat in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Dawning reason and improving practice : alternative visions 1700-1790

Changeable times : climate and weather in the eighteenth century

Improvement's first and greatest child : woodland and plantation 1700-1790

Fuel : improvement fashion versus practicality and access 1700-1790

Achieving improvement amid a "sea of waste" : agricultural change to 1790

The sting and the tail : rain, snow, frost and drought at the end of the "Little Ice Age" 1790-1850

Improvement applied : agricultural transformation 1790-1850

Fuelling scarcity, gathering abundance and netting loss : peat, coal, kelp and fish

Trees : for beauty, effect or profit

Conclusion.

Notes:

"An environmental history of Scotland."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781788856706

1788856708

OCLC:

1455115506