Wretched times?

Searching for the social and economic dimensions of climatic change in the late sixteenth century

Abstract

Given the manifold traps in the field, this article explores the necessary conditions for a renewed dialog between social history and the history of climatic change. lt proposes to look at the last third of the sixteenth century as a period undergoing a climatic >mode shift< and analyses the social and economic impacts of the rapid change in climatic conditions. Focusing on the early 1570s, when Central Europe underwent a series of severe cereal crop failures, the effects of dearth on prices, mortality, the grain trade, social relations of production in agriculture, and the overall economy are discussed.