Famines During the 'Little Ice Age' (1300-1800). Socio-natural Entanglements in Premodern Societies

Famines During the 'Little Ice Age' (1300-1800). Socio-natural Entanglements in Premodern Societies

Veranstalter
Dr. Dominik Collet / Dr. Maximilian Schuh, Heidelberg Center for the Environment, Junior Research Group "Facing famine"
Veranstaltungsort
Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, Methoden 1, D-33615 Bielefeld
Ort
Bielefeld
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
19.02.2015 - 20.02.2015
Von
Maximilian Schuh

Global climate change has put famines back on the agenda. The predicted rise of extreme weather raises the question, how similar events were met in historical societies. However, such studies are challenged by disciplinary constraints. Famines occur at the interface of nature and culture. They involve both the bio-physical as well as the social sphere. Their entanglement highlights the co-evolvement of natural environment and social actions. This broad socio-ecological character extends beyond the reach of individual disciplines. As a result, popular references to the dramatic impact of famines during the premodern era are often based on conjectures.
The workshop will bring together researchers from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities. With reference to recent interdisciplinary concepts (disaster studies, vulnerability studies, environmental history) it will examine, how the dominant opposition of natural and cultural factors can be overcome. Such an integrated approach includes the "archives of nature" as well as "archives of man". In this way, deterministic models can be tested and replaced with a dynamic, historicising approach to the events. During the discussion we are seeking answers to the following topics:
- Which data, sources and case studies can make integrative approaches work?
- Which concepts and research designs overcome both climatically and culturally deterministic models?
- How can we improve our understanding of the entanglement and co-development of environment and society as well as the cultural consequences of extreme natural impacts?
- How can we uncover the complex historical perceptions, interpretations and coping strategies?

Programm

THURSDAY, 19 FEBRUARY 2015

9:00 Welcome addresses and introduction

I. Research Approaches and Designs

9:30 Ulf Büntgen (Zürich): A tree-ring perspective on ‘Little Ice Age’ summer temperature variability

9:50 Katrin Moeller (Halle): Halle und die Hungerkrise von 1805. Ein Plädoyer für neue Krisenmodelle in der wirtschaftshistorischen Forschung der Vormoderne / Halle and the famine of 1805. New models for early modern economic history

10:20 Christian Jörg (Tübingen): Forgotten crises of the medieval warm period. Researching famines of the High Middle Ages

10:40 Coffee break

11:15 Jürg Luterbacher (Gießen): From proxies to integrated, statistically based ‘Little Ice Age’ climate reconstructions and potential for past famine studies

11:35 Discussion

12:00 Lunch break

II. European Famines

14:00 Heli Huhtamaa (Bern/Joensuu): Exploring climate-driven food crises in Finland during the Little Ice Age with written and dendroclimatological evidence

14:20 Francis Ludlow (New Haven): Dynamics of extreme weather, Subsistence crises and violent conflict in medieval Ireland

14:40 Rudolf Brazdil (Brno): Famines in the Czech Lands during the ‘Little Ice Age’

15:00 Guido Alfani (Milano): Italian famines: An overview (ca. 1250-1800)

15:30 Coffee break

16:00 Bruce Campbell (Belfast): Climate and disease: The famine of 1346-7 and near-famine of 1349-
52

16:20 Discussion

18:00 Evening lecture:
Andrea Fadani (Ulm): Hunger remembrance in a museological context: Any linkage to environmental changes?

FRIDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2015

III. Global perspectives and coping strategies

9:30 Vinita Damodaran (Sussex): Climate signals, environment and livelihoods in seventeenth and eighteenth century India

9:50 Andrea De Vincenti (Zürich): Educationalizing hunger. Perceptions of the famine of 1771/72 in Zurich and coping strategies

10:10 Steven Serels (Berlin): Reconstructing patterns of human-environment interaction and collective organization in the African Red Sea World at the end of the ‘Little Ice Age`

10:30 Discussion

11:00 Coffee break

11:30 Kathrin Pindl (Regensburg): Crises and strategies of subsistence in pre-modern Regensburg. Hospital grain accounts as sources for economic history

11:50 Andreas Rüther (Bielefeld): Theory of migration vs. colonization thesis? Concurrent concepts and multiple models of medieval eastward expansion

12:30 Lunch break

14:00 Jessica Dijkman (Utrecht): Coping with food shortages in the village of Berkel (Holland), late 16th - early 19th century

14:20 Discussion

14:45 Final discussion

15:15 End of conference

Kontakt

Dr. Maximilian Schuh
Heidelberg Center for the Environment
Historisches Seminar
Grabengassen 3-5
69117 Heidelberg

maximilian.schuh@uni-heidelberg.de

http://www.hce.uni-heidelberg.de/jrg/facingfamine.html
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Englisch
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