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The first Europeans to come to North America came woefully unprepared for the novel environments and climates they encountered here. Popular understanding equated climates with latitudes and vastly underestimated the stronger continental seasons on this side of the Atlantic. A cooling climate and large volcanic eruptions during the late 1500s only added to the challenges at hand. One expedition after another arrived in America and Canada only to collapse under the stress of droughts, freezing winters, and untimely storms. This presentation, drawn from the author’s book: A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America, retells early colonial history as a story of confusions, disasters, conflicts, and survival as Europeans met a harsh and uncertain climate. It offers a case study in how the combination of written and physical evidence, historical and paleoclimate records, might help us rethink our history and even offer insights for the present.
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About the Presenters
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Sam White
Professor of Political HistoryDr. Sam White is a professor of political history at the University of Helsinki. Prior to that he was a professor of environmental history at the Ohio State University. His research specializes in historical climate reconstruction and impacts, combining physical and written evidence. He has published various articles on climate, disease, and animals in human history, co-edited the first major textbook in climate history, and written two monographs: The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe...
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Sam White
Professor of Political HistoryDr. Sam White is a professor of political history at the University of Helsinki. Prior to that he was a professor of environmental history at the Ohio State University. His research specializes in historical climate reconstruction and impacts, combining physical and written evidence. He has published various articles on climate, disease, and animals in human history, co-edited the first major textbook in climate history, and written two monographs: The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter with North America (Harvard University Press, in review). With Dagomar Degroot, he is the co-founder and director of the Climate History Network.
Presenters
Sam White, University of Helsinki
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