A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter With North America - Couverture rigide

White, Sam

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0674971922 ISBN 13 : 9780674971929

Editeur : Harvard University Press, 2017

Synopsis

When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia, and its effects were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, and winters when even the Rio Grande froze. This period of climate change has come to be known as the Little Ice Age, and it played a decisive role in Europe’s encounter with the lands and peoples of North America. In A Cold Welcome, Sam White tells the story of this crucial period in world history, from Europe’s earliest expeditions in an unfamiliar landscape to the perilous first winters at Santa Fe, Quebec, and Jamestown.

Weaving together evidence from climatology, archaeology, and the written historical record, White describes how the severity and volatility of the Little Ice Age climate threatened to freeze and starve out the Europeans’ precarious new settlements. Lacking basic provisions and wholly unprepared to fend for themselves under such harsh conditions, Europeans suffered life-threatening privation, and their desperation precipitated violent conflict with Native Americans.

In the twenty-first century, as we confront an uncertain future from global warming, A Cold Welcome reminds us of the risks of a changing and unfamiliar climate.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Sam White is Associate Professor in the Department of History at The Ohio State University.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Harvard University Press
• Date d'édition: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0674971922
• ISBN 13: 9780674971929
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 376
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Amazon EU Sarl; 0; www.amazon.com; ; 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; 0; L-1855; Luxembourg