Wolfgang Behringer

Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities

In addition to objective climatic data, subjective or social reactions can also serve as indicators in the assessment of climatic changes. Concerning the Little Ice Age the conception of witchcraft is of enormous importance. Weather-making counts among the traditional abilities of witches. During the late 14th and 15th centuries the traditional conception of witchcraft was transformed into the idea of a great conspiracy of witches, to explain “unnatural” climatic phenomena. Because of their dangerous nature, particularly their ability to generate hailstorms, the very idea of witches was the subject of controversial discussion around 1500. The beginnings of meteorology and its emphasis of “natural” reasons in relationship to the development of weather must be seen against the background of this demoniacal discussion. The resurgence of the Little Ice Age revealed the susceptibility of society. Scapegoat reactions may be observed by the early 1560s even though climatologists, thus far, have been of the opinion that the cooling period did not begin until 1565. Despite attempts of containment, such as the calvinistic doctrine of predestination, extended witch-hunts took place at the various peaks of the Little Ice Age because a part of society held the witches directly responsibile for the high frequency of climatic anomalies and the impacts thereof. The enormous tensions created in society as a result of the persecution of witches demonstrate how dangerous it is to discuss climatic change under the aspects of morality.

Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept

This essay explores the origins and the development of a ‘communications revolution’, which would give rise to a new concept within historiography. It proposes that the Communications Revolution can be explained as a macrohistorical process, comparable to the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, which have both had permanent and irreversible consequences in the modern era. The communications revolution, like the other two, began in the early modern era, and is still ongoing. The concept of a Communications Revolution encompasses smaller ‘media revolutions’, more easily ascribed to a specific historical period, and to a large extent mutually interrelated and dependent. The development of postal services gave rise to a new understanding of space and time, and it is this development that the essay identifies as the mainspring of change in the communications revolution. Postal services enabled faster movements of people, goods, and information. The new medium of the printed book, newspaper or sheet magnified the effects of this faster dissemination of information and news. So the Communications Revolution can be argued to have been the motor that enabled the construction of the infrastructure of the modern world, newspapers, cartography, and the ‘public sphere’ of politics, of warfare and diplomacy. Indeed, there is scope for discussion as to whether it was in fact the Communications Revolution which may have opened the way for both the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. 167 See Roy Porter, ‘The Scientific Revolution: A Spoke in the Wheel?’, in Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (eds), Revolution in History (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 290–316; David C. Lindberg, ‘Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Bacon to Butterfield’, in Lindberg and Westman, Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, pp. 1–26; H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago, 1994); Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 1996). GH378oa-02.qxd 26-06-2006 13:02 Page 374 at R acliffe Sience Lrary, Bleian Lrary on N ovem er 1, 2010 gh.oxfjournals.org D ow naded rom