Vol. 1 No. 1 (2024)
Research

Large Fires and Climatic Variability in Urban Europe, 1500–1800

PDF HTML
  • David Garrioch
David Garrioch
Monash University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/whpcch.63842135436332

Published 2024-01-29 — Updated on 2024-11-18

Versions

Keywords

  • Little Ice Age,
  • Early modern Europe,
  • urban history,
  • climatic variability,
  • history of fire

How to Cite

Garrioch, D. (2024). Large Fires and Climatic Variability in Urban Europe, 1500–1800. Climates and Cultures in History, 1(1), 3–27. https://doi.org/10.3197/whpcch.63842135436332 (Original work published January 29, 2024)

Copyright (c) 2024 David Garrioch

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Several hundred large urban fires occurred in Europe during the early modern period, but they did not take place randomly. This article charts their incidence and reveals a peak in the seventeenth century, coinciding with some of the coolest periods of the Little Ice Age. This apparent paradox can best be explained by climatic variability, since overall cooling was accompanied by numerous warm, dry anomalies. While the cause of fires was usually human activity, and small fires happened frequently, this paper shows that many of the largest conflagrations of the early modern period took place in years of such hot and/or dry climatic anomalies, and closer analysis of individual fires confirms that these meteorological conditions facilitated their spread. This strongly suggests that climatic variability associated with the Little Ice Age was a major determinant of the timing of large fires in Europe. Over the same broad period, climatic disasters linked to cooler and damper conditions contributed to social and political instability, and there is evidence that this in turn undermined fire prevention and control and thus further increased the likelihood of small fires becoming large ones.

PDF HTML

References

  1. Aubert, G. 2010. ‘De la ville médiévale à la ville des Lumières’. In G. Aubert, A. Croix and M. Denis (eds). Histoire de Rennes. 2nd ed. Rennes: Apogée/Presses universitaires de Rennes. pp. 89–107.
  2. Aubert, G. and G. Provost (eds). 2020. Le grand incendie de Rennes, 1720. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
  3. Bankoff, G., U. Lübken and J. Sand (eds). 2012. Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  4. Bell, W. 1920. The Great Fire of London in 1666. London: John Lane.
  5. Blackstone, G.V. 1957. A History of the British Fire Service. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
  6. Borsay, P. 1989. The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  7. Brázdil, R. P. Dobrovolný, M. Trnka, U. Büntgen, L. Rezníčková, O. Kotyza, H. Valášek and P. Štěpánek. 2016. ‘Documentary and instrumental-based drought indices for the Czech lands back to AD 1501’, Climate Research 70: 103–1. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01380
  8. Clark, A. (ed.) 1891–1900. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary, of Oxford, 1632–1695, Described by Himself. 5 vols. Oxford: Printed for the Oxford Historical Society, at the Clarendon Press.
  9. Clark, P. and P. Slack (eds). 1972. Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
  10. Cleland, J. 1820. Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the City of Glasgow. Glasgow: Printed by James Hedderwick.
  11. Ericson, L. 2001. Stockholms historia under 750 år. Lund: Historiska media.
  12. Evelyn, J. 1955. The Diary of John Evelyn. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oseo/instance.00006908
  13. Ewen, S. 2010. Fighting Fires. Creating the British Fire Service, 1800–1978. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  14. Ewen, S. 2006. ‘The problem of fire in nineteenth-century British cities: the case of Glasgow’. In M. Dunkeld (ed.) Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Construction History. 4 vols. Cambridge: Construction History Society. vol. 1, pp. 1061–74.
  15. Fillaut, R. 1999. Rennes, Des combattants du feu aux techniciens du risque. Rennes: Amicale des sapeurs-pompiers de Rennes/Maury.
  16. Forsbom, A. 1950. ‘Eldsvådorna i Stockholm: kronologisk översikt’, Stockholms Borgargilles Årsbok: 3–18.
  17. Frenzel, B., C. Pfister and B. Gläser (eds). 1994. Climatic Trends and Anomalies in Europe (1675–1715). Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag.
  18. Frich, P. and K. Frydendahl. 1994. ‘The summer climate in the Øresund region of Denmark, A.D. 1675 to 1715’. In Frenzel, Pfister and Gläser (eds), Climatic Trends, pp. 33–41.
  19. Frost, L.E. and E.L. Jones. 1989. ‘The fire gap and the greater durability of nineteenth century cities’. Planning Perspectives 4: 333–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665438908725687
  20. Gai, S. R. Mahytka and R. Otte. 2019. ‘Im Schatten der Domburg – 2200 Jahre Siedlungsgeschichte im Paderborner Stadtkern’, Archäologie in Westfalen-Lippe: 212–16.
  21. Gallicciolli, G. 1795. Delle memorie venete antiche profane ed ecclesiastiche raccolte da Giambattista Gallicciolli. 8 vols. Venice: Appresso Domenico Fracasso.
  22. Gamrath, H. 1999. ‘The Great Fire of Copenhagen in 1728’. In Körner, Bartlome and Flückiger (eds). Stadtzerstörung und Wiederaufbau, vol. 1, pp. 293–302.
  23. Garnier, E. 2019. ‘Historic drought from archives: beyond the instrumental record: science and policy’. In Iglesias, Assimacopoulos and Van Lanen (eds), Drought: Science and Policy. pp. 45–67. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119017073.ch3
  24. Garrioch, D. 2019a. ‘Towards a fire history of European cities, 1500–1850’. Urban History 46: 202–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926818000275
  25. Garrioch, D. 2019b. ‘Why didn’t Paris burn in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?’ French Historical Studies 42 (1): 35–65. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-7205197
  26. Garrioch, D. 2016. ‘1666 and London’s fire history: a re-evaluation’, Historical Journal 59 (2): 319–38. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X15000382
  27. Glaser, R. 2001. Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas. 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen. Darmstadt: Primus Verlag.
  28. Grasset, L. 1988. ‘L’incendie de Sainte Menehould, 7 au 8 août 1719’. Horizons d’Argonne 57: 9–24.
  29. Hahn, F. 1855. Geschichte von Gera und dessen nächster Umgebung Gera. 2 vols. Gera: Verlag des Verfassers.
  30. Harding, V. 2019. ‘Disaster management: the City of London and the Great Fire of 1666’. Paper presented at Firefighting and the Narratives of Great Fires in Early Modern Europe, workshop organized by DISCOMPOSE (Disasters, Communication and Politics in Southwestern Europe) and DECIvE (Dealing with the Collective Interest in early modern Europe), Naples, 22 January.
  31. Herden, R.B. 2005. Roter Hahn und rotes Kreuz: Chronik der Geschichte des Feuerlösch- und Rettungswesens. Bad Rippoldsau-Schapbach and Kehl am Rhein: Books on Demand.
  32. van der Heyden, J. 1996 [1690]. A Description of Fire Engines with Water Hoses and the Method of Fighting Fires Now Used in Amsterdam. Translated and with introduction by L.S. Multhauf. Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications.
  33. Iglesias, A., D. Assimacopoulos and H.A.J. Van Lanen (eds). 2019. Drought: Science and Policy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119017073
  34. Jones, E.L., S. Porter and M. Turner. 1984. A Gazetteer of English Urban Fire Disasters, 1500–1900, Historical Geography Research Group of the Institute of British Geographers, Research Paper Series, No. 13. Norwich: Geo Books.
  35. Karpińsky, A. 2021. Pożary w miastach Rzeczypospolitej w XVI–XVIII wieku i ich następstwa ekonomiczne, społeczne i kulturowe. Katalog. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. https://doi.org/10.31338/uw.9788323543787
  36. Keene, D. 1999. ‘Fire in London: destruction and reconstruction, A.D. 982–1676’. In Körner, Bartlome and Flückiger (eds), Stadtzerstörung und Wiederaufbau, pp. 187–211.
  37. Kraus, T.R. 2007. ‘Der Aachener Stadtbrand vom 2. Mai 1656 und seine Folgen’. Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsvereins 109: 35–99.
  38. Körner, M., N. Bartlome and E. Flückiger (eds). 1999. Stadtzerstörung und Wiederaufbau: Zerstörungen durch Erdbeben, Feuer und Wasser. Destruction and Reconstruction of Towns: Destruction by Earthquakes, Fire and Water. 3 vols. Bern and Vienna: P. Haupt.
  39. Leggewie, C. and F. Mauelshagen (eds). 2018. Climate and Culture, Climate Change and Cultural Transition in Europe. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004356825
  40. Leijonhufvud, L. and D. Retsö. 2021. ‘Documentary evidence of droughts in Sweden between the Middle Ages and ca. 1800 CE’. Climate of the Past 17: 2015–29. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2015-2021
  41. Le Roux, T. 2011. Le Laboratoire des pollutions industrielles. Paris, 1770–1830. Paris: Albin Michel. pp. 46–68.
  42. Le Roy Ladurie, E. 2004–2006. Histoire humaine et comparée du climat. 2 vols. Paris: Fayard. https://doi.org/10.3406/edyte.2004.886
  43. van Lieshout, C. 2016. ‘Droughts and dragons: Geography, rainfall, and eighteenth-century London’s water systems’. Technology and Culture 57 (4): 780–805. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2016.0107
  44. Luterbacher, J., D. Dietrich, E. Xoplaki, M. Grosjean and H. Wanner. 2004. ‘European seasonal and annual temperature variability, trends, and extremes Since 1500’. Science 303 (5 March): 1499–1503. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1093877
  45. Macadam, J. 2012. ‘English weather: the seventeenth-century diary of Ralph Josselin’. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 43: 221–46. https://doi.org/10.1162/JINH_a_00380
  46. Manley, G. 1974. ‘Central England temperatures: monthly means 1659 to 1973’. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 100: 389–405. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.49710042511
  47. Mauelshagen, F. 2010. Klimageschichte der Neuzeit, 1500–1900. Darmstadt: WBG.
  48. Mellado-Cano, J. D. Barriopedro, R. García-Herrera and R.M. Trigo. 2020. ‘New observational insights into the atmospheric circulation over the Euro-Atlantic sector since 1685’. Climate Dynamics 54: 823–41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-05029-z
  49. Mellado-Cano, J., D. Barriopedro, R. García-Herrera, R.M. Trigo and M.C. Alvarez-Castro. 2018. ‘Euro-Atlantic atmospheric circulation during the late Maunder Minimum’. Journal of Climate 31: 3849–63. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0261.1
  50. Molesky, M. 2012. ‘The Great Fire of Lisbon, 1755’. In Bankoff, Lübken and Sand (eds), Flammable Cities, pp. 147–69.
  51. Nicolas, J. 2008 [2002]. La Rébellion française, 1661–1789. Paris: Gallimard. https://doi.org/10.14375/NP.9782070359714
  52. Nicolson, M.H. and S. Hutton (eds). 1992. The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountesse Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, 1642–1684. Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198248767.book.1
  53. Nielsen, Y. 1877. Bergen fra de ældste tider indtil nutiden. En historisk-topografisk skildring. Christiania, C. Tønsberg.
  54. Parker, G. 2013. Global Crisis. War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. pp. 62–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt32bksk
  55. Pauling, A., J. Luterbacher, C. Casty and H. Wanner. 2006. ‘Five hundred years of gridded high-resolution precipitation reconstructions over Europe and the connection to large-scale circulation’. Climate Dynamics 26: 387–405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-005-0090-8
  56. Pearson, R. 2004. Insuring the Industrial Revolution. Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700–1850. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 33–38.
  57. Pérémé, A. 1847. Recherches historiques et archéologiques sur la ville d’Issoudun. Paris: Duprat.
  58. Pfister, C. 2018. ‘The “Black Swan” of 1540: aspects of a European megadrought’. In C. Leggewie and F. Mauelshagen (eds). Climate and Culture, Climate Change and Cultural Transition in Europe. Leiden: Brill. pp. 156–93. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004356825_007
  59. Pfister, C. et al. 2018. ‘Early Modern Europe’. In White, Pfister and Mauelshagen (eds), Palgrave Handbook, pp. 265–95. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_23
  60. Pfister, C. 1994. ‘Spatial patterns of climatic change in Europe A.D. 1675 to 1715’. In Frenzel, Pfister and Gläser (eds), Climatic Trends, pp. 287–317.
  61. Pfister, C. 1988. Klimageschichte der Schweiz: 1525–1860. Das Klima der Schweiz von 1525 – 1860 und seine Bedeutung in der Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Landwirtschaft. 3rd ed. 2 vols in 1. Bern and Stuttgart: Paul Haupt.
  62. Pils, S.C. 1999. ‘“... Damit nur an Wasser khain Menngl erscheine ... ”: Vom Umgang der Stadt Wien mit dem Feuer in der frühen Neuzeit’. In Körner, Bartlome and Flückiger (eds), Stadtzerstörung und Wiederaufbau, vol. 1, pp. 173–86.
  63. Porter, S. 1998 [1996]. The Great Fire of London. Godalming, Surrey: Bramley Books.
  64. Power, M.J. 1972. ‘East London housing in the seventeenth century’. In Clark and Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700. pp. 237–62.
  65. Pribyl, K. 2020. ‘A survey of the impact of summer droughts in southern and eastern England, 1200–1700’. Climate of the Past 16: 1027–41. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1027-2020
  66. Przybylak, K. et al. 2020. ‘Droughts in the area of Poland in recent centuries in the light of multi-proxy data’. Climate of the Past 16: 627–61. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-627-2020
  67. Pyne, S.J. 2001. Fire. A Brief History. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
  68. Rácz, L. 2013. The Steppe to Europe: An Environmental History of Hungary in the Traditional Age. Cambridge: The White Horse Press.
  69. Robreau, B. 2009. Histoire du pays dunois. 2 vols. Châteaudun: Société dunoise d’archéologie.
  70. Sad and Lamentable News from Wapping. 1682. London: Printed for J. Clarke, Seignior.
  71. Snell, F.J. 1892. The Chronicles of Twyford, Being a New and Popular History of the Town of Tiverton. Tiverton and London: Gregory, Son, and Tozer/Elliot Stock.
  72. Strype, J. 1720. A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster. 2 vols. London: A. Churchill et al.
  73. Svalduz, E. 2006. ‘Dal fuoco si rinasce. Gli incendi a Venezia dal xv al xviii secolo’. In D. Calabi (ed.), Venezia in Fumo. I grandi incendi della città-fenice. Bergamo: Leading Edizioni. pp. 41–82.
  74. Vesajoki, H. and M. Tornberg. 1994. ‘Outlining the climate in Finland during the pre-instrumental period on the basis of documentary sources’. In Frenzel, Pfister and Gläser (eds), Climatic Trends and Anomalies in Europe. pp. 51–60.
  75. de Vries, J. 1984. European Urbanization, 1500–1800. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  76. Weigl, A. 2001–2006. ‘Gewerbliche Konjunkturen’. In P. Csendes and F. Opll (eds), Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt. 3 vols. Vienna: Böhlau. vol. 2, pp. 146–61.
  77. White, S., C. Pfister and F. Mauelshagen (eds). 2018. The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5
  78. White, S., J. Brooke, and C. Pfister. 2018. ‘Climate, weather, agriculture, and food’, in White, Pfister and Mauelshagan (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History, pp. 331–53. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_27
  79. Xoplaki, E., J. Luterbacher, H. Paeth, D. Dietrich, N. Steiner, M. Grosjean and H. Wanner. 2005. ‘European spring and autumn temperature variability and change of extremes over the last half millennium’. Geophysical Research Letters 32. https://doi.org/10.1029/2005GL023424
  80. Zwierlein, C. 2021 [2011]. Prometheus Tamed: Fire, Security, and Modernities, 1400 to 1900. Leiden and Boston: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431225