IN cultural terms, the impact of the Little Ice Age also had some notable side effects. One of them was reportedly the famous Stradivarius violin. Its superb resonance is attributed to the acoustic qualities of extremely dense wood, from trees that matured during the Maunder Minimum.Historians refer to 1816 as 'the year without a summer,' when lakes and streams in Europe failed to thaw. Unable to pursue their normal warm weather routines, a group of writers spent their time in the Alps, shut up in a cabin, telling each other horror stories. Mary Shelly called her story 'Frankenstein'.The link between the Little Ice Age and Europe's imperial incursion into Africa, is evinced culturally in the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish spiritualist, philosopher and astronomer. In astronomy, Swedenborg is probably best known as an early exponent of the nebula hypothesis and of the concept of the 'island universe'.Swedenborg was both a scientist and a theologian. His spiritual philosophy gave rise to a religious movement, which led to the establishment of 'Swedenborgian' or 'New Jerusalem' churches throughout the Western world and in Africa.In Swedenborg's religious philosophy, which he espoused in the last half of the 1700s, the heart of the Christian Church, and the focal point of human spirituality, was in Africa. He also believed there was a 'hidden African Church' whose members apprehended the 'unmediated truth'.Swedenborg's philosophy was, for the most part, abolitionist hype'propaganda aimed at mobilizing support for the efforts of Swedish, British and French liberals and radicals to establish a colony of freed slaves in West Africa.'These ideas,' writes Robert William Rix, in his biographical article on the Swedenborgian missionary, Carl Bernhard Wadstron (Internet), 'provided intellectual fuel for the abolitionist cause and compelled several Swedenborgians to travel to Africa'.I will return to Swedenborg's New Jerusalem movement. But before I drift too far afield, it should be pointed out that the rise of abolitionism was a reaction to more profoundly negative global developments that would affect Africa and are traceable to the Little Ice Age.Kant, whom I quoted early on witch hunting, writes: ''As the Little Ice Age advanced agricultural production dwindled'The collapse of the booming agriculture turned the English into a navy based nation of merchants that began scouring the distant tropical lands across the seas for riches rather than creating wealth within'.Kant, who is attached to the Institute for Green Economy in New Delhi, India, speculates that 'The central blame for slavery of an entire people and of colonization elsewhere would perhaps one day be placed on the freezing climate of the thirteenth century'.But it was not England alone, who looked beyond Europe for wealth. The Environmental History Resources website, also quoted previously, notes that 'The Little Ice Age coincided with the maritime expansion of Europe and the creation of sea born trading and later colonial empires'.First, it continues, 'came the Spanish and the Portugese, followed by the Dutch, English and other European nations. Key to this success was the development of shipbuilding technology, which was a response to ' trading, strategic and climatic pressure'.To be continued.
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