The coronavirus outbreak has had a huge impact on our planet. Day-to-day life has changed fundamentally in many ways. With lockdown and social distancing likely to be with us for a long time, our world will continue to change in ways we don't yet understand. Whatever happens now, history is likely to look back on our time in many unique and profound ways.
The economy has been hit particularly hard by the restrictions, with the budget watchdog now warning the country could suffer its biggest recession in 300 years if lockdown continues into the summer. Inevitably this has sparked many comparisons to the economic crises of history, such as the financial crash in 2008 (now known as 'The Great Recession'), and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Having lived through the crash of 2008 most of us will be used to inevitable comparisons with the 1930s, but the economic crisis brought about by Covid19 has led to new comparisons with history. Astonishingly, charts showing data back to the 18th century have been appearing in our daily government briefings, with the year 1709 being our new viable comparison to our current situation.
Experts now believe the UK is headed for its biggest economic slump since 1709, so just what the chuff did happen in 1709? Well, Europe became gripped by something called 'The Great Frost' when the country was hit by a deep freeze that spread to the continent to become Europe's worst winter in 500 years.
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| The frozen River Thames |
It began in early January and lasted for three months and sparked food shortages, thousands of deaths, and a huge deficit to the economy. People ice-skated on the River Thames, which (like all rivers in all our cities at the time) was vital to trade. The continent was cut off, church bells shattered when rung, a flu epidemic took hold and a panic-buying fury left a population without cereals, vines, vegetables, fruit trees, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle. With agricultural land frozen, the situation sparked hikes in grain prices, with prices rising six-fold during the course of the year.
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| The Tyne Bridge, Newcastle |
Scientists and historians still debate the cause of the extreme cold, a number of volcanoes around Europe had erupted, including Santorini (in the eastern Mediterranean), Teide (on the Canary Islands), and Vesuvius (near Naples). Huge quantities of dust and ash in the atmosphere reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth. The year 1709 also falls within the period known by climatologists as the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715), when the sun’s emission of solar energy was significantly diminished.
In 2020, the same economic conditions have returned, except we're not skating on our frozen rivers, we're isolated indoors with mountains of toilet paper and numerous streaming services.
So could we do any worse than 1709? How much further back in history do we need to look for what could be the next viable comparison in economic terms if our present crisis worsens?
Well if we get the lift on lockdown wrong it would appear The Great Famine of 1315 could soon feature on our daily dose of government graphs. The famine centered on a sequence of harvest failures in 1315, 1316 and 1321, combined with an outbreak of the murrain sickness amongst sheep and oxen between 1319–21 and the fatal ergotism fungi amongst the remaining stocks of wheat. In the ensuing famine, many people died (historians debate the toll, but it is estimated that 10–25% of the population of most cities and towns died as a result) and the peasantry were said to have been forced to eat horses, dogs and cats as well to have conducted cannibalism against children, although these last reports are usually considered to be exaggerations.
We're not there yet but my neighbour does have three very noisy cats; when they woke me up last night I did shout through the window 'shut up you tasty looking bastards!'