The author | our author Zhang Lan
"Asahisha" (formerly "We Love History") is the headline number signed group media
Word count: 2077, Reading time: 6 minutes
History asks questions
In 1816, which has historically been called the "year without summer", the summer frosted, what was the specific situation?
A: On April 5, 1815, Mount Tambora erupted suddenly on the Indonesian island of Senbawa. According to the original records of the time, the inhabitants of the surrounding islands at first heard the noise of explosions every quarter of an hour, and the next day the sun seemed to be wrapped in thick fog, and volcanic ash began to fall in the sound of explosions. On April 10, Mount Tambora erupted again, sending a column of gray smoke soaring into the sky, reaching a height of more than 40 kilometers. On April 19, the largest eruption of the volcano arrived, and people around thirty kilometers saw the flames erupting, lava flowing everywhere, and at least 100,000 people died in the eruption...
And all this is just the beginning of this volcanic eruption disaster, the volcanic eruption of magma, covering an area of 175 square kilometers. A low pressure zone was formed over Mount Tambora, causing temperatures to plummet over a radius of 600 kilometers around it, and the effects of "cooling" expanded rapidly over the next few days. Two weeks later, there was also a sharp drop in temperature in india's east coast. The 150 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash that rushed into the sky also "circulated" globally with the air currents. In September 1815, the volcanic ash that "visited" the European continent formed a pink halo over London and other cities, and the strange and gorgeous scene attracted celebrities from all over the world to watch...
At the same time, these volcanic ash, which has long hovered in the sky, also formed a thick barrier in the sky of the northern hemisphere, firmly blocking the sun's rays. So the following year, 1816 AD, also has an important name in modern history: the year of no summer.
In 1816, the twenty-first year of Jiaqing in The Qing Dynasty of China. For many historical fans, it seems like a bland year. But if you look at the global climate, you know what a shocking year it was.
For example, in the United States this year, from April of that year, the temperature in the United States dropped sharply, and it rained cold rain in many places. In New Hampshire, in theory, june has entered the summer, and the wind and snow are still whistling, which is really "June flying snow". By August, when it was supposed to be a "sweltering heat," most of the plants in New England had frosted and their crops were buried in "snow white." Due to the large-scale harvest of grain, in the historical records of the United States in 1816, in addition to being called "the year without summer", there is another terrible name - the year of hunger.
Such a hunger scene is not only in the North American continent. In the same period on the European continent, the summer in Switzerland and other countries, according to the records of many poets and writers, is "intertwined in rain and cold". Many French provinces are hit by hail, heavy rain and cold waves in the summer, flooding in the Seine River, due to the low temperature and rainy summer, the ears of wheat can not germinate, barley, wheat, grapes and other crops fail to harvest or even fail. The year 1816 is thus known in France as the "Year of Decay". Britain and the German states also issued food bans because of serious harvest failures, and many European cities were full of "beggars like bees"...
Even for the Seemingly "No Big Deal" Chinese Qing Dynasty, the real scene of 1816 was incredibly shocking.
Although in the historical materials of the Qing Dynasty at that time, the recorders often wrote special books on political and military events, and briefly brushed aside the common disasters and famines in various places. But despite this, we only look at the "simple" records at that time, and we can also see how serious the "no summer" of the Qing Dynasty was: in July of this year, heavy snow fell in Yunnan Province, which should have been hot, and disasters such as floods, droughts, and snow hail broke out.
For Yunnan at that time, how serious was this "summerless" disaster? In 1816 alone, Kunming, Mengzi, Dingyuan, Zhennan, Dali and other places in Yunnan were affected. In some places, "hunger, epidemic in June frost", at that time in Yunnan, the main food crop is rice, the low temperature in summer means the disaster, rice in many places is almost out of harvest, "bucket rice 1,800 wen" or even "bucket rice thousands of dollars" has become a common phenomenon. In many local historical materials in Yunnan, there are tragic scenes of "no summer year": "Poor people can't ask for food, and there are people who die on the road."
And the influence of "no summer" is not limited to the great southwest. The scholar Li Yushang once hooked the northern local history from 1815 to the end of the Qing Dynasty, and found that from 1815 onwards, Jiaozhou and Moupingdi in the north had strange cold weather such as "June cold". Scholar Xu Rui also believes that from 1816 to 1850, the average annual temperature in China was about eight degrees lower than that of modern times. The incidence of extreme weather such as cold waves and snow disasters has increased sharply. The "year without summer" of 1816 should have had a great influence on this.
Looking at these simple records alone, it is not difficult to see what a harsh test it would be for the countries of the Northern Hemisphere that suffered from the "summerless year" at that time. Even many of the political and economic events that followed in recent history were associated with this catastrophe.
If we compare Chinese history, it is not difficult to see the connection between them: in the face of the "summerless" famine in Yunnan, the Qing government at that time was unable to provide disaster relief, and all it could do was to "reduce and reduce". In the following Daoguang years, natural disasters were even more intense: from the first year of Daoguang to the thirty years of Daoguang, there were floods almost every year. As for drought, plague and so on, it is more uninterrupted, and China has entered another period of high incidence of natural disasters. All of this shows how great the pressure was for the Qing Dynasty, which had a population of nearly 400 million at that time and only one point and nine acres of arable land per capita.
Successive years of disasters have also exacerbated the crisis of rule during the Daoguang years. The Qing Dynasty's revenue fell sharply, civil unrest and popular routs continued, and the evil opium trade accelerated, and in 1835, there were more than 2 million opium addicts in China. Yunnan and other places, which experienced a grain harvest and a lack of relief, in 1839 "there were many places to plant poppies in Tong Province". At this time, it was not far from the Opium War.
If we look at these alone, we may feel that the late Qing Dynasty is "too bad luck". But is this only due to natural disasters? What we can also see is that even in the face of disasters such as "summerless years". During the Jiaqing period, the Qing Dynasty still stubbornly adhered to various rigid national policies. The administration of the Qing Dynasty was also extremely inefficient. For example, in 1812, the new inspector of Jiangxi cried to the Jiaqing Emperor that the previous inspector had more than 600 official affairs. By the time the Daoguang Emperor was in power, "taking bribes" and "lying about reports" in various places had become the norm, and corruption was rife. Such a Qing Dynasty naturally stepped into the quagmire of backwardness and beatings with the disaster of the "year without summer".
How to face the test of history, how to face the threat of nature, two hundred years ago, there are still endless warnings left for today.
References: Hesenberg's "Homo sapiens of attack", Zhou Xiaolan's "Revisiting the Climate-Crisis Model", Yao Jialin's "Overview of the Great Famine in Jiaqing Yunnan from 1815 to 1817", Li Yuejing's "Low Temperature Changes the World"