Book Review: Klimageschichte der Schweiz 1525-1860 (Vol. I), Bevolkerung, Klima und Agrarmodernisierung 1525-1860 (Vol. II)

Authors

Ernest Menolfi

Keywords

book review, weather information, agricultural development, Swiss development, Christian Pfister

Abstract

Although long ago many historians realized the significance of weather information and the great impact of climate on demographic, social, economic, or agricultural development, they have up to now mostly not been in a position to make more than an episodic and illustrative use of it, since the random data was scattered in innumerable diaries, parish registers, yield records, communal and municipal archives, private observation records and the like. Most of those entries, however, do not make sense as individual bits of information (e.g. the cherry blossom time, the beginning of the vintage in one particular year). Yet by systematically gathering and presenting over 33,000 individual pieces of information from all over Switzerland, Pfister's two-volume work now provides the historian with an almost complete set of climate data covering about 340 years prior to the standardized and regular measurements starting in 1864. Thus Pfister adds another and no doubt indispensable long-term basis for the social researcher, who has hitherto founded his statements on often vague census figures and the production and price trends of basic foodstuffs (with the notoriously disruptive factor of inflation).

Recommended Citation

Menolfi, Ernest (1987) "Book Review: Klimageschichte der Schweiz 1525-1860 (Vol. I), Bevolkerung, Klima und Agrarmodernisierung 1525-1860 (Vol. II)," Swiss American Historical Society Newsletter: Vol. 23: Iss. 2, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_newsletter/vol23/iss2/4