As the timeline shows, contextualizing The Fellowship of the Tree Rings demonstrates the complex relationship between the “Maunder Minimum,” hurricanes, the Golden Age of European Piracy, and the Sugar Revolution. Between 1650 and 1715, a lull in hurricane activity associated with the “Maunder Minimum” transformed the environment. As maritime trade increased, ships simultaneously faced a comparatively lower threat of hurricanes than in other periods in history. This meant that hurricanes did not play their traditional role in the Caribbean ecosystem—their check on human activity was temporarily weakened.
Why is this important? Between 1650 and 1715, European colonial powers cemented their position in the Americas through the Sugar Revolution. European ships transported a massive amount of wealth—including enslaved African people—in the triangular trade, which helped fund Europe’s industrial revolution. The Fellowship of Tree Rings introduces the environment as playing a role in accelerating that process, sinking fewer fleets because of hurricane activity. This connection reveals how historical periods are impacted by changes in climate, providing us with new understandings of the larger societal shifts that come with them.
Valerie Trouet, Marta Domínguez-Delmás, and Grant Harley make use of tree rings as climate proxies to establish these connections and illustrate the value of studying human history in terms of the environment. Their study joins the growing field of paleoecologists who seek to learn about our climatic history from the natural world around us. In addition to learning about climate history as it is narrowly understood, these scholars are studying the environment to learn about systems of power, like the rise of the Sugar Revolution and its relationship with the Golden Age of European Piracy.
Historians often leave out an important voice in their stories: the planet. In The Fellowship of the Tree Rings, we hear about the environment’s role in one of the most formative time periods in the Western Hemisphere, the Sugar Revolution and the Golden Age of European Piracy. As we enter an era defined by human-made climate change, it is even more important to understand the historical relationship between social changes and the climate. Trouet, Domínguez-Delmás, and Harley tell us to first look at the environment itself.