'In Shadows of Eternal Spring': Local Climates and Systemic Crises in the Caribbean's 'Little Ice Age'

Caribbean climates and environments were unusually calm in the early seventeenth century. While the subtropical and temperate regions of the Atlantic underwent a series of environmental shocks brought on by the climatic cooling of the ‘Little Ice Age,’ people in the Caribbean experienced a lull in tropical storms, epidemic disease, and drought that was unprecedented in hundred-plus years since the first Europeans and Africans arrived in the region. But if Caribbean environments were marked by relative stability, Caribbean societies were not. Between 1600 and 1640, the insular and littoral communities of the Caribbean witnessed sudden and dramatic increases in illicit trade, privateering, and the transatlantic slave trade. This article examines demographic and commercial change in the early seventeenth century Caribbean in the context of climate change. In particular, it argues that the effects of global cooling in the temperate regions of Western Europe and Atlantic Africa precipitated the Caribbean’s social transformation, demonstrating how localized environmental crises are distributed along lines of trade and migration.