Natur’s Mutiny – Nature and Culture in Times of Climate Change

Lecture by Philipp Blom (Historian, Writer and Broadcaster, Vienna) within the IKA Lecture Series 2019/2020 organised and curated by David Gissen and Hannes Stiefel.

An illuminating work of environmental history that chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, which transformed the social and political fabric of Europe.

Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the sixteenth century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and “frost fairs” were erected on a frozen Thames—with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.

Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this “Little Ice Age,” acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had suddenly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, they gave rise to the growth of European cities, the emergence of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A timely examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Philipp Blom was born in 1970 in Hamburg and grew up in Detmold, in Germany. After university studies in Vienna and Oxford, he obtained a D.Phil in Modern History. He started writing at Oxford and published a novel as well as occasional journalism, moving on to London, where he worked as an editor, translator, writer and freelance journalist, contributing to newspapers, magazines and radio programmes in Great Britain, the US, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and France.

In 2001, Philipp Blom moved to Paris to concentrate on his books. In 2007 he settled in Vienna, where he continues to write nonfiction, such as Nature’s Mutiny, as well as fiction, films, and occasional journalism. He presents a cultural discussion programme on Austrian national radio and has lectured on history, philosophy, and cultural history in Europe, the US, and South America. He is married to Veronica Buckley, who is also a writer.