Born Then1693–1698
Life during the Little Ice Age famines of the 1690s
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
The 1690s were among the coldest years of the Little Ice Age. Harvests failed across northern Europe: France lost over a million people in 1693–1694, Finland perhaps a third of its population in 1695–1697, and Scotland had its seven ill years. Hunger and the epidemics it brought killed the poor first.
Deaths: about a quarter to a third of Finland's people in 1695–1697; about 1.3 million in France in 1693–1694; perhaps 5 to 15 percent in Scotland.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (West Africa) 1501–1799
- Atlantic slave trade (Kongo and Angola) 1514–1799
- Plantation slavery in Brazil 1550–1799
- Russian conquest of Siberia 1580–1700
- Tokugawa peace 1603–1780
- Sugar slavery in the Caribbean 1640–1799
- Ming–Qing transition 1644–1683
- Slavery in the British North American colonies 1660–1799
- Little Ice Age famines of the 1690s 1693–1698
- 1707 Hōei earthquake and Fuji eruption 1707–1708