Abstract
The 'General Crisis' thesis arose during the 1950s and sparked fierce debate between Marxist and anti-Marxist scholars of European history, led in Britain by Eric Hobsbawm and Hugh Trevor-Roper. The Little Ice Age, as a period in the history of European climate, is primarily defined by average temperature levels over the long term, within which were fluctuating periods of colder or more moderate trends. The coldest winter of the Little Ice Age in England, indeed the coldest winter in that country's entire history since the beginning of continuous record keeping in 1659, occurred in 1683/4. For English diplomats writing at the same time, the hard winter of January 1608 was similarly noteworthy but also similarly without political significance. As Noah Millstone has argued, early modern diplomats and other professional connoisseurs of political news were especially concerned with reading the political implications of events.