We often don’t think of how explosive and violent Mother Nature can be. In 1600 a volcano exploded in Peru, affecting life around the planet in many ways. In Malta, it led to a diplomatic spat with Sicily and caused a riot in the south of Malta.

This article explains how one led to the other.

The Huaynaputina eruption

Locals called it “a low ridge” in the mountains of Peru^{1 2}. There were no distinguishing marks and nothing to make people fear anything in the mountain range formed by glaciers in Ice Ages past¹. In December 1599, earthquakes hit the region². If science had been a little more advanced, they might have suspected something.

They didn’t know that this low unremarkable ridge was a dormant volcano.

On 17 February 1600, it exploded³. The eruption lasted till 6 March^{3 1}. It’s hard to be precise about dates but contemporary word of mouth accounts suggest it didn’t last more than 3 weeks. Scientists estimate that over this 3 week period, the volcano:

• Launched an eruption column 33 km high²
• Ejected more than 30 cubic kilometres of ash^{3 1}which covered an area of 360 000 square kilometres.
• Shifted the earth underfoot with the explosion. Mudflows pushed by the explosion reached the Pacific coast, 120 km away^{3 1}.

This still is the largest volcanic eruption in South America³. It was a shocking natural disaster which buried nearby villages¹. It took the regional economy 150 years to recover from this¹.

The startled locals named the volcano Huaynaputina which means “new volcano”³.

Around 150 years later a massive earthquake hit Europe, changing the way we think about the natural world.

This was catastrophic for the region but how does this link to southern Europe?

Effect on Sicily and on agriculture

The simple answer is that the ash cloud cooled the entire planet.

The longer, more detailed, story is:

• We have many eye witness accounts of how the weather changed around these dates. Across Central Europe, people recorded the sun as dimmer². Even shadows were not as well defined because of the reduced light from the sun².
• In Vienna, a lunar eclipse was darker than usual, because of the materials in the atmosphere².
• The summer of 1601 was the coldest summer in half a millennium². Records from many places around the globe document the lower temperatures. This naturally had an effect on crops that people grew that year.

Sicily was not excluded from all this. Their 1601 season and harvest was severely impacted by the poor weather conditions.

There wasn’t enough food for the island.

So how was Malta, 120 km away, affected by this freak weather?

Situation in Malta vis a vis imports

The Knights of St John knew Malta was not self-sufficient when they arrived on the islands. Malta could only grow about 15% of the grain it needed⁴. At the time they negotiated with the Viceroy of Sicily to ensure they could buy quotas of food without paying export duty⁵. The assumption in this negotiation was that Sicily would always have enough surplus to be able to supply Malta. This way they could regulate the price of grain, and bread, which was the biggest headache the Knights of St John had in those days⁴.

In 1602, the Viceroy decided that his responsibility to Sicily came first and he stopped supplying Malta^{5 4}. The Knights appointed a lawyer to argue their point – Malta was an integral part of Sicily so preventing shipments of food to Malta was the same as excluding a part of Sicily itself⁵. This, they argued, was unfair.

The few Maltese records we have of those days don’t show much about the situation. There is one story we do know of. A certain Fra Jacques Bruin lived in the southern Maltese village of Bir Miftuħ at the time⁵. A court found him guilty of causing a riot in 1602, sentencing him to two years of imprisonment⁵. This was the major issue of the day in Malta, and it happened at the same time, so it is probable the two are connected.

Conclusion: Malta’s always been dependent on imports because it is not self-sustaining.

References

1. www.volcanodiscovery.com. (n.d.). Huaynaputina volcano eruptions – eruptive history, info / VolcanoDiscovery. [online] Available at: https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/huaynaputina-eruptions.html#er210.[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
2. de Silva, S.L. and Zielinski, G.A. (1998). Global influence of the AD 1600 eruption of Huaynaputina, Peru. Nature, 393(6684), pp.455–458. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/30948[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
3. Smithsonian Institution | Global Volcanism Program. (n.d.). Global Volcanism Program | Huaynaputina. [online] Available at: https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=354030[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
4. Eating and fasting. (Carmel Cassar). Available at: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/106373/1/Eating_&_fasting_in_medieval_and_early_modern_Malta_2008.pdf [Accessed 19 Oct. 2024][↩][↩][↩]
5. Times of Malta. (2024). Finding traces of three Maltese localities in the ‘Libri Conciliorum’. [online] Available at: https://timesofmalta.com/article/finding-traces-three-maltese-localities-libri-conciliorum.1098644 [Accessed 19 Oct. 2024][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]

Remember: links were correct at time of publication.