section_path: Regional history/Europe/18th century
section_name: 18th century
paragraph_text: 18th century
  
  The period of 1740–1743 saw frigid winters and summer droughts, which led to famine across Europe and a major spike in mortality. The winter 1740–41 was unusually cold, possibly because of volcanic activity.
  
  According to Scott and Duncan (2002), "Eastern Europe experienced more than 150 recorded famines between AD 1500 and 1700 and there were 100 hunger years and 121 famine years in Russia between AD 971 and 1974."
  
  The Great Famine, which lasted from 1770 until 1771, killed about one tenth of Czech lands ' population, or 250,000 inhabitants, and radicalised countrysides leading to peasant uprisings.
  
  There were sixteen good harvests and 111 famine years in northern Italy from 1451 to 1767. According to Stephen L. Dyson and Robert J. Rowland, "The Jesuits of Cagliari recorded years during the late 1500s 'of such hunger and so sterile that the majority of the people could sustain life only with wild ferns and other weeds'... During the terrible famine of 1680, some 80,000 persons, out of a total population of 250,000, are said to have died, and entire villages were devastated".
  
  According to Bryson (1974), there were thirty-seven famine years in Iceland between 1500 and 1804. In 1783 the volcano Laki in south-central Iceland erupted. The lava caused little direct damage, but ash and sulphur dioxide spewed out over most of the country, causing three-quarters of the island's livestock to perish. In the following famine, around ten thousand people died, one-fifth of the population of Iceland.