Global Crisis [Kindle Edition] Author: Geoffrey Parker | Language: English | ISBN:
B00BQZ1UHK | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and extent. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan, from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa. The Americas, too, did not escape the turbulence of the time.
In this meticulously researched volume, master historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who saw and suffered from the sequence of political, economic, and social crises between 1618 to the late 1680s. Parker also deploys the scientific evidence of climate change during this period. His discoveries revise entirely our understanding of the General Crisis: changes in prevailing weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.
Parker's demonstration of the link between climate change, war, and catastrophe 350 years ago stands as an extraordinary historical achievement. And the implications of his study are equally important: are we adequately prepared—or even preparing—for the catastrophes that climate change brings?
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- File Size: 5336 KB
- Print Length: 904 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (March 1, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00BQZ1UHK
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,535 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > World > 17th Century - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Environment > Weather - #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Violence in Society
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > World > 17th Century - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Environment > Weather - #15
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Violence in Society
This very interesting and well written book is an ambitious survey of the traumatic 17th century. Parker is an expert on 17th century Europe who has written previously on this and quite a number of related topics. This book is a successful attempt to summarize a huge amount of historial information about the 17th century across the globe and draws not only on the very large range of secondary literature but also an impressive number of primary sources. Parker is a fine writer and shrewd analyst.
Even by the turbulent standards of human history, the 17th century was a particularly deadly period. While no one can know for certain, its plausible that somewhere between a quarter and a third of humanity in Eurasia perished prematurely across the 17th century. Famine, disease, and a great deal of prolonged conflict characterized the 17th century. This includes such well known events as the 30 Years War in Europe and the Ming-Qing transition in China. Parker describes 5 interacting features that drove the disasters of the 17th century. This is the period of the Little Ice Age (LIA), which resulted in diminished agricultural output and frequent harvest failures across the globe. Parker points out that the relatively benign 16th century had seen considerable population growth putting greater numbers of people at risk for subsistence crises. Important interacting human factors were the growth across Eurasia of states powerful enough to support substantial and destructive armies but not powerful or rich enough to produce centralized states that could mitigate the environmental and military challenges of the period.
This book tells the story of the 17th century with its chaos, famine, revolutions, harsh weather and wars, and does in an all-encompassing look across the globe.
Much of this story has been told before either in works focusing on individual areas, or as a whole.
The premise underlying this retelling is that harsh and unusual weather/climate had a greater role in triggering the political upheaval than heretofore appreciated.
There is no doubt that the climate was severe based on historical records and observations, and that it resulted in famine, population decrease etc.
It's a little less clear to what extent the climate triggered the political events. The author interjects the climatic variables into the historical story and suggests they played a role but at times it's not clear whether the climatic effects were causal, correlated, or simply co-existed.
So we hear that cold, heat, drought, floods played into the historical events, but in some instances they are interjected into the currency of the events, which is no more meaningful than to acknowledge that while the unusually early and cold winter halted Napolean's and Hitler's attempt to conquer Russia, that the winters were in any way causal of their invasions rather than correlated or co-existent.
In most cases the author attempts to find and indicate causality but the lines do get blurred as to what was causal or coincidental, as the book repeatedly interject into the narrative that 'it was the coldest, hottest, driest, wettest' etc,; points out the disruption and famine that was undoubtedly caused by these changes and infers theeir connections as causative cause rather than an harsh but co-existent modifier of the events.
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