![cover of the book Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century](/covers/files_200/2740000/440324d710906700ecbd93b827a811ab-g.jpg)
Ebook: Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century
Author: Parker Geoffrey
- Tags: Civil war, Civil war--History--17th century, Climatic changes--Social aspects, Climatic changes--Social aspects--History--17th century, Disasters, Disasters--History--17th century, History Modern, History Modern--17th century, Military history, Military history--17th century, Revolutions, Revolutions--History--17th century, History, History Modern -- 17th century, Military history -- 17th century, Civil war -- History -- 17th century, Revolutions -- History -- 17th century, Climatic changes -- Social aspects
- Year: 2014
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- City: New Haven
- Language: English
- epub
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...