History and Climate Change
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History and Climate Change History and Climate Change is a balanced and comprehensive overview of the links between climate and man’s advance from early to modern times. It draws upon demographic, economic, urban, religious and military perspectives. It is a synthesis of the many historical and scientific theories which have arisen regarding man’s progress through the ages. Central to the book is the question of whether climate variation is a fundamental trigger mechanism from which other historical sequences develop, or one amongst a number of other factors, decisive only when a regime/society is poised for change. Evidence for irreversible climate change is either partial or lacking entirely, but it is clear that climatic variation has regularly played a part in historical development. Particular attention is here paid to Europe since ad 211. Cold and warmth, wetness and aridity can create contrary reactions within societies, which can be interpreted in different ways by scholars from different disciplines. Does climate change exacerbate famine and epidemics? Did climate fluctuation play a part in pivotal historical events such as the mass exodus of the Hsiung-nu from China, the pressure of the Huns on the Romans and the genesis of the Crusades. Did the bitter Finnish winter of 1939–40 ensure the ultimate defeat of Hitler? These events and many others are discussed throughout in the author’s distinctive style, with maps and photographs to illustrate the examples given. Neville Brown is Professorial Research Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University, and is attached to the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics and Society. Routledge Studies in Physical Geography and Environment This series provides a platform for books which break new ground in the understanding of the physical environment. Individual titles will focus on developments within the main subdisciplines of physical geography and explore the physical characteristics of regions and countries. Titles will also explore the human/environment interface. 1. Environmental Issues in the Mediterranean J.B. Thornes and J. Wainwright 2. The Environmental History of the World Humankind’s changing role in the community of life J. Donald Hughes 3. History and Climate Change A Eurocentric perspective Neville Brown History and Climate Change A Eurocentric perspective Neville Brown London and New York First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2001 Neville Brown All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Brown, Neville. History and climate change: a eurocentric perspective/Neville Brown. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Climatic changes—Social aspects—Europe. 2. Human beings—Effect of climate on—Europe.3. Europe—Civilization—History.I. Title. QC989.A1 B76 2001 551.694—dc21 2001019473 ISBN 0-203-99568-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0–415–01959–1 (Print Edition) Contents List of figures vii List of maps viii Preface ix About the author xii PART 1 The conceptual background 1 1 A confluence of disciplines 3 2 Climate dynamics 37 PART 2 Late Antiquity to Renaissance foreglow, AD 211 to 1350 65 3 Empires and barbarians 67 4 Antiquity melds 90 5 Northerly engagement 120 6 Towards the optimum 147 The climate in temperate Eurasia 147 A germinal century 156 7 The Near East in crisis 182 8 How savage a culmination? 201 How cruel a sea? 201 The Mongol horde 211 9 Through the optimum 224 vi Contents PART 3 Une longue durée 265 10 Water, warmth and emergent Europe 267 11 Pointers to a future 286 The Eurocentric world, 1492–1942 286 Huntington or Gibbon? 289 A Gibbonesque era 292 Translation to the present 299 Persisting uncertainties 302 Appendix A: Assessing past climates 310 Appendix B: An outline chronology, 211–1350 321 Notes 324 Select bibliography 378 Index 380 Figures 1.1 Edward Gibbon, c. 1790 23 3.1 Pont du Gard 81 7.1 Krak des Chevaliers, Crusader fortress 198 8.1 Floods in Holland, 1861 208 9.1 Military armour, 1190–1312 227 9.2 Sunspots seen in the reign of Henry I, inserted 1128 by John of Worcester into the chronicle begun by Florence of Worcester (d. 1118) 231 9.3 New College, Oxford, founded 1379 257 10.1 Bombay harbour 276 11.1 A Soviet casualty of the winter war 298 Maps 1.1 Alps to Apennines 32 2.1 Normandy landings 1 43 2.2 Normandy landings 2 49 4.1 Ireland 96 4.2 Medieval Constantinople 106 4.3 The Gulf and Arabia 112 5.1 The Baltic region 134 6.1 South Britain 160 6.2 Gaul/France 177 7.1 East Mediterranean 194 8.1 The Low Countries 203 9.1 North Britain 246 10.1 China proper 271 10.2 The northern world 278 11.1 Iberia 287 Preface This book is the first fruit of a conversion, that from a long-standing involvement in Stra- tegic Studies – alias International Security Affairs. The most evident backdrop to this has been the strategic revolution of a decade ago and, above all, the end of the division of Germany and of Europe. History may conclude that Strategic Studies contributed to this benign bouleversement, particularly through its concern with how to cope with the quantum jump in firepower that nuclear weapons represented. But the result has been to leave the subject itself currently in limbo, with most of its customary themes either a sight less relevant or else analysed to exhaustion already. Some of us have long argued – nay, pleaded – for its taking societal change, world resources and ecology properly on board as salient themes in the continuing quest for a true peace. But those who guard its inner sanctum have been much too resistant to this. Most would, in any case, be inwardly incapable of extending their remit that bit further to com- prehend the threats to lasting peace posed not just externally but by the contradictions and instabilities within Western societies themselves. And in so far as other strategists may prove able to broaden their brief, they will thereby become generically less distinctive. Yet this book is also the product of a reversion, one to my own youthful quest for identity and purpose. This quest boiled down early on to what the world might see as a stark alternative, that between history and physics. A country lad’s fascination with the weather led me through meteorology towards general physics. But I always lacked confidence in my laboratory technique. Besides, the family precedents were towards reading history, prece- dents reinforced by the quasi-Churchillian sense of perpetual historic crisis many of my generation had imbibed from our wartime infancy. In addition, my home area – the Chiltern escarpment in the central Thames Valley – resonated with its remoter past more visibly then than it does now: with the Celts, the Romans, the Romano-British, the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, not to mention Tudor and Stuart times. What brought everything full circle was the early acquisition of a riveting sense of shifting climate patterns, prehistorically as well as later. The upshot was a decidedly unorthodox progression, one perhaps too much so to be admissible today. Grammar school majors in the physical sciences were followed by degrees in economics and history. Next, National service (i.e. military conscription) supervened, having previously been deferred (I had been led to believe for ever) by a sub-clinical attack of glandular fever or something like it that a Royal Air Force medical had uncovered. So the question was how to respond to good effect. At that time, the Fleet Air Arm was advertising short-service commissions as meteorological forecasters. The said advertisement was explicitly directed at honours graduates in physics and mathematics. But swayed by maternal insistence, I rather desperately applied. I gained the last of the six new-entry places x Preface on the meteorological long course then being organised. Thus began the most diversified and stimulating three years in my whole career. Not every interest or obligation pursued in the interim evokes nostalgia today. But I also look back with wistful gratification to my years (1965–73) as a defence correspondent, part- time but quite proactive. My most salutary experience was to discover in Saigon in 1966 how much erstwhile ‘Kennedy liberals’ – the ‘best and the brightest’ from Ivy League campuses – were feeding misguided official optimism about the war by applying their trite social science models to an alien culture via pathetically skimpy and corrupted databases. The troops in the field gave you a different story. This experience, in particular, has left me with abiding reservations about modish methodologies. Historical climatology is justified in part, in my view, as a corrective to forecasts of climate change and of its human impact that are entirely computer-driven. In that realm, computers are always essential but rarely sufficient. About terminology, there is not a lot to say. For purposes of enumeration, Anglo- American units are used interchangeably with metric ones (Système Internationale) because that is how the relevant literature pans out still.