Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

Citation

Parker, G. (2014). Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. Yale University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book, first published in 2013 and running to about 900 pages, studies the wave of wars, rebellions, revolutions, famines and epidemics that struck states from England to Japan between 1618 and the 1680s. Its argument, as the publisher describes it, combines two kinds of evidence: the first-hand testimony of men and women who lived through the crisis (the "human archive") and scientific evidence of the climate of the period (the "natural archive"). Cooler, wetter summers and longer winters in the 1640s and 1650s disrupted harvests and brought hunger, disease and political breakdown. The structure below follows the book's front matter and five parts.

Prologue and Introduction: Did Someone Say 'Climate Change'?; The 'Little Ice Age' and the 'General Crisis'

The opening sections set out the question and introduce the two ideas in the title of the introduction: the Little Ice Age, a period of cooler global climate, and the "General Crisis", the long-standing historians' term for the seventeenth-century upheavals. The prologue links the subject to contemporary concern about climate change.

Part I, The Placenta of the Crisis (Chapters 1–4)

The part begins with Chapter 1, The Little Ice Age, and Chapter 2, The General Crisis, which present the climate evidence and the historiography of the crisis. The remaining chapters address the conditions of hunger and survival that made societies vulnerable.

Part II, Enduring the Crisis

A series of regional case studies of states under strain. The book's abridged edition lists chapters on the Ming-to-Qing transition in China, Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Ottoman empire, Germany and its neighbours, the Iberian Peninsula, France, Britain and Ireland, and early Tokugawa Japan, which gives an idea of the geographical range of the full book.

Part III, Surviving the Crisis

The third part takes up the question of how societies survived the crisis.

Part IV, Confronting the Crisis

Looks at responses to the crisis, including popular resistance and the part played by aristocrats, intellectuals and clerics.

Part V, Beyond the Crisis

Considers how states escaped the crisis and its long-term consequences, including the choice between a warfare state and a welfare state, and the question of the Great Divergence between Europe and other regions.

Conclusion and Epilogue: The Crisis Anatomized; 'It's the climate, stupid'

The conclusion draws the argument together and the epilogue connects the seventeenth-century experience with present-day concerns, a link the publisher stresses when it asks whether today's societies are prepared for the catastrophes climate change could bring. A chronology, a note on conventions, a note on sources and a large bibliography follow.

Key Concepts

Prologue and Introduction

• Little Ice Age: a period of cooler and wetter weather, intense in the mid-seventeenth century, treated as a driver of crisis.
• General Crisis: the concept of a Europe-wide or worldwide political and social crisis in the seventeenth century.

Parts I–V

• Human and natural archives: eyewitness records and scientific reconstructions of past climate, used together.
• Placenta of the crisis: the conditions of climate and vulnerability from which the crisis grew.
• Warfare state or welfare state: a choice facing states after the crisis.
• Great Divergence: the later divergence of Europe from other regions, addressed in the final part.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Global range. The book follows the crisis from Europe to the Ottoman lands, Russia, China and Japan, the one historical story that the publisher describes as extending from England to Japan.
• Two kinds of evidence. The combination of human testimony and climate science is the book's distinctive method; reviewers praise the research (Theodore Rabb in the Times Literary Supplement calls it a magnum opus) and the breadth of languages in the bibliography (J. R. McNeill in Historically Speaking).
• Readable scale. Reviewers in the Financial Times, the Sunday Times and elsewhere stress the vivid, emotionally intense sense of what it felt like to live through the period.
• Contemporary relevance. The epilogue and the publisher's framing connect the subject to modern debates about climate.

Limitations

• Length. At about 900 pages it is a very large book; an abridged and revised edition of about half the length was issued in 2017, aimed at students and general readers.
• A thesis that gives weight to climate. The Wall Street Journal's review notes that Parker emphasises climate rather than individual agency; readers should consider how the argument treats political decisions and other causes.
• Background assumed. The reader meets a dense international cast of states, wars and rebellions; some previous reading in early modern history helps.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the early modern history list, Parker is the large-scale synthesis of the seventeenth century and the most global of the books. Merry Wiesner-Hanks's Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789 and Beat Kümin's edited The European World 1500–1800 are general surveys and are the better first reading; Carlos Eire's Reformations, Euan Cameron's The European Reformation and Peter Marshall's The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction concentrate on religious change and on the sixteenth century, so they supply background for the religious conflicts that Parker's crisis involves.

Parker's contribution is the combination of climate evidence with comparative political history across Eurasia, which the other books in the list do not attempt. It fits best after a survey, as an advanced study of one period.

How to Use This Book

It is written for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and committed general readers. Some previous knowledge of early modern Europe and of one or more other regions is useful.

A practical reading plan:

• Core: the Prologue and Introduction, Part I for the climate and the nature of the crisis, and the Conclusion and Epilogue for the argument.
• Selective: Parts II to IV, read by region or theme, for the case studies that fit a particular course; the regions most relevant to a course can be chosen.
• Part V for readers interested in long-term consequences and the Great Divergence.
• Alongside: compare the book's account of a region with a survey of that region, and for a shorter route use the abridged edition.