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

673 Pages·2017·7.653 MB·English

by  Geoffrey Parker

GEOFFREY PARKER
GLOBAL
CRISIS
WAR, CLIMATE CHANGE AND CATASTROPHE
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
ABRIDGED AND REVISED EDITION
‘Staggeringly researched, rivetingly written, intellectually dazzling’
—Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times
GLOBAL CRISIS
Geoffrey Parker is a renowned British historian who taught at the University
of St Andrews, the University of Illinois, the University of British Columbia,
and Yale University, before becoming Andreas Dorpalen Professor of
European History and Associate of the Mershon Center at The Ohio State
University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences, the Spanish-American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(Cadiz), the Royal Academy of History (Madrid), and the Royal Society of
Edinburgh. He is also a Profesor Afiliado in the División de Historia at the
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico City. His many
books include The Military Revolution (1988; winner of the best book prize
of the American Military Institute and the Society for the History of
Technology), The Grand Strategy of Philip II, published by Yale in 1998
(winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize), and, most recently, Imprudent
King: A New Life of Philip II, published by Yale in 2014. In 2012, the Royal
Dutch Academy awarded Parker its biennial Heineken Foundation Prize for
History, open to scholars in any field and any period, from any country; two
years later, he won a medal awarded by the British Academy for ‘a landmark
academic achievement . . . which has transformed understanding of a partic-
ular subject’ for Global Crisis.
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GEOFFREY PARKER
GLOBAL
CRISIS
WAR, CLIMATE CHANGE AND CATASTROPHE
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
ABRIDGED AND REVISED EDITION
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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Copyright © 2017 Geoffrey Parker
Original hardback edition published 2013
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the
publishers.
For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please
contact:
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Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by Hobbs the Printers, Totton, Hampshire
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Parker, Geoffrey, 1943- author.
Title: Global crisis : war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth
century / Geoffrey Parker.
Description: Abridged edition. | New Haven : Yale University Press, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005476 (print) | LCCN 2017008357 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780300219364 (paperback) | ISBN 9780300226355 ()
Subjects: LCSH: History, Modern—17th century. | Military history—17th century. |
Civil War—History—17th century. | Revolutions—History—17th century. |
Climatic changes—Social aspects—History—17th century. |
Disasters—History—17th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / World. | HISTORY /
Modern / 17th Century.
Classification: LCC D247 .P37 2017 (print) | LCC D247 (ebook) | DDC
909/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005476
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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This book is dedicated in admiration to all who fight
multiple sclerosis
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‘Global Crisis Cruelly Abridged’
And the earth did spin.
An orb far from warming light.
Cast in a dark pall.
From the sun it came;
Wave on wave, chilling absence.
Crops stunted in bloom.
The hardship spread fast.
The golden age did not last.
Rulers toppled first.
Out in barley fields,
Where farmers could scrounge no meals,
Hear the beating drum!
Headless was the king.
And the historians sing:
The weather! Really?
Bah . . .
Richard Parker, January 2014
Composed upon learning that Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer, had
distilled the 2,000-page IPCC Fifth Assessment Report into nineteen haiku
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Contents
List of Figures ix
Preface to the Abridged and Revised Edition xi
Prologue: Did Someone Say ‘Climate Change’? xiii
Introduction: The Little Ice Age and the General Crisis xix
PART I. THE PLACENTA OF THE CRISIS
1 The Little Ice Age 3
2 The General Crisis 24
3 ‘Hunger Is the Greatest Enemy’: The Heart of the Crisis 49
4 Surviving in the Seventeenth Century 67
PART II. ENDURING THE CRISIS
5 The Great Enterprise in China, 1618–84 91
6 The ‘Great Shaking’: Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian 122
Commonwealth, 1618–86
7 The ‘Ottoman Tragedy’, 1618–83 150
8 Bloodlands: Germany and its Neighbours, 1618–88 169
9 The Agony of the Iberian Peninsula, 1618–89 198
10 France in Crisis, 1618–88 227
11 The Stuart Monarchy: The Path to Civil War, 1603–42 249
12 Britain and Ireland from Civil War to Revolution, 1642–89 274
PART III. SURVIVING THE CRISIS
13 The Mughals and their Neighbours 301
14 Red Flag over Italy 315
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15 The Americas, Africa and Australia 331
16 Getting It Right: Early Tokugawa Japan 356
PART IV. CONFRONTING THE CRISIS
17 ‘Those Who Have No Means of Support’: The Parameters 377
of Popular Resistance
18 ‘People Who Hope Only For a Change’: Aristocrats, 394
Intellectuals, Clerics and ‘Dirty People of No Name’
19 ‘People of Heterodox Beliefs . . . Who Will Join Up with 411
Anyone Who Calls Them’: Disseminating Revolution
PART V. BEYOND THE CRISIS
20 Escaping the Crisis 433
21 Warfare State or Welfare State? 448
22 The Great Divergence 473
Conclusion: The Crisis Anatomized 497
Epilogue: ‘It’s the Climate, Stupid’ 512
Chronology 526
Acknowledgements 535
Conventions 539
Note on Sources 540
Abbreviations Used in the Bibliography and Notes 546
Notes 549
Bibliography 588
Index 622
Figures
1. The Global Crisis. xvi
2. Sunspot cycles, volcanic anomalies and summer temperature 13
variations in the seventeenth century. Sources: Eddy, ‘The
“Maunder Minimum” ’, 290, figure 11–6; Vaquero, ‘Revisited,
sunspot data’, figure 2; and Atwell, ‘Volcanism’, figures C5 and E3.
3. Estimated heights of French males born between 1666 and 1770. 21
Source: Komlos, ‘Anthropometric history’, 180, figure 16.
4. Frequency of wars in Europe, 1610–80. 25
5. The social structure of Navalmoral, Spain, in the early 64
seventeenth century. Source: Weisser, Peasants, 38–42.
6. Ming China and its neighbours. 92
7. Disasters and diseases cripple Ming China, 1641. 102
Source: Dunstan, ‘Late Ming epidemics’, map 6; von Glahn,
Fountain of fortune, xiii.
8. East Asian temperatures, 800–1800. Courtesy of Keith Briffa 110
and Tim Osborn.
9. The Russian empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 127
10. The climatic zones of the Ottoman empire. Source: Hütterroth, 153
‘Ecology’, 20.
11. The depopulation of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War, 195
1618–48. Source: Franz, Der dreissigjährige Krieg, 4th edn, 8.
12. The revolt of Portugal, 1637. Source: Schaub, Le Portugal, 491. 206
13. Catalonia in revolt, May 1640. Source: Atles d’història de 210
Catalunya, 157.
14. The Green Banner revolts in Andalusia, 1647–52. 220
Source: Domínguez Ortiz, Alteraciones andaluzas, 51.
15. Baptisms in Castile, 1580–1790. Source: Nadal, ‘La 224
población española’, 53–4.
16. Seventeenth-century France. Source: Bonney, Political 228
change, 345.
17. Pamphlet publication in seventeenth-century France. 240
Source: Duccini, ‘Regard’, 323.
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