History and Climate Change : A Eurocentric Perspective

ISBN-13: 9780415019590 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 416 str.

Neville G. Brown

Opis

This study is a balanced and comprehensive overview of the links between climate and man's advance from pre-history to modern times. It spans all periods of history, drawing 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 if climate variation is one amongst a number of other factors, decisive only when a regime/society is poised for change. Evidence for prolonged climate change is either partial or lacking entirely, but it is clear that climatic variation has played a part in the historical development of the world. Cold weather and warm weather can create apparently contradictory reactions within societies, which can be interpreted in very different ways by scholars from different disciplines. Does climate change exacerbate famine and epidemics?

Spis treści

The Conceptual Background
1. A Confluence of Disciplines
2. Climate Dynamics
3. Empires and Barbarians
4. Antiquity Melds
5. Northerly Engagement
6. Towards the Optimum (a) The Climate in Temperate Eurasia (b) A Germinal Century
7. The Near East in Crisis
8. How Savage a Culmination? (a) How Cruel a Sea? (b) The Mongol Horde
9. Through the Optimum
Une Longue Durée
10. Water, Warmth and Emergent Europe
11. Pointers to a Future (a) The Eurocentric World, 1492-1942 (b) Huntington or Gibbon? (c) A Gibbonesque Era (d) Translation to the Present (e) Persisting Uncertainties

O autorze

Neville Brown is a Professorial Associate Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University; and is attached to the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics and Society.