GLOBAL CRISIS: WAR CLIMATE CHANGE AND CATASTROPHE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Paperback – Import, 15 August 2014

great book when not reading I use it with Procopius' History and the Epic of Gesar to give my desk lamp some height brings a whole new meaning to higher learning

So far I've been dipping between reading the epilogue and starting at the beginning. So far some very compelling arguments presented on the effect of climate on human behaviour in the broad. As a fiction author with a thirst for accuracy, I've been logging the weather from various sources in my usual period, 1775-1820 in Britain which is enough of a challenge, and wondering how much effect the climate change of the Dalton Minimum had, and I am now inclined to consider looking at it more closely.Having recently been studying Polish history to follow up a wild interest in winged hussars, I bought this book which was recommended by a friend, and it is a tremendous help, and explains a passage in Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel 'Potop' in which King Jan II Kazimierz Wasa makes the famous Lwów oath in April when there is hard frost. That this is a world-wide study is mind-blowing and I salute the author for dedication and scholarship.

Geoffrey Parker,mondialement connu pour la thématique sur la Révolution Militaire, aborde ici un nouveau thème mettant en perspective les évolutions, politiques, économiques et militaires dans ce que l'on appelle la crise du 17ème siècle. Le petit âge glaciaire a sévi plusieurs pays du globe et l'auteur montre avec brio l'impact du climat, et des événements naturels. C'est un livre avec de nombreuses références et qui n'est pas centré seulement sur l'Europe. Geoffrey Parker aborde le thème de façon mondiale en tenant compte des recherches menées depuis une dizaine d'années et indiquant par ailleurs les vides subsistants ainsi que les axes à approfondir. C'est un excellent livre d'histoire qui se lit très bien

This is a great work; it will stand as a major history of human beings dealing with multiple crises. I have to disagree with those who say it's "not for the beach" just because it's long. It is so well and compellingly written that it served me well on a long vacation. Infinitely better than those horrible long novels people take with them.My one problem is that Dr. Parker does not really prove a case that climate caused the revolutions and wars. He stops a bit short of saying it did. He correlates wars and rebellions with the horrible climate events of the Little Ice Age, but--in a particularly good section of the book--notes that the awful climate events continued well into the 18th century, but the wars didn't. In fact, the 18th century begat the Enlightenment, partly in reaction to all those wars in the 17th. So, in fact, climate problems sometimes go with wars and sometimes go with revolutions and sometimes with neither one. Not much hope of causal chains there.In some cases, the wars were predictable long before the climate turned bad. The Ming Dynasty's survival till 1644 was a still-unexplained miracle; it was rotten and tottering by 1550 (or even 1500) and would surely have fallen in the 17th century, climate or no. The religious wars of Europe were also a long time coming; they started in the 1200s with the Albigensian Crusade and got steadily more serious as Protestantism appeared. The climax in the 17th century was fairly predictable.So, how much does climate explain? It certainly made people more desperate. It certainly displaced millions, and displaced people have much less vested interest in peace than stably located ones. We will need a lot more studies.Of course, Parker is writing with an eye to our current period of rapid climatic change. I expect that we will see either lots of wars or lots of action to stop climate change. Possibly both. Dr. Parker provides a scary scenario of what might happen (again).

Although very interesting and often reading like today's news....it was far too long a saga......just skipped the last 2 chapters