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

Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Figures
Preface to the Abridged and Revised Edition
Prologue: Did Someone Say ‘Climate Change’?
Introduction: The Little Ice Age and the General Crisis
PART I THE PLACENTA OF THE CRISIS
	chapter one The Little Ice Age1
		‘A Strange and Wondrous Succession of Changes in the Weather’
		The Search for Scapegoats
		Blame it on El Niño?
		Climate and Crops
		Climate and Calories
		Calories and Death
		An Overpopulated World?
	chapter two The General Crisis
		‘The Century of the Soldiers’
		‘Feeding Mars’
		The Fiscal-Military State
		Doing God’s Work
		Pride and Prejudice
		Minorities and Tanistry
		The Curse of the Composite State
		Favourites
		Absolutism and the ‘Willingness to Wink’
	chapter three ‘Hunger Is the Greatest Enemy’: The Heart of the Crisis
		Agriculture on the Margin
		The Urban Graveyard Effect
		Palace Cities
		The Macroregions
		Malevolence and the Macroregions
		‘The Haves and the Have-nots’
	chapter four Surviving in the Seventeenth Century1
		I. Death: ‘Never Send to Know for Whom the Bell Tolls’3
		II. Only Women Bleed
		III. Migration
PART II ENDURING THE CRISIS
	chapter five The Great Enterprise in China, 1618–841
		Manchus versus Ming
		The Erosion of Ming Power
		The Great Enterprise Begins
		The Little Ice Age Strikes
		The Alienated Intellectuals of Ming China
		The Rise of the Dashing Prince
		The Tipping Point: China’s Battle of Hastings
		China Partitioned
		‘Keep Your Head, Lose Your Hair; Keep Your Hair, Lose Your Head’
		‘China in Tigers’ Jaws’
		The Cost of Changing the Mandate
	chapter six The ‘Great Shaking’: Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1618–861
		The Humiliation of Russia
		The ‘Imaginary Little World’ of the Muscovites
		The Tsar and his ‘Slaves’
		‘The Whole World is Shaking’
		The Great Compromise of 1649
		The Ukrainian Revolt
		The Tipping Point: The Commonwealth Dismembered
		Ruin and ‘the Deluge’
		Russia’s Religious Schism
		Stenka Razin
		The New Order
	chapter seven The ‘Ottoman Tragedy’, 1618–831
		‘The Greatest Empire That Is, or Perhaps That Ever Was’
		Climate and Depopulation
		‘The Ottoman Tragedy’7
		Murad IV’s Personal Rule
		The Mad Sultan
		A Second Regicide
		The Return of Stability
		The Messianic Moment of Shabbatai Zvi
		The Tipping Point
	chapter eight Bloodlands: Germany and its Neighbours, 1618–881
		The Long Shadow of the Thirty Years’ War
		The Prague Spring
		The Crisis of the Dutch Republic
		Enter Denmark
		‘The Root of All Evils’
		The Tipping Point: The Rape of Germany
		Peace Breaks Out in Germany
		Denmark and Sweden on the Edge
		The Second Crisis of the Dutch Republic
		The Danes ‘Forge their Own Chains’
		‘The All-Destructive Fury of the Thirty Years’ War’: A Myth?36
	chapter nine The Agony of the Iberian Peninsula, 1618–891
		‘The Target at Which the Whole World Wants to Shoot its Arrows’
		Open Opposition Begins
		The Portuguese Emergency
		Olivares at Bay
		The Revolt of the Catalans
		The Revolt of Portugal
		The Tipping Point
		The Fall of Olivares
		The Green Banner Revolts
		The Spanish Phoenix?
		Counting the Cost
	chapter ten France in Crisis, 1618–881
		La Grande Nation?
		France Goes to War
		War and Insurgency
		The Revolt of the Judges
		The Tipping Point: The Barricades of Paris
		The Fronde
		The Sun King
		Plus ça change?
	chapter eleven The Stuart Monarchy: The Path to Civil War, 1603–421
		‘Great Britain’: A Problematic Inheritance
		‘The Crisis of Parliaments’
		The Scottish Revolution
		The Tipping Point
		England on Edge
		The Irish Revolution
		A King Without a Capital
		Charles I: A Problematic King
	chapter twelve Britain and Ireland from Civil War to Revolution, 1642–89
		The Uncivil Wars
		The New Model Army Takes Charge
		The ‘Young Statesmen’
		The Second Civil War
		Creating the British Republic
		Creating the First British Empire
		The Road to Restoration
		The ‘Happy Restoration’
		The Glorious Revolution
		After the Revolution
PART III SURVIVING THE CRISIS
	chapter thirteen The Mughals and their Neighbours1
		‘The Most Potent Monarchs on Earth’
		‘A Perfect Drought’: The Great Indian Famine of 1630–32
		Afghanistan: The Perpetual Battleground
		The Crisis of Mughal India
		Southeast Asia: Turning Plenty into Poverty
		The Enigma of Iran
	chapter fourteen Red Flag over Italy1
		Sicily in Revolt
		Red Flag over Naples
		Red Flag over Sicily
		The Empire Strikes Back
		The Republic of Naples
		The Tipping Point
		A Final ‘Epidemic of Uprisings’
	chapter fifteen The Americas, Africa and Australia1
		The Americas
		Africa
		Australia
	chapter sixteen Getting It Right: Early Tokugawa Japan1
		The Pax Tokugawa
		The Industrious Revolution
		‘The Greatest and Powerfullest Tyranny That Ever Was Heard of in the World’
		Coping with the Kan’ei Famine
		The Tipping Point: Onwards and Upwards
		Japan in Print
		Getting It Right?
PART IV CONFRONTING THE CRISIS
	chapter seventeen ‘Those Who Have No Means of Support’: The Parameters of Popular Resistance1
		Public and Hidden Transcripts
		Articulating Grievances
		Deterrents to Collective Violence
		‘Women Can Do No Wrong’
		Clerics and Fools
		The Etiquette of Collective Violence
		Place and Time
		Weapons, Cadres and Emblems
		Concession or Repression?
	chapter eighteen ‘People Who Hope Only For a Change’: Aristocrats, Intellectuals, Clerics and ‘Dirty People of No Name’1
		The Crisis of the Aristocracy
		Education and Revolution
		The Contentious Clergy
		‘Dirty People of No Name’
		Justifying Disobedience
	chapter nineteen ‘People of Heterodox Beliefs . . . Who Will Join Up with Anyone Who Calls Them’: Disseminating Revolution1
		‘Contagious Diseases’ and Composite States
		The Connectors
		Exporting Revolution
		A Public Sphere in the West?
		A Public Sphere in China?
		A Public Sphere Elsewhere?
		The Rule of the Few
PART V BEYOND THE CRISIS1
	chapter twenty Escaping the Crisis
		Getting Away From It All
		Keeping Score
		The Psychoactive Revolution
		Peace Breaks Out
		No More Wars
	chapter twenty-one Warfare State or Welfare State?
		The Phoenix Effect
		Be Fruitful and Multiply
		A Second Agricultural Revolution
		The Consumer Revolution
		‘Seeing Like a State’
		The Containment of Disease
		Nourishing the People
		Creative Destruction
		Non-Creative Destruction
	chapter twenty-two The Great Divergence
		Educate and Punish
		The Crisis of the Universities
		The New Learning
		The Thought Police
		Singletons and Multiples
		The Limits of the Scientific Revolution
	Conclusion: The Crisis Anatomized
		Winners and Losers
		In Search of Common Denominators
		If
		The Two Worlds of Robinson Crusoe
	Epilogue: ‘It’s the Climate, Stupid’1
‘Darkness’ by Lord Byron36
Chronology
Acknowledgements
Conventions
Note on Sources
Abbreviations Used in the Bibliography and Notes
Notes
Bibliography
Index