Farming, Famine and Plague

Farming, Famine and Plague PDF Author: Kathleen Pribyl
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319559532
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book

Book Description
This book is situated at the cross-roads of environmental, agricultural and economic history and climate science. It investigates the climatic background for the two most significant risk factors for life in the crisis-prone England of the Later Middle Ages: subsistence crisis and plague. Based on documentary data from eastern England, the late medieval growing season temperature is reconstructed and the late summer precipitation of that period indexed. Using these data, and drawing together various other regional (proxy) data and a wide variety of contemporary documentary sources, the impact of climatic variability and extremes on agriculture, society and health are assessed. Vulnerability and resilience changed over time: before the population loss in the Great Pestilence in the mid-fourteenth century meteorological factors contributing to subsistence crises were the main threat to the English people, after the arrival of Yersinia pestis it was the weather conditions that faciliated the formation of recurrent major plague outbreaks. Agriculture and harvest success in late medieval England were inextricably linked to both short term weather extremes and longer term climatic fluctuations. In this respect the climatic transition period in the Late Middle Ages (c. 1250-1450) is particularly important since the broadly favourable conditions for grain cultivation during the Medieval Climate Optimum gave way to the Little Ice Age, when agriculture was faced with many more challenges; the fourteenth century in particular was marked by high levels of climatic variability.

Farming, Famine and Plague

Farming, Famine and Plague PDF Author: Kathleen Pribyl
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319559532
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book

Book Description
This book is situated at the cross-roads of environmental, agricultural and economic history and climate science. It investigates the climatic background for the two most significant risk factors for life in the crisis-prone England of the Later Middle Ages: subsistence crisis and plague. Based on documentary data from eastern England, the late medieval growing season temperature is reconstructed and the late summer precipitation of that period indexed. Using these data, and drawing together various other regional (proxy) data and a wide variety of contemporary documentary sources, the impact of climatic variability and extremes on agriculture, society and health are assessed. Vulnerability and resilience changed over time: before the population loss in the Great Pestilence in the mid-fourteenth century meteorological factors contributing to subsistence crises were the main threat to the English people, after the arrival of Yersinia pestis it was the weather conditions that faciliated the formation of recurrent major plague outbreaks. Agriculture and harvest success in late medieval England were inextricably linked to both short term weather extremes and longer term climatic fluctuations. In this respect the climatic transition period in the Late Middle Ages (c. 1250-1450) is particularly important since the broadly favourable conditions for grain cultivation during the Medieval Climate Optimum gave way to the Little Ice Age, when agriculture was faced with many more challenges; the fourteenth century in particular was marked by high levels of climatic variability.

A Plague of Hunger

A Plague of Hunger PDF Author: Gene Erb
Publisher: Iowa State Press
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book

Book Description
Erb is business writer for the Des Moines register and this is a collection of his newspaper stories about world hunger and Third World exploitation--the result of travels to Mexico, Honduras, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Egypt, and South Korea. With many b&w photographs. No scholarly apparatus. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Third Horseman

The Third Horseman PDF Author: William Rosen
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698163494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
The incredible true story of how a cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history—years before the Black Death, from the author of Justinian's Flea and the forthcoming Miracle Cure In May 1315, it started to rain. For the seven disastrous years that followed, Europeans would be visited by a series of curses unseen since the third book of Exodus: floods, ice, failures of crops and cattle, and epidemics not just of disease, but of pike, sword, and spear. All told, six million lives—one-eighth of Europe’s total population—would be lost. With a category-defying knowledge of science and history, William Rosen tells the stunning story of the oft-overlooked Great Famine with wit and drama and demonstrates what it all means for today’s discussions of climate change.

Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society

Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society PDF Author: John Walter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521406130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
An examination of the complex interrelationships among past demographic, social, and economic structures demonstrates how the impact of hunger and disease can enhance the exploration of early modern society.

Famine in European History

Famine in European History PDF Author: Guido Alfani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107179939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Get Book

Book Description
The first systematic study of famine in all parts of Europe from the Middle Ages to present. It compares the characteristics, consequences and causes of famine in regional case studies by leading experts to form a comprehensive picture of when and why food security across the continent became a critical issue.

Death, Disease, and Famine in Pre-industrial England

Death, Disease, and Famine in Pre-industrial England PDF Author: Leslie A. Clarkson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book

Book Description


Farming and Famine

Farming and Famine PDF Author: Donald Crummey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780299316334
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book

Book Description
Historians and scholars of Ethiopia have long struggled to understand the "Ethiopian Paradox": that is, how could Africa's most productive food production system, which sustained an extraordinary imperial culture over two millennia, also be home to periodic, gut-wrenching famine and rural poverty? Ethiopia in the late twentieth century has surpassed earlier icons of famine: China, India, Armenia, and Biafra. And yet, ironically, Ethiopia's highland culture also generated, and eventually exported, the iconic cuisine served in Ethiopian restaurants throughout the developed world, and in large cities in Africa itself. Donald Crummey argues that in the face of increasing environmental stress, Ethiopian farmers have innovated and adapted. In the process they have developed effective strategies for managing their environment--strategies too often ignored by conservation projects.

Agriculture in the Middle Ages

Agriculture in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Martin Bakers
Publisher: Cambridge Stanford Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book

Book Description
In the Middle Ages agriculture underwent many changes. The nobles and the clergy were considered the most important members of the feudal society. However, they were never the majority: in the Middle Ages, almost all people were peasants. Not all farmers had the same category and social status. Many of them were free men. Among these, some were small landowners who lived on their own land, while others, the settlers, leased the feudal lord a small plot of land.

Famine in England

Famine in England PDF Author: Gerard Vernon Wallop Earl of Portsmouth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book

Book Description


Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire

Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire PDF Author: Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351937030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire presents the first analytical account in English of the history of subsistence crises and epidemic diseases in Late Antiquity. Based on a catalogue of all such events in the East Roman/Byzantine empire between 284 and 750, it gives an authoritative analysis of the causes, effects and internal mechanisms of these crises and incorporates modern medical and physiological data on epidemics and famines. Its interest is both in the history of medicine and the history of Late Antiquity, especially its social and demographic aspects. Stathakopoulos develops models of crises that apply not only to the society of the late Roman and early Byzantine world, but also to early modern and even contemporary societies in Africa or Asia. This study is therefore both a work of reference for information on particular events (e.g. the 6th-century Justinianic plague) and a comprehensive analysis of subsistence crises and epidemics as agents of historical causation. As such it makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on Late Antiquity, bringing a fresh perspective to comment on the characteristic features that shaped this period and differentiate it from Antiquity and the Middle Ages.