Global Crisis cover art

Global Crisis

War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

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Global Crisis

By: Geoffrey Parker
Narrated by: Peter Noble
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About this listen

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-seventeenth century.

Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas.

In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis.

Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.

©2013 Geoffrey Parker (P)2022 Tantor Economics Environment Environmental Economics Science War Imperialism Famine Global Crisis

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This is one of the few books yet written to present a genuine global history and do it well. Its final chapter brings its story and findings up to date in a clear and disquieting account of climate change and the lessons we could (but mostly refuse) to glean from the seventeenth-century global crisis.

A monumental achievement, and warning

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This is an enthralling book. The content is heavy and detailed. The author seems to range over the subject matter rather than presenting an historical narrative. Seems to do so because the plot is not the sequence of events, but an interval when the cooling planet was the major player in events. Maybe this has always been the case?

No doubt, I listen number of times over and each time assimilate the anecdotes about a neglected player into what I know of 17th century history.

I find the approach to history novel, perhaps because I haven’t read widely enough. But if this kind of ecological history could be intertwined into the history delivered in schools, it would make the subject even richer.

Robin Matthews

And ecological view of history

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It’s an interesting book but the majority of the interesting information is at the start and the rest of the book provides case studies to validate those assertions. Thus it becomes rather repetitive.

Interesting but overly long.

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It’s obviously a well and painstakingly researched book but the narrator is very dry and extremely Ernest sounding. I half expected him to start issuing decrees. And if I never hear the word ‘moreover’ again, it’ll be too soon.

It’s pretty turgid

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