Climate Changes, Plagues and Wars: The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century in the Afro-Eurasian Context (Encounters in the Middle East and Asia)

The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century has been regarded as a turning-point in world history, but it has typically only been approached from a European perspective.This volume expands that view by focusing on Asia and the Middle East (Afro-Eurasia) and by including environmental approaches that recognise the shifts in the Eurasian socio-ecological regime from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age.It therefore positions this period of history within three interrelated contexts - climate change, political upheaval outside Europe and a transcontinental pandemic - making historical connections typically not considered in studies of the Crisis. Bringing together thus-far neglected topics and case studies, and based on new sources and palaeo-scientific data, this book analyses the Crisis through an interdisciplinary lens.This intersection of climatology, environmental studies and history adds a long-awaited global dimension to the existing scholarship.