The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China
By Timothy Brook
Princeton University Press
ISBN: 978-0-691-25040-3
Why did the Ming Dynasty collapse in the 17th century? This book offers an answer by looking at grain prices and how they were affected by climate change.
Excerpt:
My focus on the culture of consumption and social investment in Ming China was what led me to prices. Once I began to find them, I looked up from the texts I was reading and realized that the history of consumption was pointing me not just to price history but to climate history as well, for it was in periods of climate disturbance that prices rose and chroniclers thought to write them down. This book presents a synthesis of what I have found. It is not so much a history of Ming prices as an account of the role that prices played in mediating the relationship between the people of the Ming and the climate that turned against them. While most of the documents were penned and published by the Ming elite, my goal has been to catch sight of ordinary people so as to better understand the decisions they made as they bought and sold their goods and services, especially in periods when China slid from prosperity to calamity.
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Who is this book for?
Three groups of historians will find this to be an interesting read: economic historians, those interested in historical climate change, and those interested in the collapse of states throughout history. In particular, it offers a good case example of the Little Ice Age led to a agricultural decline.
Reviews:
“Brook has, it would seem, blazed a trail; this short book of only some 170 pages powerfully persuasive.” ~ review by Peter Gordon in Asian Review of Books
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“The Price of Collapse would be a useful book if it provided nothing beyond a compilation of price data and disaster narratives, but it does far more. In his well-established style, Brook uses seemingly banal data points to reveal the inner and outer worlds of Ming subjects and their global points of contact. On the question of climate, however, this book leaves more to be explored. While Brook shows that the crisis of the 1630s and 1640s must be understood in light of the Maunder Minimum, an unprecedented period of global cooling and regional drought, he does not fully demonstrate how or to what degree climate precipitated this episode, let alone the relationship between climate and grain prices in earlier periods.” ~ review by Ian Miller in H-Environment
The author:
Tim Brook is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, where he specializes in the history of China, in particular the Ming Dynasty period. Click here to view his Wikipedia page.
The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China
By Timothy Brook
Princeton University Press
ISBN: 978-0-691-25040-3
Why did the Ming Dynasty collapse in the 17th century? This book offers an answer by looking at grain prices and how they were affected by climate change.
Excerpt:
My focus on the culture of consumption and social investment in Ming China was what led me to prices. Once I began to find them, I looked up from the texts I was reading and realized that the history of consumption was pointing me not just to price history but to climate history as well, for it was in periods of climate disturbance that prices rose and chroniclers thought to write them down. This book presents a synthesis of what I have found. It is not so much a history of Ming prices as an account of the role that prices played in mediating the relationship between the people of the Ming and the climate that turned against them. While most of the documents were penned and published by the Ming elite, my goal has been to catch sight of ordinary people so as to better understand the decisions they made as they bought and sold their goods and services, especially in periods when China slid from prosperity to calamity.
Who is this book for?
Three groups of historians will find this to be an interesting read: economic historians, those interested in historical climate change, and those interested in the collapse of states throughout history. In particular, it offers a good case example of the Little Ice Age led to a agricultural decline.
Reviews:
“Brook has, it would seem, blazed a trail; this short book of only some 170 pages powerfully persuasive.” ~ review by Peter Gordon in Asian Review of Books
“The Price of Collapse would be a useful book if it provided nothing beyond a compilation of price data and disaster narratives, but it does far more. In his well-established style, Brook uses seemingly banal data points to reveal the inner and outer worlds of Ming subjects and their global points of contact. On the question of climate, however, this book leaves more to be explored. While Brook shows that the crisis of the 1630s and 1640s must be understood in light of the Maunder Minimum, an unprecedented period of global cooling and regional drought, he does not fully demonstrate how or to what degree climate precipitated this episode, let alone the relationship between climate and grain prices in earlier periods.” ~ review by Ian Miller in H-Environment
The author:
Tim Brook is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, where he specializes in the history of China, in particular the Ming Dynasty period. Click here to view his Wikipedia page.
You can learn more about this book from the publisher’s website
You can also buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
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