The Great Transition : Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World / Bruce M.S. Campbell, The Queen's University of Belfast.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, B. M. S., author.

Series:

Ellen McArthur lectures

Ellen McArthur lectures ; 2013

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War and society.

History.

Diseases--Social aspects.

Black Death.

Human ecology.

Climatic changes--Economic aspects.

Climatic changes--Social aspects.

Social change.

Europe--History--476-1492.

Europe.

Social change--Europe--History--To 1500.

Climatic changes--Social aspects--Europe--History--To 1500.

Climatic changes.

Climatic changes--Economic aspects--Europe--History--To 1500.

Human ecology--Europe--History--To 1500.

Black Death--Europe--History.

Diseases--Social aspects--Europe--History--To 1500.

Diseases.

War and society--Europe--History--To 1500.

Europe--Social conditions--To 1492.

Social conditions.

Europe--Economic conditions--To 1492.

Economic conditions.

Economic history.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxv, 463 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Summary:

"In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a major new study of this 'Great Transition,' Bruce Campbell assesses the contributions of commercial recession, war, climate change, and eruption of the Black Death to a far-reaching reversal of fortunes from which no part of Eurasia was spared. The book synthesises a wealth of new historical, palaeo-ecological and biological evidence, including estimates of national income, reconstructions of past climates, and genetic analysis of DNA extracted from the teeth of plague victims, to provide a fresh account of the creation, collapse and realignment of Western Europe's late medieval commercial economy"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1. Interactions between nature and society in the late medieval world

2. Efflorescence : the enabling environment and the rise of Latin Christendom

3. A precarious balance : mounting economic vulnerability in an era of increasing climatic instability and re-emergent pathogens

4. Tipping point : war, climate change and plague shift the balance

5. Recession : the inhibiting environment and Latin Christendom's late medieval demographic and economic contraction

Epilogue: Theory, contingency, conjuncture and the Great Transition.

Notes:

"The 2013 Ellen McArthur lectures."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 402-447) and index.

ISBN:

9780521195881

0521195888

9780521144438

0521144434

OCLC:

946009751