A Seventeenth-Century ‘General Crisis’ in East Asia?

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Williams S. Atwell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Yi Dynasty ◽  
Asian History ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The Impact

Approximately ten years ago now, several colleagues and I were discussing Geoffrey Parker and Lesley Smith's then recently-published volume on the ‘Seventeenth-Century Crisis’ when a specialist in Byzantine history told us that in his opinion at least, Parker, Smith, and the others who had contributed to their jointly-edited work had gotten it all wrong. The reallyimportant‘general crisis’ in pre-modern times, he believed, had occurred not in the seventeenth century but rather in the fourteenth. As he went on to discuss the impact of climatic change, food shortages, epidemic disease, monetary fluctuations, and military operations on fourteenth-century Europe and the Middle East, I began to think about some of the great and terrible events that had occurred in East Asian history during that same century: the fall of the Kamakura Shogunate (1185–1330S) and the political turmoil of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (Nambokuchō) period (1336–92) in Japan; the economic and military disasters surrounding the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) in China; and the food shortages, ‘Japanese pirate’ (wakō) raids, and civil wars that paved the way for the founding of the Yi dynasty (1392–1910) in Korea. In subsequent readings I added economic and political strife in fourteenth-century Southeast Asia, the decline of the Delhi Sultanate in India, the collapse of the Ilkhanate (1256–1335) in Persia, and the destructive rise of Timur (1336–1405) in Transoxania. Surely a case could be made, I came to think, for a 'General Crisis of the Fourteenth Century,' one much broader in scope than even our Byzantine specialist had been considering.

Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Akkerman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Political Campaign ◽  
The Impact

This book presents a biography of Elizabeth Stuart, one of the most misrepresented and underestimated figures of the seventeenth century. Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI and I, was married to Frederick V, Elector Palatine in 1613. The couple were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia in 1619, only to be deposed and exiled to the Dutch Republic in 1620. Elizabeth then found herself at the epicentre of the Thirty Years’ War and the Civil Wars, political and military struggles that defined seventeenth century Europe. Following her husband’s death in 1632, Elizabeth fostered a cult of widowhood and conducted a long and fierce political campaign to regain her children’s birthright. On returning to England in 1661, Elizabeth Stuart found a country whose people still considered her their ‘Queen of Hearts’. This book reveals the impact Elizabeth Stuart had on both England and Europe, demonstrating that she was more than just the grandmother of George I.

Incentivizing Peace

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Tir ◽  
Johannes Karreth
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
East Timor ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Tools ◽  
The Impact

Civil wars are one of the most pressing problems facing the world. Common approaches such as mediation, intervention, and peacekeeping have produced some results in managing ongoing civil wars, but they fall short in preventing civil wars in the first place. This book argues for considering civil wars from a developmental perspective to identify steps to assure that nascent, low-level armed conflicts do not escalate to full-scale civil wars. We show that highly structured intergovernmental organizations (IGOs, e.g. the World Bank or IMF) are particularly well positioned to engage in civil war prevention. Such organizations have both an enduring self-interest in member-state peace and stability and potent (economic) tools to incentivize peaceful conflict resolution. The book advances the hypothesis that countries that belong to a larger number of highly structured IGOs face a significantly lower risk that emerging low-level armed conflicts on their territories will escalate to full-scale civil wars. Systematic analyses of over 260 low-level armed conflicts that have occurred around the globe since World War II provide consistent and robust support for this hypothesis. The impact of a greater number of memberships in highly structured IGOs is substantial, cutting the risk of escalation by over one-half. Case evidence from Indonesia’s East Timor conflict, Ivory Coast’s post-2010 election crisis, and from the early stages of the conflict in Syria in 2011 provide additional evidence that memberships in highly structured IGOs are indeed key to understanding why some low-level armed conflicts escalate to civil wars and others do not.

Dissent and Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Burden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Higher Educational Institutions ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dissenting Academies

Much eighteenth-century Dissenting educational activity was built on an older tradition of Puritan endeavour. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the godly had seen education as an important tool in spreading their ideas but, in the aftermath of the Restoration, had found themselves increasingly excluded from universities and schools. Consequently, Dissenters began to develop their own higher educational institutions (in the shape of Dissenting academies) and also began to set up their own schools. While the enforcement of some of the legal restrictions that made it difficult for Dissenting institutions diminished across the eighteenth century, the restrictions did not disappear entirely. While there has been considerable focus on Dissenting academies and their contribution to debates about doctrinal orthodoxy, the impact of Dissenting schools was also considerable.

scholarly journals Seaweeds As a “Palatable” Challenge between Innovation and Sustainability: A Systematic Review of Food Safety

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7652
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Cavallo ◽  
Chiara Lorini ◽  
Giuseppe Garamella ◽  
Guglielmo Bonaccorsi
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metals ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Food System ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Novel Foods ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Polluted Sites ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Global Food

Moderate or severe food insecurity affect 2 billion people worldwide. The four pillars of food security (availability, access, use and stability) are in danger due to the impact of climatic and anthropogenic factors which impact on the food system. Novel foods, like seaweeds, have the potential to increase food yields so that to contribute in preventing or avoiding future global food shortages. The purpose of this systematic review was to assess microbiological, chemical, physical, and allergenic risks associated with seaweed consumption. Four research strings have been used to search for these risks. Preferred Reporting Item for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines were applied. Finally, 39 articles met the selected criteria. No significant hazards for microbiological, allergenic, and physical risks were detected. Regarding chemical risk, algae can accumulate various heavy metals, especially when harvested in polluted sites. Cultivating seaweeds in a controlled environment allows to avoid this risk. Periodic checks will be necessary on the finished products to monitor heavy metals levels. Since the consumption of algae seems to be on the rise everywhere, it seems to be urgent that food control authorities establish the safety levels to which eating algae does not represent any risk for human health.

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

‘A Welsh Lancashire’? Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Jesuit Mission ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Popish Plot

In the seventeenth century, one of the Catholic strongholds of Britain had lain on the southern Welsh borders, in those areas of north Monmouthshire and southern Herefordshire dependant on the Marquis of Worcester at Raglan, and looking to the Jesuit mission at Cwm. Abergavenny and Monmouth had been largely Catholic towns, while the north Monmouthshire countryside still merited the attention of fifteen priests in the 1670s—after the Civil Wars, and the damaging conversion to Protestantism of the heir of Raglan in 1667. Conspicuous Catholic strength caused fear, and the ‘Popish Plot’ was the excuse for a uniquely violent reaction, in which the Jesuit mission was all but destroyed. What happened after that is less clear. In 1780, Berington wrote that ‘In many [counties], particularly in the west, in south Wales, and some of the Midland counties, there is scarcely a Catholic to be found’. Modern histories tend to reflect this, perhaps because of available evidence. The archives of the Western Vicariate were destroyed in a riot in Bath in 1780, and a recent work like J. H. Aveling's The Handle and the Axe relies heavily on sources and examples from the north of England. This attitude is epitomised by Bossy's remark on the distribution of priests in 1773: ‘In Wales, the mission had collapsed’. However, the question of Catholic survival in eighteenth-century Wales is important. In earlier assessments of Catholic strength (by landholding, or number of recusants gaoled as a proportion of population) Monmouthshire had achieved the rare feat of exceeding the zeal of Lancashire, and Herefordshire was not far behind. If this simply ceased to exist, there was an almost incredible success for the ‘short, sharp’ persecution under Charles II. If, however, the area remained a Catholic fortress, then recent historians of recusancy have unjustifiably neglected it.

DEATH AND THE MODERN EMPIRE: THE 1918–19 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC IN INDIA

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
David Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Influenza Epidemic ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Military Recruitment ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

ABSTRACTIn India the 1918–19 influenza pandemic cost at least twelve million lives, more than in any other country; it caused widespread suffering and disrupted the economy and infrastructure. Yet, despite this, and in contrast to the growing literature on recovering the ‘forgotten’ pandemic in other countries, remarkably little was recorded about the epidemic in India at the time or has appeared in the subsequent historiography. An absence of visual evidence is indicative of a more general paucity of contemporary material and first-hand testimony. In seeking to explain this absence, it is argued that, while India was exposed to influenza as a global event and to the effects of its involvement in the Great War, the influenza episode needs to be more fully understood in terms of local conditions. The impact of the disease was overshadowed by the prior encounter with bubonic plague, by military recruitment and the war, and by food shortages and price rises that pushed India to the brink of famine. Subsumed within a dominant narrative of political unrest and economic discontent, the epidemic found scant expression in official documentation, public debate and/or even private correspondence.

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