Text/Wang Jing
Those who live in the age to come will be incredulous about the hardships, pains and misfortunes that those of us who have experienced.
—Father Francisco Wolcio, The Plague Diaries, 1631.
Bad weather is the servant of the furious God, and together they wipe out the remaining humanity: the mountains spew fire; the earth shakes; the plagues disperse.
—Jean-Nicolas Parival, Short History of the Black Iron Century, Southern Netherlands, 1653.
Ever since I perceived myself in this world, I have found myself in the midst of a storm almost all the time.
—John Locke, Treatise on The Government Film, 1660.
In all the cities of Anatolia, there are so many male and female prophets who are stirring up trouble that all believe with all their hearts that the end of the world has arrived... Indeed, there have been all kinds of miracles and miracles like this that have not happened since the day of creation.
—Leub ben Oizer, Biography of Shabatay Zevi, 1665-1666.
He who has seen many dead people and is not afraid of them so far, because he has seen many things through the scriptures.
--Yao Tingyi, Annals, 1670.
From these horrific narrations alone, it can be read that the great crisis that stretched across the globe in the 17th century had changed from a climatic anomaly to a "war between man and man", and is still in the aftermath of the dialogue between history and reality.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > interdisciplinary research methods</h1>
This book is best known for introducing interdisciplinary research methods, adding more possibilities and directions to traditional historiography. Taking glaciology, geology, pollenology and tree rings as the precursors, the author introduces a large number of quantitative research methods, infers the natural conditions of more than 400 years ago with model that can stand the verification of facts, supplemented by a large number of literature and historical materials that have survived to this day, and restores the crisis era brought about by the "Xiaoice River Period": the decline in accumulated temperature, the reduction of crop yields, the arrival of famine; frequent floods, frequent earthquakes, and rampant plagues; the collapse of rule, the ingress of revolutions, and the years of war.
If the literature is sufficient, the author will supplement his conclusions and enrich his narrative with these quantitative studies of natural sciences; conversely, for the "dark continents" of Australia, Black Africa and South America, the author can only infer the tragic situation at that time from the tree rings and ice cores. Not only that, but the author also uses nature's "faithful and reliable recorder", like "rewinding video tapes and audio tapes", to reconstruct historical records that were rendered, weakened or even distorted by 17th-century people.
In applying interdisciplinary research methods, the authors do not forget to remind us that even if people hundreds of years ago failed to realize that this was a terrible global crisis, we cannot blame them except for political reasons, because there is a simple and easy-to-understand "observer effect": the abundance of observations is sometimes only due to improvements in observational means or increased frequency of observations. Like the "survivor bias," the "observer effect" reminds historical researchers that they can't just settle for their own holes and gaps. The compelling interdisciplinary approach of Global Crisis is a medicine for contemporary historical research.
Writing a true "global history" rather than a "superposition of national histories" should be said to be the common ideal of all aspiring historians. On the surface, "Global Crisis" is still a chapter-by-country discussion, but the author cleverly takes the chronological order as the outline and the national history as the purpose, and narrates the five major sections of pregnancy crisis, enduring the crisis, crisis survival, facing the crisis directly, and transcending the crisis.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="33" > the elusive uncertainty of history and the contingency of electric flint</h1>
The book's chapter structure is structured in a chapter: the first part, "The Pregnancy Crisis," analyzes the causes of the crisis from the perspective of the natural sciences through an interdisciplinary approach. The second part, "Enduring the Crisis", and the third part, "Surviving the Crisis", describe the history of crises in various countries in chapters. The fourth part, "Facing the Crisis Head-on", analyzes what are the factors behind this global crisis from the perspective of traditional humanities and social sciences such as political science and history. The fifth part, "Beyond the Crisis" (which can also be translated as "Out of the Crisis"), describes the profound impact of the crisis on human history.
The reader will notice that the countries described in the second part have been hit the hardest by the crisis, and the consequences of the crisis are also the most collateral. The Ming and Qing Revolutions in the East Asian continent involved the whole body, and the German "Thirty Years' War" on the European continent dragged the entire Latin Christian world into the water. Both parts explain the "fatal synergy" and "total crisis" theories unveiled by the author in the "Enduring the Crisis" section — that climate is by no means the only factor affecting world history, nor is it a sufficient condition for the subsequent outbreak of crises. Climate change (global cooling) is also the result of a chain reaction of causality and correlation – rulers everywhere are left and right in the face of sudden climate upheavals, one mistake after two or three mistakes, one lie spawning ten lies, one revolution after another, and a wave of war burying several peaces.
The third part, "Surviving the Crisis," chronicles the countries that were more successful in coping with the crisis, the best of which was undoubtedly Japan during the Edo period, which also had weaker ties to Eurasia. At the end of the chapter on national history, the author enters the time of comprehensive analysis, summarizing from multiple theories the way mankind came out of the crisis, and the completely different direction of world history after the crisis. In this way, the author cleverly uses the perspective of global history to tell a terrifying and sideways horror story.
Zhang Xuecheng's "Literature and History Tongyi" borrows the phrase "The virtue of the Yine is round and the god, and the virtue of the gua is the wisdom" of the "I Ching and the Dictionary", and sentences the two major sects of "Yuan Shen" and "Fang Zhi" for the historical works. Although Zhang's thesis lacks theoretical evidence, it is also very concise in saying two types of historical works: "Round God" people, who emphasize narrative and light reasoning, prefer character events to less discussion and speech, more like literary works than high-headed sermons, and the "History of History" is an outstanding representative of them; "Fang Zhi" people, the main reasoning and light narrative, partial discussion and less character events, more like high-headed lectures rather than academic papers, "Book of Han" is one of the biggest. By extension, "Yuanshen" and "Fang Zhi" actually represent the two types of works of "historical writings" and "historical theories".
Today is the era of information explosion, and the first reaction of readers picking up a historical book must be "whether there is interest, there is no material" rather than "whether it is useful", which may be the function of textbooks and success studies. If the writings on the global crisis fall only on the doctrinal analysis of the crisis, they are doomed to not have a large readership. The author's success lies in the fact that, although he employs a variety of interdisciplinary research methods, including the natural sciences, he does not turn the book into a pile of mathematical models and quantitative formulas that taste like chewing wax. Traditional historiography focuses on the merits of narrative and character shaping, and it is also well publicized in the book "Global Crisis".
Although the author chose the research methods of the natural sciences, he did not slip into the abyss of historical determinism. The key characters of the key historical moments in "Global Crisis" tell the reader again and again that the most fascinating thing about historiography lies in its elusive uncertainty and the contingency of electric flint stones - the Chongzhen Emperor, Charles I, Cardinal Mazaran, the German general Wallenstein, the Spanish favorite Olivarez, the Polish King Władysław, the Japanese general Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, the King of Kings of the Persian Safi dynasty... They have all chosen the path that will eventually change the world at the fork in the road of history, changed the historical destiny of millions of people, and shaped the "great divergence" of the Eastern and Western worlds.
In describing the English Civil War, the author uses the clever metaphor of "pinball". The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the English Parliament, the English Royal Family, the Irish Catholics, several groups of forces constantly changing camps in response to the back-and-forth changes in the political situation, and the dazzling plot and beautiful characters can make Chinese readers get an immersive sense of the scene when they enter the history of the English Civil War. The realm of the work of first-class historians is to resurrect and reconstruct the historical world that has never returned, as if the author and the reader are active in it, and this "Global Crisis" has reached this level. The author takes the reader on a journey through the flower-studded pantheon and the glamorous pandemonium to see which way out of the crisis can be found.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > the intersection of natural and human factors contributes to the "lethal synergy"</h1>
The author ends the book with a deafening warning: "Stupid, it's the climate!" It's the climate, stupid!) Mimics Clinton's famous slogan when he ran for president in 1992: "Stupid, it's the economy!" (It's the economy, stupid!), intended to speak in terms of historical records and emphasize the long-term stubbornness of the climate problem, is not something that manpower can try to reverse, or try to rely on that little bit of energy saving and emission reduction to make everything happen.
The truth is that even before the Industrial Revolution, climate change was enough to destroy half the world and render humanity powerless. That little bit of carbon emissions is insignificant in the face of nature's terrible god's palm. The authors draw a very strong conclusion: "The problem is not climate change, because the cycle of climate change is coming sooner or later." The question is, what can we do when climate change comes? ”
It was this "lethal synergy" caused by the intersection of natural and human factors that detonated the world's "general crisis" in the 17th century, bringing about a demographic, social, economic, and political catastrophe that lasted for two generations. Could it be that when climate change comes, we humans will have to wait for death? The answer is not.
The authors study history from a climate perspective, focusing on the roles of "infrastructure" and "contigency." According to his theory, unless there is an asteroid impact on the Earth or a supernova explosion, a super black swan event that we can only wait for, we can still reduce our losses as much as possible in the face of natural disasters. Note that losses can only be minimized.
The global crises of the 17th century were brutal, but when they came, the different responses of the rulers of various countries also led to different results. Those tyrannical and ignorant rulers either try to maintain the rule as they are, or hope to launch internal and external wars to transfer contradictions, but it turns out that their junta thinking can only be half the work when the universal crisis comes, or even counterproductive. The rulers, who were groaning and aching under the torment of famine and plague, rose up and took advantage of the opportunity of revolution and internal and external wars to punish the rulers fiercely, forcing them to transform all states into welfare states step by step, and promoting the modernization process of Europe. Tigers sleep, harsh government does not rest. When natural disasters come, we can also minimize man-made disasters.