Weather and revolting peasants
Over history it would seem possible that weather shocks, which effect food supply, could affect the probability of peasant revolts. When food is in short supply peasants are more likely to revolt. While such a hypothesis may seem reasonable, is there any evidence to back it up? Thanks to a new article in The Economic Journal there is. At least for China.
I use data covering 267 prefectures over four centuries to investigate two questions about historical China. To what extent did weather shocks cause civil conflict? And to what extent did the historical introduction of (drought resistant) sweet potatoes mitigate these effects? I find that before the introduction of sweet potatoes, exceptional droughts increased the probability of peasant revolts by around 0.7 percentage points, which translates into a revolt probability in drought years that is more than twice the average revolt probability. After the introduction of sweet potatoes, exceptional droughts only increased the probability of peasant revolts by around 0.2 percentage points.
The article is Weather Shocks, Sweet Potatoes and Peasant Revolts in Historical China by Ruixue Jia.
Sometimes common sense does make sense.
6 Responses to “Weather and revolting peasants”
Its still happening. Syria.
http://thebulletin.org/climate-change-and-syrian-uprising
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/08/220438728/how-could-a-drought-spark-a-civil-war
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/10/drought-helped-caused-syrias-war-will-climate-change-bring-more-like-it/
Pretty long bow from carbon to Syria. Not nuts to think it could happen in future, but droughts happen random-draw, carbon or no.
I think the connection to drought is sound. Lets stick to the drought rather than possible “causes” Oh Denier.:-)
Happily accept that warming has started, and that it will intensify, and that some places will consequently see greater likelihood of drought. So they turn from 1 in n year events to 1 in m<n year events.
It bugs me when warming advocates point to anything currently happening and shout "See see!". 'Cause how could we even know that this particular drought wouldn't have happened anyway?
droughts are random? Irregular I could accept, not easily predicted I’d accept as well. But just like any weather, droughts are not random… For example, droughts in NZ are reliably linked to the long-range weather patterns eg the Nina/Nino seasonality which cause particular and seasonally predictable localised drought (and flood) events.
It bugs me when warming deniers point to anything currently happening and shout “See see!”. ‘Cause how could we even know that this particular snowstorm would have happened anyway?
Its the age-old problem of any party using one-off instances as proof of their claim. The old adage “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘fact’.” comes to mind.