Climate and famines: a historical reassessment
Philip Slavin
This study, dealing with the question of impact climate and extreme weather events on famines, has two objectives. The first objective is to review recent literature topic, distinguishing between economic political science papers aimed at addressing contemporary famine in Third World countries, historical research famines past. former category characterized by a tendency take connection variables for granted. latter category, however, tends exercise more analytical caution, but it still exhibits degree environmental determinism. second article reassess role short‐term anomalies pre‐Industrial societies, both European non‐European history. At first, appears that went invariably hand‐in‐hand climatic changes anomalies. A closer analysis, reveals those created shocks (harvest failures blights), which implied shortages, rather than famines. Whether shortages were bound transform into full‐fledged was determined nonenvironmental factors: primarily, human institutions demographic trends. Climate alone, argued, incapable creating often unquestioned be an imaginary cultural construct our era, when fear global warming awareness change dominate public scholarly discourse. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:433–447. doi: 10.1002/wcc.395 categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture &gt; Historical Perspectives
WIREs Climate Change