Bruce M. S. Campbell
Auteur van The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World
Over de Auteur
Werken van Bruce M. S. Campbell
England on the eve of the Black Death : an atlas of lay lordship, land and wealth, 1300-49 (2006) 6 exemplaren
Land, labour and livestock : historical studies in European agricultural productivity (1991) — Redacteur — 4 exemplaren
A Medieval capital and its grain supply : agrarian production and distribution in the London region c.1300 (1993) 2 exemplaren
Field Systems and Farming Systems in Late Medieval England (Variorum Collected Studies) (2008) 1 exemplaar
Gerelateerde werken
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geboortedatum
- 1949-06-11
- Geslacht
- male
Leden
Besprekingen
Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk
Gerelateerde auteurs
Statistieken
- Werken
- 9
- Ook door
- 1
- Leden
- 89
- Populariteit
- #207,492
- Waardering
- 4.3
- Besprekingen
- 1
- ISBNs
- 19
Successive chapters take in the rapid growth of Latin Christendom between about 950-1250, thanks to reliable crop yields; the post-1250 shock caused by increased climactic instability which caused repeated harvest shortfalls and improved conditions for epidemics and epizootics; the Black Death, both the first climactic irruption of the 1340s and the recurring waves of the 1360s and 1380s which were likely the ones which had far more dramatic impacts on long-term demographics; and the intersecting and various crises which continued to affect Europe until at least 1475.
Campbell is clearly most at home with the English agrarian records on which he's spent most of his career, but he draws on a vast array of European and Asian historical sources, together with contemporary scientific literature. His argument is built on everything from the mineral composition of stalactites in Chinese caves, to palaeogenomics, to charts for grain yields. (There are 78 figures alone.) The breadth of sources used is nothing other than deeply impressive, even if still largely Euro-Anglo-centric.
The close nature of Campbell's argument, together with the less than scintillating nature of his prose, means that The Great Transition is unlikely to find an audience outside of academia. Not all of his interpretations are fully borne out, I think, and new aDNA findings have already made some of Campbell's conclusions about the origins and spread of the Black Death obsolete. Yet the book is a very good example of how to balance an assessment of broad-scale climactic change and geographic contexts with an awareness of “the complexity of human actions and reactions” and “the autonomy of biological agents.” (In this, it also is a useful exemplar to set against a lot of pop "histories" which tell grand narratives that are just as sweeping as Campbell's, but which are ultimately much more reductive.) Highly recommended.… (meer)