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The Price of Collapse

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Timothy Brook draws on the history of grain prices to discuss the final tumultuous years of a once-great dynasty.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 18, 2024

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This video video discusses the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the historical context surrounding it, particularly focusing on environmental factors, specifically the Little Ice Age. Traditionally, the fall of the Ming Dynasty has been attributed to moral and administrative failures, such as corruption and poor leadership under a young emperor. However, the author argues that environmental crises, notably those caused by the Little Ice Age, played a significant role in this collapse.

The discussion highlights how the Little Ice Age impacted food production in China, leading to severe grain shortages and soaring prices, which would have devastating effects on the population, including famine and depopulation. The author emphasizes that the social structure and pricing data from historical records reflect these environmental challenges rather than mere mismanagement.

Furthermore, they place the Ming Dynasty's fall within a global historical narrative, noting that similar climate-driven crises were occurring in Europe during the same period. They also critique the idea that the influx of silver from the New World significantly distorted the Chinese economy, arguing that the scale of the Chinese economy rendered such an influx insufficient to explain the agricultural crisis. Instead, they posit that environmental factors must be accounted for to understand the economic conditions leading to the fall.

This video video serves as a cautionary tale about food supply's critical role in societal stability, suggesting that we should be mindful of how environmental changes can lead to political and military crises, as was seen in the collapse of the Ming Dynasty amidst tumultuous climate conditions.

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The historical context for the books I is the Fall

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of the Ming Dynasty, at least from the Chinese perspective.

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Uh, the Ming Dynasty was formed in 1368.

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It survived for close to three centuries,

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finally collapsing in 1644.

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It was a dynasty that emerged,

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because the Mongol Empire had absorbed China

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into its control.

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And in 1368, the Chinese kicked the Mongols out

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and established their own Chinese dynasty.

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And it lasted for three centuries.

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The other context is a little ice age, because

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although we now global history has, has caused us

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to become really aware of

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and sensitive to climate change, over,

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over the last many centuries.

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This was never part of the story

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that was told about the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

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Instead, the Ming Dynasty was seen as a, a failure

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of administration, a failure of leadership.

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Um, China was under the rule of an emperor who was young

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and inexperienced,

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and his, the officials

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around him were all corrupt and so forth.

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Those are the stories that are usually told about the

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fall of the mean dynasty.

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But I've found that if you bring in the little Ice age

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as you have to, because the little Ice Age was a Northern

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Hemisphere phenomenon, it affected Europe.

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We know this very well.

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Uh, the, the English Civil War took place during

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a bad phase of the little Ice Age.

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And so it seemed to me, once I began to find data that

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that pointed to, a crisis in the 1630s

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and 1640s, it wasn't a moral crisis.

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It wasn't an administrative crisis.

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It wasn't even a financial crisis.

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It was an environmental crisis.

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And so that's, that's caused me to write the book

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that I've written, the price of Collapse.

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There is some scholarship on the main dynasty.

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It's not hugely written about.

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The main scholars

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of the main dynasty have been Chinese authors.

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And the Chinese narrative of the fall

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of the main dynasty is very much tied to this idea

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of a moral failure that is a Chinese dynasty came

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to power, and then it collapsed in the face

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of the threat from the Manchu who were, a sort of,

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like the Mongols, a semi nomadic people living,

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living in Siberia.

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That, that the failure of the Chinese

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to defend themselves against the Manchus

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was written out as a moral failure.

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And this was, this was a recipe that was a narrative,

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or I should say a narrative that was created

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by the conquering Manchus.

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They said, well, emperor Chung Jang was okay,

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but his commanders were of bogus merit.

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His administrators were all corrupt.

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Um, he, he didn't have the backing

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of the best people in the realm in order to keep his dynasty

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Going. And so

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we stepped in and took over.

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And this is a self-serving narrative that the Manchus used

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as a way of persuading the Chinese, that they deserve

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to be the new rulers of China

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and not the old, the old, the old family

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that had ruled the Ming Dynasty for three centuries.

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And in fact, from my perspective,

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this is not a useful way of talking about history.

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Rarely does a moral explanation really explain

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to us why historical changes happen,

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that there are other factors.

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And in this case, I've had to turn to the Little Ice Age

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as a way of try to try

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and explain the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

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What I started to do, it was a completely different project.

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I started to collect data about commodity prices

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during the Ming Dynasty.

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I wanted to know what it cost to live during that dynasty.

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What could ordinary people afford?

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What could rich people afford?

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I was interested in developing a kind of social history

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of prices during the Ming Dynasty.

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And, and I found it very difficult to get the data

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because unlike European history in this period,

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Ming History does not have a lot of price data.

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You have to go scrounging here, there,

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and everywhere for little bits of data.

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Over time, I found that my best, most consistent data

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was the price to which grain rose during funds.

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And I started collecting this data from the middle

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of the 15th century forward to the middle

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of the 17th century.

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And this data,

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this data I found in local historical sources.

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There's a, there's a genre in Chinese history called

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the local Gaer.

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It's a kind of an administrative handbook that every county

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in the country was supposed to produce.

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There are about a thousand counties in Maine, China.

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So we have this enormous trove of local historical material

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that was put together by people, in the wake

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of, all sorts of historical and administrative changes.

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So I began to collect this, this price data,

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and I was going to write a, use this data

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to write a book on the history of Ming prices.

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And then I realized, wait a minute,

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what these prices are telling us, the price of grain

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during these crises

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was actually telling us a much more interesting narrative.

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Not so much about what it was like to live in China

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during the main dynasty,

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but what was it like to live during the little ice age

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during the, the deepest downturns of Little Ice Age?

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Um, and so I, I I I,

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I also read in being the history, so,

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Jeffrey Parker's work, for example, on, on a global collapse

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of the 17th century, the global crisis,

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I think the book was called,

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Pointed me to the fact that

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the Northern Hemisphere was experiencing these terrible

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climate downturns.

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And that that, that my data about grain prices during,

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during these crisis periods was pointing me in the direction

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of the little Ice Age, not in terms of any, I mean,

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it does tell me something about what it meant to live

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during those periods.

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And it was brutal because the price of grain grew tens

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to hundreds of times more than it should have been.

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This created massive prices, depopulation people died.

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There were, there were pandemics

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that broke out under these conditions.

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So China experienced some very difficult periods

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between the 1450s and the 1640s,

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and they lined up so, so almost

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seamlessly with what we know of the little Ice Age.

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I dropped the book that I was going to write about Bryce's

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and the main dynasty and decided, no, let's, let's work

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with the story that the data are, is, is telling me about.

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And that's the story of the effect

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of the little Ice age in China.

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And I, I should add that I'm interested in this sort

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of thing because as a historian, I'm a historian

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of Maine China, but I'm also interested in

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how do we place Chinese history in a global context?

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How do we connect Chinese history to Western history?

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And how do we think about, not,

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not just in a comparative sense,

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but what are the common factors

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that are being shared in the world

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when events are happening in China?

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So more and more, I've tried to place Ming history

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inside a global context.

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And the little Ice Age was, was where I ended up

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settling this, this stack of data that I, I had collected.

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The data that I, I chose is, is, if you like,

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it's untypical data.

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It's data that is collected at a time of crisis.

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And it's a way for historians

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or is, people in China to record the scale

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of the, of the, of the crisis they were experiencing.

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So prices are a kind of, quantitative metric

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that you can use to say, well, life was going along fine,

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and then all of a sudden grain prices were 10

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times what they should have been.

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And there was, there was a massive crisis.

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So, the data is, it's a,

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it's it's crisis data.

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And, but I found that

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as I collected this data from Gaza,

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tears from counties all over China, there was,

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there was a pattern that emerged of these,

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these crises happening at roughly the same time.

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And so the, the data pointed me towards,

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towards these, these, these terrible moments when,

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temperatures fell.

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And, I mean the, the little Ice age affected China

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and Europe a bit differently.

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Leroy Laie famously said, Europe's experience

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of the little Ice age in the 17th century was

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that it was cold and wet.

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Now, China's experience

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of the little ice age in the 17th century was

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that it was cold and dry.

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Wet is not such a problem if you're growing rice,

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but drought is terrible for rice.

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Um, wheat can sometimes can survive dry conditions,

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but it can't survive hugely wet conditions.

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Whereas rice can survive wet conditions

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but can't survive dry conditions.

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So, so the little ice age played out differently in

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the two parts of the world.

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But, it's, it's, it that that was what,

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that was what led me to, to the, to the model

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that I've applied for the fall of the being dynasty.

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Now, the other way that we,

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who are interested in world history have have thought about,

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the collapse of being China is that

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it was starting in the late 16th century that

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Spain was mining silver in the new world.

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A lot of that silver was being shipped up

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to Acapulco being put on what are called the Manila ions,

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and then sailed off and,

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and to the Spanish colony in the Philippines to Manila.

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And there in Manila, Chinese, Chinese merchants brought,

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Chinese, products out to Manila.

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They traded with the Spanish merchants.

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Um, they took the silver

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and gave the Spanish merchants the silk, some,

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the porcelains and the paper,

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and, to some extent furniture as well, and paintings.

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Uh, they brought all of these, all of this,

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these commodities out, sold them to the Chinese merchants,

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filled their ships with the silver that they were paid,

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and then took the silver back to China.

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And one of the arguments that got going early on was

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that this influx of silver had

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to have been distorting the Chinese economy

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and had to have been causing inflation.

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Well, there, there are two problems with that explanation.

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One is that the Chinese economy was so huge.

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I mean, the Chinese economy was on the scale

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of the entire European economy, that the influx of silver,

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it seemed to me, was not sufficient to cause

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inflation on the scale

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that we're seeing in these grain prices.

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And I have to say that we, we really don't have

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much other price data except for grain.

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So, it's, it, it struck me that the influx

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of silver through the transpacific silver trade was not

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sufficient to drive the prices up to the level it did.

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And, secondly, you can't find, or I

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Haven't been able to find in Chinese sources, any writer

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who, who makes that link, who says, well,

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silver is pouring into the country

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and prices are going crazy.

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There's only one commodity market in which the

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prices went through the roof, I think

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because of the imported silver, and that was the art market

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and the luxury market.

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So people buying luxuries

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and fine art were paying

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hugely inflated prices into the 1630s and 1640s.

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And that, I think, is not an environmental issue.

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That's because the silver was largely in the hands

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of rich merchants.

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And so the silver didn't go out into the economy.

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The silver was, was kept in, in the hands

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of certain households

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who then decided they were gonna spend their silver on fine

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art and luxuries and so forth.

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So the luxury market was a, was somewhat affected, I think,

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by the influx of New world silver.

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But the food market wasn't, the grain market wasn't,

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the grain market was too large.

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And, and interestingly, the, the grain market on the,

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in the coastal areas was no more

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inflated than the grain market deep in the interior

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where none of the new world silver was, could,

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could possibly reach.

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So we had two phenomenon here.

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One, yes, China is beginning

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to be incorporated into the global economy,

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but the effects of that global economy are not so huge as

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to be driving grain prices in the country.

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And that's why I, I, in fact, in the price of collapse,

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I devoted an, a full chapter to thinking about

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China's foreign trade as a way of sort

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of testing out this hypothesis.

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And in the end, I decide, no, it's, that's the influx

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of foreign silver is not enough to be causing grain prices

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to be, to, to be rising to the levels

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that they are rising in these crises.

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I think it has to be sufficient

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because it's hard to find any other factor

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driving agriculture.

13:57.645 --> 13:59.125
You have to remember, China in

13:59.745 --> 14:03.205
the 17th century is basically an agrarian society.

14:03.305 --> 14:06.085
It has a huge manufacturing SE sector,

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and that manufacturing sector is doing very well,

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selling abroad with, with some success.

14:12.265 --> 14:15.125
But ultimately the economy is an agrarian economy.

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And when grain prices start shooting up,

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there are not a lot of factors that you can think of.

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I mean, you could think of a population explosion,

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so the demand for grain is huge,

14:27.425 --> 14:30.245
but the, the population was going up through the 16th

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and 17th centuries,

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but I wouldn't say that it was exploding.

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So the, the problem is there is simply not enough grain

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being harvested, and the reason there's not enough grain

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being harvested is that the, the, the, the, the,

14:45.085 --> 14:50.005
temperatures are falling, the availability of, of, of water

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to irrigate the crops that water is disappearing.

14:53.265 --> 14:55.285
So you really have to step back

14:55.285 --> 14:57.405
to an environmental understanding

14:57.465 --> 14:59.925
of the conditions under which the main fell.

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Now, I have to say that I've been sort

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of in a frenzy way accused by one

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or two people of being a climate determinist.

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But frankly, when you're dealing

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with an agrarian economy in which massive food supply crises

15:15.215 --> 15:18.605
occur, there really isn't any other way, anywhere else

15:18.665 --> 15:21.645
to turn except to the, to environmental factors

15:21.705 --> 15:23.605
and in particular to climate change.

15:23.705 --> 15:25.205
And we know the record

15:25.265 --> 15:28.805
of the little ice Age is well enough understood on the basis

15:28.865 --> 15:31.085
of European data that in fact,

15:31.145 --> 15:34.045
we can transfer it quite comfortably into the Chinese

15:34.045 --> 15:38.085
context and see China going through many of the same

15:38.465 --> 15:41.325
or similar crises as to the crisis

15:41.355 --> 15:42.765
that Europe, Europe is going through.

15:42.765 --> 15:44.085
Europe in the 17th century,

15:44.185 --> 15:47.445
as we know from Jeffrey Parker's work,

15:47.665 --> 15:52.085
is experiencing some extraordinary, political

15:52.425 --> 15:56.125
and moral crises as a result of,

15:56.385 --> 16:00.325
the change in temperatures starvation,

16:00.625 --> 16:05.205
the military conflict that gets underway as, as rulers seek

16:05.205 --> 16:07.965
to grab resources from, from other rulers.

16:08.225 --> 16:11.005
So the fact that the Ming Dynasty collapsed

16:12.855 --> 16:16.835
is part of the story of the mid 17th century,

16:17.255 --> 16:18.835
all across the world.

16:18.865 --> 16:22.595
It's not, it's not a purely a Chinese story brought about

16:22.595 --> 16:26.435
because the Manchu suddenly felt like they had,

16:26.815 --> 16:28.475
the resources to invade China.

16:28.615 --> 16:31.955
In fact, if you think about it, the ma, one

16:31.955 --> 16:35.395
of the reasons the Manchus go south of the Great Wall

16:35.395 --> 16:39.515
and invade the country is that they too are feeling,

16:39.935 --> 16:41.555
are feeling the colder temperatures.

16:41.745 --> 16:43.435
They are having to move south.

16:43.865 --> 16:47.035
They, they moved into northeast China a couple of decades

16:47.255 --> 16:49.355
before the Ming fell in order

16:49.415 --> 16:51.355
to take over the grain production that was,

16:51.425 --> 16:53.835
that was going on in areas

16:53.845 --> 16:56.275
where Chinese farmers were producing grain.

16:56.415 --> 16:58.605
But as temperatures fell

16:59.065 --> 17:02.045
and as rainfall declined,

17:02.265 --> 17:05.205
the mans shoes were being pushed, I think

17:05.305 --> 17:08.165
by climate factors, they were being pushed southward

17:08.705 --> 17:11.245
in search of, food supply.

17:11.585 --> 17:14.165
And so it strengthened the manchus desire

17:14.225 --> 17:15.805
to move into China.

17:16.665 --> 17:19.565
And, it weakened the ability of China

17:19.585 --> 17:22.045
to defend itself against this foreign threat.

17:22.805 --> 17:24.445
I think it's a cautionary tale

17:24.985 --> 17:27.325
if we think about food supply.

17:27.725 --> 17:31.245
I mean, if, if we were to, if the world were to go through,

17:32.065 --> 17:36.205
as, as profound an environmental shock

17:36.665 --> 17:38.605
as it went through in the 17th century,

17:39.315 --> 17:41.325
then our food supply would be constrained.

17:41.585 --> 17:45.965
And that would then generate conflict between states

17:46.225 --> 17:48.845
as rulers seek to find food supply

17:49.225 --> 17:51.085
In order to keep their populations alive.

17:51.465 --> 17:53.325
Now, we live in a very different world than the,

17:53.325 --> 17:54.965
than the world of the 17th century.

17:55.625 --> 17:57.365
We have all kinds of ways to

17:58.405 --> 18:01.125
increase food production in the face

18:01.265 --> 18:05.205
of declining temperatures and declining rainfall.

18:05.985 --> 18:09.485
But nonetheless, there is a kind of bottom line.

18:09.705 --> 18:14.125
And if, if we in the world do not have sufficient,

18:14.905 --> 18:17.845
food to eat well, we can't survive.

18:17.865 --> 18:19.845
And it's going, and it, and it will lead to crisis.

18:20.265 --> 18:23.005
So there is something of a cautionary tale there.

18:23.985 --> 18:25.205
And,

18:26.705 --> 18:28.805
and it's probably something that, I mean,

18:29.055 --> 18:30.925
we're facing a different crisis at the moment

18:31.265 --> 18:33.325
as temperatures are rising because of,

18:33.755 --> 18:37.605
because of human induced changes in the climate.

18:37.985 --> 18:41.805
But if we were to suddenly see temperatures fall by five

18:41.825 --> 18:44.565
or 10 degrees and precipitation to fall

18:44.745 --> 18:48.965
by a significant percentage, we would, we as a, as a,

18:48.985 --> 18:52.845
as a world would be facing, another food supply crisis.

18:53.265 --> 18:55.725
So, so there is a cautionary tale there.

18:56.225 --> 19:01.205
And, and the tale is that, when people are desperate

19:01.585 --> 19:03.965
to establish around themselves the conditions

19:03.965 --> 19:06.805
that allow themselves to live and to reproduce

19:06.865 --> 19:11.805
and so forth, when that is threatened, the outcome is likely

19:11.865 --> 19:14.525
to be a political and military crisis.

00:00 - The historical context for the books I is the Fall of the Ming Dynasty, at least from the Chinese perspective. the Ming Dynasty was formed in 1368. It survived for close to three centuries, finally collapsing in 1644. It was a dynasty that emerged,

00:19 - because the Mongol Empire had absorbed China into its control. And in 1368, the Chinese kicked the Mongols out and established their own Chinese dynasty. And it lasted for three centuries. The other context is a little ice age, because although we now global history has, has caused us to become really aware of and sensitive to climate change, over, over the last many centuries.

00:50 - This was never part of the story that was told about the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Instead, the Ming Dynasty was seen as a, a failure of administration, a failure of leadership. China was under the rule of an emperor who was young and inexperienced, and his, the officials around him were all corrupt and so forth. Those are the stories that are usually told about the fall of the mean dynasty.

01:14 - But I've found that if you bring in the little Ice age as you have to, because the little Ice Age was a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon, it affected Europe. We know this very well. the, the English Civil War took place during a bad phase of the little Ice Age. And so it seemed to me, once I began to find data that that pointed to, a crisis in the 1630s and 1640s, it wasn't a moral crisis. It wasn't an administrative crisis.

01:46 - It wasn't even a financial crisis. It was an environmental crisis. And so that's, that's caused me to write the book that I've written, the price of Collapse. There is some scholarship on the main dynasty. It's not hugely written about. The main scholars of the main dynasty have been Chinese authors. And the Chinese narrative of the fall of the main dynasty is very much tied to this idea

02:10 - of a moral failure that is a Chinese dynasty came to power, and then it collapsed in the face of the threat from the Manchu who were, a sort of, like the Mongols, a semi nomadic people living, living in Siberia. That, that the failure of the Chinese to defend themselves against the Manchus was written out as a moral failure. And this was, this was a recipe that was a narrative, or I should say a narrative that was created

02:40 - by the conquering Manchus. They said, well, emperor Chung Jang was okay, but his commanders were of bogus merit. His administrators were all corrupt. he, he didn't have the backing of the best people in the realm in order to keep his dynasty Going. And so we stepped in and took over. And this is a self-serving narrative that the Manchus used as a way of persuading the Chinese, that they deserve

03:08 - to be the new rulers of China and not the old, the old, the old family that had ruled the Ming Dynasty for three centuries. And in fact, from my perspective, this is not a useful way of talking about history. Rarely does a moral explanation really explain to us why historical changes happen, that there are other factors. And in this case, I've had to turn to the Little Ice Age as a way of try to try

03:38 - and explain the fall of the Ming Dynasty. What I started to do, it was a completely different project. I started to collect data about commodity prices during the Ming Dynasty. I wanted to know what it cost to live during that dynasty. What could ordinary people afford? What could rich people afford? I was interested in developing a kind of social history of prices during the Ming Dynasty. And, and I found it very difficult to get the data

04:07 - because unlike European history in this period, Ming History does not have a lot of price data. You have to go scrounging here, there, and everywhere for little bits of data. Over time, I found that my best, most consistent data was the price to which grain rose during funds. And I started collecting this data from the middle of the 15th century forward to the middle of the 17th century. And this data,

04:37 - this data I found in local historical sources. There's a, there's a genre in Chinese history called the local Gaer. It's a kind of an administrative handbook that every county in the country was supposed to produce. There are about a thousand counties in Maine, China. So we have this enormous trove of local historical material that was put together by people, in the wake of, all sorts of historical and administrative changes. So I began to collect this, this price data,

05:11 - and I was going to write a, use this data to write a book on the history of Ming prices. And then I realized, wait a minute, what these prices are telling us, the price of grain during these crises was actually telling us a much more interesting narrative. Not so much about what it was like to live in China during the main dynasty, but what was it like to live during the little ice age during the, the deepest downturns of Little Ice Age?

05:40 - and so I, I I I, I also read in being the history, so, Jeffrey Parker's work, for example, on, on a global collapse of the 17th century, the global crisis, I think the book was called, Pointed me to the fact that the Northern Hemisphere was experiencing these terrible climate downturns. And that that, that my data about grain prices during, during these crisis periods was pointing me in the direction

06:14 - of the little Ice Age, not in terms of any, I mean, it does tell me something about what it meant to live during those periods. And it was brutal because the price of grain grew tens to hundreds of times more than it should have been. This created massive prices, depopulation people died. There were, there were pandemics that broke out under these conditions. So China experienced some very difficult periods between the 1450s and the 1640s,

06:46 - and they lined up so, so almost seamlessly with what we know of the little Ice Age. I dropped the book that I was going to write about Bryce's and the main dynasty and decided, no, let's, let's work with the story that the data are, is, is telling me about. And that's the story of the effect of the little Ice age in China. And I, I should add that I'm interested in this sort of thing because as a historian, I'm a historian of Maine China, but I'm also interested in

07:15 - how do we place Chinese history in a global context? How do we connect Chinese history to Western history? And how do we think about, not, not just in a comparative sense, but what are the common factors that are being shared in the world when events are happening in China? So more and more, I've tried to place Ming history inside a global context. And the little Ice Age was, was where I ended up

07:45 - settling this, this stack of data that I, I had collected. The data that I, I chose is, is, if you like, it's untypical data. It's data that is collected at a time of crisis. And it's a way for historians or is, people in China to record the scale of the, of the, of the crisis they were experiencing. So prices are a kind of, quantitative metric that you can use to say, well, life was going along fine, and then all of a sudden grain prices were 10

08:21 - times what they should have been. And there was, there was a massive crisis. So, the data is, it's a, it's it's crisis data. And, but I found that as I collected this data from Gaza, tears from counties all over China, there was, there was a pattern that emerged of these, these crises happening at roughly the same time. And so the, the data pointed me towards,

08:55 - towards these, these, these terrible moments when, temperatures fell. And, I mean the, the little Ice age affected China and Europe a bit differently. Leroy Laie famously said, Europe's experience of the little Ice age in the 17th century was that it was cold and wet. Now, China's experience of the little ice age in the 17th century was that it was cold and dry.

09:21 - Wet is not such a problem if you're growing rice, but drought is terrible for rice. wheat can sometimes can survive dry conditions, but it can't survive hugely wet conditions. Whereas rice can survive wet conditions but can't survive dry conditions. So, so the little ice age played out differently in the two parts of the world. But, it's, it's, it that that was what, that was what led me to, to the, to the model

09:52 - that I've applied for the fall of the being dynasty. Now, the other way that we, who are interested in world history have have thought about, the collapse of being China is that it was starting in the late 16th century that Spain was mining silver in the new world. A lot of that silver was being shipped up to Acapulco being put on what are called the Manila ions, and then sailed off and, and to the Spanish colony in the Philippines to Manila.

10:23 - And there in Manila, Chinese, Chinese merchants brought, Chinese, products out to Manila. They traded with the Spanish merchants. they took the silver and gave the Spanish merchants the silk, some, the porcelains and the paper, and, to some extent furniture as well, and paintings. they brought all of these, all of this, these commodities out, sold them to the Chinese merchants, filled their ships with the silver that they were paid,

10:55 - and then took the silver back to China. And one of the arguments that got going early on was that this influx of silver had to have been distorting the Chinese economy and had to have been causing inflation. Well, there, there are two problems with that explanation. One is that the Chinese economy was so huge. I mean, the Chinese economy was on the scale of the entire European economy, that the influx of silver, it seemed to me, was not sufficient to cause

11:25 - inflation on the scale that we're seeing in these grain prices. And I have to say that we, we really don't have much other price data except for grain. So, it's, it, it struck me that the influx of silver through the transpacific silver trade was not sufficient to drive the prices up to the level it did. And, secondly, you can't find, or I Haven't been able to find in Chinese sources, any writer who, who makes that link, who says, well,

12:00 - silver is pouring into the country and prices are going crazy. There's only one commodity market in which the prices went through the roof, I think because of the imported silver, and that was the art market and the luxury market. So people buying luxuries and fine art were paying hugely inflated prices into the 1630s and 1640s. And that, I think, is not an environmental issue.

12:28 - That's because the silver was largely in the hands of rich merchants. And so the silver didn't go out into the economy. The silver was, was kept in, in the hands of certain households who then decided they were gonna spend their silver on fine art and luxuries and so forth. So the luxury market was a, was somewhat affected, I think, by the influx of New world silver. But the food market wasn't, the grain market wasn't,

12:54 - the grain market was too large. And, and interestingly, the, the grain market on the, in the coastal areas was no more inflated than the grain market deep in the interior where none of the new world silver was, could, could possibly reach. So we had two phenomenon here. One, yes, China is beginning to be incorporated into the global economy, but the effects of that global economy are not so huge as

13:25 - to be driving grain prices in the country. And that's why I, I, in fact, in the price of collapse, I devoted an, a full chapter to thinking about China's foreign trade as a way of sort of testing out this hypothesis. And in the end, I decide, no, it's, that's the influx of foreign silver is not enough to be causing grain prices to be, to, to be rising to the levels that they are rising in these crises. I think it has to be sufficient

13:53 - because it's hard to find any other factor driving agriculture. You have to remember, China in the 17th century is basically an agrarian society. It has a huge manufacturing SE sector, and that manufacturing sector is doing very well, selling abroad with, with some success. But ultimately the economy is an agrarian economy. And when grain prices start shooting up, there are not a lot of factors that you can think of.

14:23 - I mean, you could think of a population explosion, so the demand for grain is huge, but the, the population was going up through the 16th and 17th centuries, but I wouldn't say that it was exploding. So the, the problem is there is simply not enough grain being harvested, and the reason there's not enough grain being harvested is that the, the, the, the, the, temperatures are falling, the availability of, of, of water to irrigate the crops that water is disappearing.

14:53 - So you really have to step back to an environmental understanding of the conditions under which the main fell. Now, I have to say that I've been sort of in a frenzy way accused by one or two people of being a climate determinist. But frankly, when you're dealing with an agrarian economy in which massive food supply crises occur, there really isn't any other way, anywhere else to turn except to the, to environmental factors

15:21 - and in particular to climate change. And we know the record of the little ice Age is well enough understood on the basis of European data that in fact, we can transfer it quite comfortably into the Chinese context and see China going through many of the same or similar crises as to the crisis that Europe, Europe is going through. Europe in the 17th century, as we know from Jeffrey Parker's work,

15:47 - is experiencing some extraordinary, political and moral crises as a result of, the change in temperatures starvation, the military conflict that gets underway as, as rulers seek to grab resources from, from other rulers. So the fact that the Ming Dynasty collapsed is part of the story of the mid 17th century, all across the world. It's not, it's not a purely a Chinese story brought about because the Manchu suddenly felt like they had,

16:26 - the resources to invade China. In fact, if you think about it, the ma, one of the reasons the Manchus go south of the Great Wall and invade the country is that they too are feeling, are feeling the colder temperatures. They are having to move south. They, they moved into northeast China a couple of decades before the Ming fell in order to take over the grain production that was, that was going on in areas

16:53 - where Chinese farmers were producing grain. But as temperatures fell and as rainfall declined, the mans shoes were being pushed, I think by climate factors, they were being pushed southward in search of, food supply. And so it strengthened the manchus desire to move into China. And, it weakened the ability of China to defend itself against this foreign threat.

17:22 - I think it's a cautionary tale if we think about food supply. I mean, if, if we were to, if the world were to go through, as, as profound an environmental shock as it went through in the 17th century, then our food supply would be constrained. And that would then generate conflict between states as rulers seek to find food supply In order to keep their populations alive. Now, we live in a very different world than the,

17:53 - than the world of the 17th century. We have all kinds of ways to increase food production in the face of declining temperatures and declining rainfall. But nonetheless, there is a kind of bottom line. And if, if we in the world do not have sufficient, food to eat well, we can't survive. And it's going, and it, and it will lead to crisis. So there is something of a cautionary tale there. And,

18:26 - and it's probably something that, I mean, we're facing a different crisis at the moment as temperatures are rising because of, because of human induced changes in the climate. But if we were to suddenly see temperatures fall by five or 10 degrees and precipitation to fall by a significant percentage, we would, we as a, as a, as a world would be facing, another food supply crisis. So, so there is a cautionary tale there. And, and the tale is that, when people are desperate

19:01 - to establish around themselves the conditions that allow themselves to live and to reproduce and so forth, when that is threatened, the outcome is likely to be a political and military crisis.

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