Climate Changes, Plagues and Wars

Nicola Di Cosmo is Henry Luce Foundation Professor of East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, USA). He studies the relations between China and Inner Asia from the first millennium BCE to the early modern period. He has published on the connections between climate, environment, and politics in the history of steppe empires. Among his recent publications are the co-authored book Venice and the Mongols: The Eurasian Exchange that Transformed the Medieval World (Princeton 2026), and the co-edited works Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran and the Steppe (Cambridge 2018) and Rebel Economies: Warlords. Insurgents, Humanitarians (Lanham 2021). Yoichi Isahaya is Associate Professor at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. He earned his PhD in Area Studies from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, in September 2015. His research examines the Mongol empire (1206–1368) within an Afro-Eurasian framework, emphasizing cross-cultural interactions and environmental history. His Japanese monograph, The Mongol Empire in the History of Eurasia (Tokyo 2025), situates the Mongol empire within the broader dynamics of Eurasian history.

• AcknowledgementsList of ContributorsList of FiguresIntroduction: The Crisis of the 14th Century in Afro-Eurasian ContextNicola Di Cosmo & Yoichi Isahaya1. German Cistercian Monasteries and Climate Change in Transition to the Little Ice AgeToshio Ohnuki2. On Cooling in the Lower Amur Basin in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth CenturyKazuyuki Nakamura3. Climate Anomalies and Disasters in China in the 13th and 14th CenturiesNobuhiro Uno & Takeshi Nakatsuka4. Snowfall in Baghdad: The Mongol Empire on the Threshold of the Little Ice AgeYoichi Isahaya & Takeshi Nakatsuka5. Between the Adriatic and the Caspian Sea: Socio-Environmental Perspectives on the Crisis of the Fourteenth Century from the Former Byzantine and Future Ottoman Imperial SpheresJohannes Preiser-Kapeller6. Dry and Wet Years as Causes of Famines in the Rus’ Principalities and the Golden Horde in the Fourteenth Century: A Comparison of Historical Records and Climate ProxiesRuslan Shakhmatov7. The Fourteenth-Century Crisis and Transformation of Central AsiaPhilip Slavin8. Epidemics and the 14th Century’s Decline of the Chinggisid StatesIshayahu Landa9. The Crisis of 1343 on the Black Sea: Causes, Context and ConsequencesNicola Di Cosmo10. A Witness of Two Dynasties’ Decadence: The Life and Career of Arghūn Shāh al-Nāṣirī in the Shadow of 14th Century CrisisNicola Di CosmoIndex