Quantitative analysis of the impact of droughts and floods on internal wars in China over the last 500 years

作     者：Harry F.LEE David D.ZHANG PEI Qing JIA Xin Ricci P.H.YUE 

作者机构：Department of Geography and International Center for China Development StudiesThe University of Hong Kong School of Geographical SciencesGuangzhou University Department of Social SciencesThe Education University of Hong Kong School of Geographic and Oceanographic SciencesNanjing University 

出 版 物：《Science China Earth Sciences》 (中国科学（地球科学英文版）)

年 卷 期：2017年第60卷第12期

页      面：2078-2088页

核心收录：

学科分类：11[军事学] 110102[军事学-军事历史] 1101[军事学-军事思想及军事历史] 07[理学] 070601[理学-气象学] 0708[理学-地球物理学] 0706[理学-大气科学] 0704[理学-天文学] 

基　　金：supported by the Hui Oi-Chow Trust Fund(Grant Nos.201502172003&201602172006) Research Grants Council of The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China(Grant Nos.HKU745113H&17610715) the CAS-SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams 

主　　题：Floods and droughts Climatic extremes Internal wars Wars Social stability Ming-Qing period 

摘      要：Although many large-N quantitative studies have evidenced the adverse effects of climatic extremes on social stability in China during the historical period, most of them rely on temperature and precipitation as major explanatory variables, while the influence of floods and droughts on social crises is rarely measured. Furthermore, a comparison of the climate-society nexus among different geographic regions and at different temporal scales is missing in those studies. To address this knowledge gap,this study examines quantitatively the influence of floods and droughts on internal wars in three agro-ecological(rice, wheat,and pastoral) regions in China in AD1470–1911. Poisson regression and wavelet transform coherence analyses are applied to allow for the non-linear and non-stationary nature of the climate-war nexus. Results show that floods and droughts are significant in driving internal wars in historical China, but are characterized by strong regional variation. In the rice region, floods trigger internal wars at the inter-annual and multi-decadal time scales. In the wheat region, both floods and droughts cause internal wars at the inter-annual and multi-decadal time scales. In the pastoral region, internal wars are associated with floods only at the multi-decadal time scale. In addition, the multi-decadal coherence between hydro-climatic extremes and internal wars in all three of the agro-ecological regions is only significant in periods in which population density is increasing or the upper limit of regional carrying capacity is being reached. The above results imply that the climate-war nexus is mediated by regional geographic factors such as physical environmental setting and population pressure. Hence, we encourage researchers who study the historical human-climate relationship to boil down data according to geographic regions in the course of statistical analysis and to examine each region individually in follow-up studies.