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⁴ This opinion is elaborated in my first Faculty Invitation Lecture at the University of Exeter, 1985: “The Suppression and Attainment of Growth in World History”.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ This is far from the case. The whole history of climate enterprise has been devoted to showing that climatic variables have changed over time (to identifying, say, the Little Ice Age) as well as asserting that this has mattered. For rainfall see for example Glasspoole, J., “Two Centuries of Rain,” The Meteorological Magazine, 63 (02 1928), pp. 1–6;Google ScholarHare, F. Kenneth, “Climatic Variation and Variability: Empirical Evidence from Meteorological and Other Sources,” in World Meteorological Organization, Proceedings, World Climate Conference, Geneva, 12–2302 1979, No. 537 (Geneva, nd.);Google ScholarLamb, H. H., The Changing Climate (London, 1966);Google ScholarPittock, A. B. et al. , eds., Climatic Change and Variability: A Southern Perspective (Cambridge, 1978);Google Scholar and Pfister, Christian, “The Little Ice Age: Thermal and Wetness Indices for Central Europe,” in Rotberg, Robert I. and Rabb, Theodore K., eds., Climate and History (Princeton, 1981), pp. 85–116.Google Scholar Compared with temperature data, historical rainfall records are few and less easily standardized, but they do exist and are reported and graphed in standard sources. While those from the seventeenth century and after show little global trend (Hare, “Climatic Variation,” pp. 70–71) they display considerable variation from time to time in any given region–depending on one's a priori conception of what “considerable” may be. Decennial averages computed from a number of stations in England from 1727–1926 vary from 87 percent to 108 percent of the mean for 1881–1915. Comparing twenty-year periods, for instance, the variatirin is almost as marked, for example 1727–1746, 92 percent of the mean; 1870–1889, 106 percent of the mean. In these circumstances it is not proper to project modem rainfall patterns backwards.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Shao-wu, Wang and Zong-ci, Zhao, “Droughts and floods in China, 1470–1979,” in Wigley, et al. , eds., Climate and History, pp. 271–88.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Petterssen's map appears as Figure A.19 in U.S. Committee for the Global Atmospheric Research Program, Understanding Climatic Change (Washington, D.C., 1975).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Compare Mallory, Walter H., China, Land of Famine (New York, 1926).Google Scholar

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