Recurring Dark Ages
* Book: The Recurring Dark Ages. Ecological Stress, Climate Changes, and System Transformation. By SING C. CHEW. Rowman and Littlefield, 2006
URL = https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759104525/The-Recurring-Dark-Ages-Ecological-Stress-Climate-Changes-and-System-Transformation; https://www.nhbs.com/the-recurring-dark-ages-book pdf
Description
"In this modern era of global environmental crisis, Sing Chew provides a convincing analysis of the recurring human and environmental crises identified as Dark Ages. In this, his second of a three-volume series concerning world ecological degradation, Chew reviews the past 5,000-year history of structural conditions and processes that define the relationship between nature and culture. Chew's message about the coming Dark Ages, as human communities continue to reorganize to meet the contingencies of ecological scarcity and climate changes, is a must-read for those concerned with human interactions and environmental changes, including environmental anthropologists and historians, world historians, geographers, archaeologists, and environmental scientists."
Review
1. Mats Widgren:
"In this book, which is a follow up of the authorʼs World Ecological Degradation, Sing Chew sets out to add an ecological dimension to previous studies of world systems and more specifically to study the role of ecology in explaining Dark Ages – periods of social, economic and demographic decline. The thesis is that ʻDark Ages occur as a consequence of ecological exhaustion and stress and exhibit losses in wealth, trade disruptions, and simplification of lifestyles and less hierarchization and more egalitarianism of the social structureʼ (p. 160). This argument, of a connection, or even a causative relation between over-utilisation of natural resources and social crisis is not new. New is perhaps the attempt to analyse Dark Ages through time, from the Bronze Age to the fall of the Roman Empire, and to put this in the context of the present global situation. Given the vast and fast growing body of literature on environmental history, based on scientific methods in archaeology, palaeoecology and palaeoclimatology, there is scope today for such a work aimed at a broad synthesis. Chewʼs material for the analysis of the ecological component in world systems history is a rather small selection of secondary literature, together with data from 40 pollen diagrams. These cover an area from Greenland in the northwest to Turkey in the southeast and a number of European countries in between. It is an innovative approach to make use of such a data set in order to illuminate the relations between economic/social expansion and regression, and the use of natural resources. Pollen diagrams do give a comparatively standardised picture of changes in the composition of vegetation. Moreover, for the periods and for most of the areas that Chew focuses on, human influence plays a central role in these changes. That type of data therefore represents an interesting contrast to what can be gathered from scant historical and archaeological sources for the same periods.
2. Joseph Tainter:
"The Recurring Dark Ages is Sing C. Chew’s sequel to his earlier book, World Ecological Degradation (2001), in which he argued that environmental damage repeatedly caused ancient societies to collapse. Chew concluded that deforestation in particular damaged both ancient ecosystems and the so- cieties they supported. Beyond removing trees, deforesta- tion caused erosion that undermined production. This, he asserts, affected both societies in forested areas and their trade partners elsewhere. Chew believes that deforestation and erosion caused the collapse of Bronze Age societies in Mesopotamia, the Indus River Basin, Minoan Crete, and Mycenaean Greece.
Chew’s present theme is the aftermath of collapse. Some postcollapse periods are called “dark ages,” referring to the declines in literacy and numeracy that often accom- pany a rapid drop in sociopolitical complexity. Chew ap- propriates the term for broader use. The book’s perspective, within the Marxist tradition of World System Theory, is vi- talistic: social systems evolve unless they “face obstacles” (p. 4). Obstacles arising from environmental degradation occur rarely, but they precipitate long, widespread crises.
These crises correspond, in Chew’s framework, to dark ages. Chew lists the characteristics of dark ages as disruption of trade, simplification of hierarchies and lifestyles, deurbanization, increased migration, and population losses (p. 10). Yet beyond crises, dark ages provide “opportunities for the resolution of contradictions” (p. 12). These opportunities appear near the end of dark ages, when “the natural environment has started to rejuvenate” (p. 12). Dark ages resolve the environmental crises of expansion, usually over a period of several centuries. A dark age “provides the window of opportunity for the ecological landscape to be restored and to enable economic and productive capacities to continue. ... [with] innovations in social organization and technology” (p. 13). In other words, dark ages give the earth a breathing spell, a period of relief from hard usage. In World Ecological Degradation, Chew cared little for data. His collapse explanations consisted of sweeping assertions. Chew uses the present work to dismiss previous criticism as the concern of scholars who are “guided ... by the naturalistic-scientific methodological conception ... or subjectivistic-phenomenological interpretations” (p. 6). Yet after this withering rejoinder, Chew compromises with his critics. He adds climate change to his collapse sce- narios. More importantly, he provides data—banished to appendices but present for “naturalistic-scientific” schol- ars who cannot overcome a compulsion for evidence. The data consist of pollen counts for various floras ranging spa- tially across Europe and the Mediterranean, and temporally across the periods of interest.
Chew investigates three episodes of collapse followed by previously known dark ages: circa 2200–1700 B.C.E., 1200–700 B.C.E., and C.E. 300 or 400–900. These episodes correspond to the collapses of the Early Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age, and the Western Roman Empire. But the pollen data reveal more episodes of deforestation, including one dating from 3854 to 2400 B.C.E. Archaeologists have not previously designated this a dark age, nor identified the preceding period as ending in collapse. Nonetheless, Chew labels this period “Dark Age phase 1” (p. 48). A simi- lar discovery in the pollen profiles leads Chew to announce a “Dark Age phase 4,” extending from C.E. 1311 to 1733 (pp. 48, 54). I know of no historian of the late Middle Ages, Renaissance, or early Modern period who has discerned a dark age in this era. With these discoveries Chew’s reason- ing turns circular: he theorizes that dark ages are periods of environmental degradation, then uses periods of such degradation to identify previously unknown dark ages. One of the dangers of resorting to data is that one can- not control the results.
Collapses are often preceded by a leveling or decline of population, beginning anywhere from a few decades to two or three centuries before. This phenomenon presents difficulties for Chew’s framework. If environmental degradation causes collapse, shouldn’t a reduction in environmental pressure through population decline avert collapse? Unfortunately for Chew, that is not how history has played out. In northwestern Europe, for example, forests were regrowing late in the Roman period, yet the Western empire collapsed nonetheless. Such facts suggest that it is an oversimplification to ascribe collapse solely to environmental degradation ."
Excerpts
From the Preface
Sing Chew:
"The reader will find in this book, the second of a three-volume series, my continuing journey to understand the structural conditions and processes that determine the relationship between Nature and Culture.
In particular, I am focusing on a specific conjuncture in world history known as the Dark Ages to elucidate further the structural processes of the Nature-Culture relations, and the structural transformation of the world system.
In the first volume, World Ecological Degradation, I indicated that Dark Ages were critical phases in system reproduction, and that a comparative understanding of them was necessary to understand the evolution of the world system.
Particularly in this book, I wish to clarify further the Nature-Culture relations via an examination of the Dark Ages in order to have a clearer understanding of system crisis and system transformations from an ecological world system history perspective-an approach I proposed some ten years ago (Chew 1997b).
This attempt on my part to scrutinize the issue of system crisis and transformation is to propose that perhaps it is "ecology in command" that might be the key that will offer a more robust explanation of system crisis and transformation than what has been attempted to date as the "economy in command" approach in world-systems analysis (Chew 2002b).
In an era of global environmental crisis, I hope that my approach will become more convincing as the crisis deepens, and that we will shift our way of thinking and analysis so that we can have a clearer view of what has occurred and what will happen.
To delve further into an understanding of system transformation, I propose in this book to consider Dark Ages in world history not only as a historical period for study, but also as a historical-theoretical concept to understand the historical moments of social system crisis and transition. By doing this in a historical-comparative manner over time-space boundaries, I believe, we can have a better grasp of system crisis and transition.
This effort on my part is to try to convince the reader that we need to consider that theory is history, and that history is theory. In this sense, a comparative-historical examination of the Dark Ages over world history and our understanding of these phases are informed by our ecological world system history perspective, and pari passu, our analysis of the historical events and processes of Dark Ages informs and modifies our theoretical view of Dark Ages over world history.
Given the above, my investigation of Dark Ages over world history has convinced me, and hopefully the reader, that these periods are significant moments in human world history, for they are transitional phases of system transformation. It is my belief that Dark Ages (as historical events and as a theoretical concept) are critical crisis periods in world history over the course of the last five thousand years when environmental conditions have played a significant part in determining how societies, kingdoms, empires, and civilizations are reorganized and organized. Therefore, Dark Ages are significant moments for human his- tory. They are periods of devolution of human communities, and as such from the perspective of human progress, a period of socioeconomic and political decay and retrogression. However, Dark Ages are periods of the restoration of the landscape, which are a consequence of the slowdown of human activities. In short, Dark Ages rejuvenate Nature but are bad for Humans.
To view it in such light would be in my view limiting by pitting one position against the other. Dark Ages, if we examine the historical events, conditions, and circumstances, are also historical phases of innovations, learning, and reorganizations. Being so, they are periods whereby the human communities that are impacted by these Dark Age conditions are forced by circumstances, and not perhaps by choice, to reorganize in a different manner to meet the contingencies of ecological scarcity and climate changes. It is my belief that this forms the basis for system transformation and the evolution of the world system.
This theme of system transition is discussed briefly in the concluding chapter of this book. I have reserved the full treatment of this theme, which I have termed ecological flltl/res, for the final volume of this three- volume study of world ecological degradation over five thousand years of world history."