Disasters and History: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Past Societies

Abstract

This book has emerged in the context of four key developments occurring over the past decade or so in the broad field of ‘the history of disasters.’ These are, first, the growing recognition that natural conditions and events likely had an important role to play in determining historical outcomes; second, the increasing use of non-documentary sources – including DNA, tree rings, and ice-cores – and the related quest for linking the natural and social sciences; third, the establishment of very large digital databases of information; and fourth, the gradual dominance of an explanatory framework for disasters that emphasizes resilience, and, more specifically, adaptation.