A new study suggests the 1640 eruption of Parker Volcano in the Philippines may have contributed to the fall of China’s Ming dynasty.
A paper published in the April issue of the scientific journal Climate of the Past proposes this view. It was written by Richard Warren of the Institute of History at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
The study notes that the eruption, some 3,850km from Beijing, could have triggered shifts in temperature and precipitation, raising the risk of droughts, floods and crop failures that worsened social instability.
Conventional accounts have attributed the Ming collapse to eunuch dictatorship, factionalism among officials, peasant uprisings and the rise of the Manchus. The research suggests adding natural catastrophe to the discussion.
