Bruce M.S. Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World (2016)

This is an extremely impressive, well-written, and stimulating book. It successfully instantiates what Michael McCormick called for in 2011, a "science of the human past" that integrates traditional historical methods with new scientific measures of historical climatic change and ancient DNA. Nonetheless, after reviewing the book's many strengths, I also note some lacunae. Campbell skilfully toggles between the three domains identified in his subtitle, climatic change, disease, and economic life, showing both their independent trajectories and interconnections. Though trained as an historian (or perhaps social scientist), Campbell seems to have made himself expert in the other two fields, an impressive accomplishment. He writes knowledgeably of the factors contributing to Europe's commercial expansion from roughly 1100 to 1300, subsequent plateau and outright contraction from the 1340s. For me some of the most interesting sections were about the reorientation of European economies in the fifteenth century, especially in the Low Countries, England, and a few other places in response to the demographic collapse and blockage of most trade with the east. While I'd known some of this in outline, Campbell filled in much interesting detail. The real innovation of the book, however, is to place all this human activity in a much broader context. After reading this book, any traditional economic history of the time will seem woefully incomplete - climatic changes, especially the onset of the Little Ice Age in the late fourteenth century, and the various animal and human epidemics (not just the Black Death and follow-on waves) must be included and integrated in the account. While Campbell casts an eye on other parts of Eurasia, as well as the Americas and Africa, his focus is Europe. Given how impressive this book is, it may seem churlish to offer any criticisms. But I wish he had, at least occasionally, used comparisons to strengthen his causal claims. We learn next to nothing about the Bubonic Plague in China. Campbell suggests that the Great Transition prepared the way for the Great Divergence between Europe and China. But without explicit treatment of China, his argument remains at most suggestive. This is also true of his effort to integrate human, climatic, and epidemic history. Since all three domains turned in a negative direction starting in the early fourteenth century, we don't know quite how much of the downturn was due to the Black Death, the beginnings of the Little Ice Age, and, say, increasing warfare and rising transaction costs. Only comparison might have helped tease out their different contributions.