Symposium paper: environment

Another session that I attended was on the issue of environmental history in both the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds. 

My summaries:

“European Science in Istanbul During the Tulip Era”
This historian presented on the relationship between Ottoman learning and western learning right after the Ottomans started using the printing press for the first time (1728, somewhat behind the times).  He looked at the first books published and where the information contained in these mostly science and history books came from.  

“The Mountains and the Shores: Some Questions on Ottoman Environmental History from a Mediterranean Perspective”
This historians thoughts were certainly big picture, relating the changes in the Ottoman economy to the changes in the types of land that they control at times.  

“The Ottoman Empire and the Little Ice Age”
This young, ambitious historian wants to describe many of the disasters of the Ottoman Empire to issues of the environment, especially climate change.  In 1621 for example, the Bosporus froze completely so people could actually walk across from Europe to Asia.  A famine in the city resulted.  Riots followed, and a crisis of monarchy occurred.  He also wanted to tag a number of revolts at the same time in France (the Fronde), England (Civil War), China (fall of the Ming Dynasty), and West Africa to the Little Ice Age of the early 1620s.  Inconvenient Truth, anyone?