Abstract
East Asia, like the rest of the world, faced the Medieval Warm Period from the early 900s through the 1200s. At its height, this period was the warmest in history until the human-caused warming of today. In East Asia, the greatest beneficiaries, in relative terms, were the steppe and boreal forest societies. They changed from poor peripheral societies to powerful regional ones, and eventually to all-conquering world powers. China, Japan, and Vietnam, by contrast, were often devastated by floods. This produced the clearest signature of climate directly influencing East Asian history, since weakened China could not withstand the invigorated Central and North Asian powers, while Japan was wracked by wars that destroyed the old society and eventually created a new one.
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Anderson, E.N. (2019). The Rise of Central Asia: Coastal Golden Ages Increasingly Threatened by Conquest Dynasties from the Deep Interior. In: The East Asian World-System. World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16870-4_6
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