The Relationship between Famine, Peasant Uprisings and Climate Change in China over the Past 2000 Years

Famine and uprisings, sensetive to climate change, had serious social impacts in ancient China. Based on historical literature records, a famine index sequence and a frequency sequence of peasant uprisings were constructed. There are 826 years with records of famine in the total of 2 117 years from the Western Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. A total of 4 186 famine events have been recorded in total. Famine was most severe in the Yuan, Qing, Ming and Song dynasties. There were 468 large-scale peasant uprisings of national significance in historical China. In the Sui, Eastern Han, Yuan and Ming dynasties, there were more frequent peasant uprisings. The changes of the famine index and temperature anomalies over the past 2000 years are significantly negatively correlated, while the correlations between famine index and dry-wet index are not significant. Most of the decades with the high frequency of famine events were within the cold periods or the warm-cold transition periods. On the other side, at the 90-year timescale, the frequency of peasant uprisings correlated negatively with both temperature anomalies and dry-wet index. It is very notable that peasant uprisings were less frequent during the warm periods, while they were more frequent during the cold periods.