Strange Parallels Research Articles

Quantifying the internal and external drivers of Southeast Asian rainfall extremes on decadal timescales

Rainfall over mainland Southeast Asia experiences variability on seasonal to decadal timescales in response to a multitude of climate phenomena. Historical records and paleoclimate archives that span the last millennium reveal extreme multi-year rainfall variations that significantly affected the societies of mainland Southeast Asia. Here we utilize the Community Earth System Model Last Millennium Ensemble (CESM-LME) to quantify the contributions of internal and external drivers to decadal-scale rainfall extremes in the Southeast Asia region. We find that internal variability was dominant in driving both Southeast Asian drought and pluvial extremes on decadal timescales although external forcing impacts are also detectable. Specifically, rainfall extremes are more sensitive to Pacific Ocean internal variability than the state of the Indian Ocean. This discrepancy is greater for droughts than pluvials which we suggest is attributable to external forcing impacts that counteract the forced Indian Ocean teleconnections to Southeast Asia. Volcanic aerosols, the most effective radiative forcing during the last millennium, contributed to both the Ming Dynasty Drought (1637–1643) and the Strange Parallels Drought (1756–1768). From the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age, we observe a shift in Indo-Pacific teleconnection strength to Southeast Asia consistent with enhanced volcanism during the latter interval. This work not only highlights asymmetries in the drivers of rainfall extremes but also presents a framework for quantifying multivariate drivers of decadal-scale variability and hydroclimatic extremes.

Drought (scPDSI) reconstruction of trans-Himalayan region of central Himalaya using Pinus wallichiana tree-rings

Knowledge of the long-term frequency and intensity of drought events in an area is crucial since drought has adverse effects on natural ecosystems, food security, economy, society, and civilization. We developed a 405-year long (1611–2015C.E.) tree-ring chronology of Pinus wallichiana (Blue pine) from the Dolpo area of the trans–Himalayan region in Nepal to reconstruct drought variability in this remote region. Correlation analysis revealed significant positive relationships with February–August precipitation, but negative correlations with temperature. High positive correlations with the self-calibrated Palmer drought severity index (scPDSI) confirmed that moisture availability during the early growing season and full growing season is the primary limiting factor for Blue pine tree growth in the trans–Himalayan region. We used a linear regression model between our tree-ring record and regional climate data to reconstruct a 319-year long (1697–2015C.E.) February–August scPDSI series. This reconstruction accounts for 39.4% of the total variance in actual scPDSI over the calibration period (1957–2015C.E.). The reconstruction showed that the area was under slightly dry conditions for most of the reconstructed period, with below normal scPDSI values. An extreme drought was observed in the year 1707. Also, the years 1705, 1706, 1784, 1786, 1809, 1810, 1813, 1821, 1849, 1858, 1861, 1909, 1967, 2006, and 2009 experienced severe drought conditions. Consecutive years with moderate drought were 1702–1706, 1783–1789, 1796–1798, 1812–1814, 1816–1827, 1846–1848, 1856–1864, 1873–1877, 1879–1882, 1899–1901, 1908–1911, and 1967–1968. Three historic mega-drought events that occurred in Asia were also captured in our reconstruction: Strange Parallels drought (1756–1768), the East India drought (1790–1796), and the late Victorian Great Drought (1876–1878). Very few wet years (1776–1979, 1989, 1991, and 2003) were observed during the reconstruction period. Power spectrum analysis revealed drought variability at frequencies of 2.0–2.5, 3.0, 12.0, and 128 years, suggesting that drought in the region might be linked to broad-scale atmospheric-oceanic variabilities such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The results not only improve our understanding on regional drought variability, but are also helpful to make decisions on adaptation measures for protecting the marginal communities of the trans–Himalayan region from the anticipated adverse impacts of future droughts.

1. INDIA IN A WORLD: DILEMMAS OF SOVEREIGNTY

ABSTRACTAzfar Moin's The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam prompts a consideration not only of the histories of Islam and early modern connected histories of Central and South Asia, but also of current debates about local and global history‐writing. Moin's work intersects with a strand of comparative world history—following Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels—but also engages strands of historical anthropology, bringing to light a range of compelling stakes for global historians, historians of South Asia, and scholars of nationalism alike. Though Moin's work pushes the boundaries of connected histories centered on South Asia, his focus on a trans‐regional millennial science avoids questions of the local within new global histories.

Multi-scale drought and ocean–atmosphere variability in monsoon Asia

Spatially extensive and persistent drought episodes have repeatedly influenced human history, including the ‘Strange Parallels’ drought event in monsoon Asia during the mid-18th century. Here we explore the dynamics of sustained monsoon failure using observed and tree-ring reconstructed drought patterns and a 1300-year pre-industrial community earth system model control run. Both modern observational and climate model drought patterns during years with extremely weakened South Asian monsoon resemble those reconstructed for the Strange Parallels drought. Model analysis reveals that this pattern arises during boreal spring over Southeast Asia, with decreased precipitation and moisture flux, while related summertime climate anomalies are confined to the Indian subcontinent. Years with simulated South Asian drying exhibit canonical El Niño conditions over the Pacific and associated shifts in the Walker circulation. In contrast, multi-year drought periods, resembling those sustained during the Strange Parallels drought, feature anomalous Pacific warming around the dateline, typical of El Niño Modoki events.

Southeast Asia. Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800–1830, vol. 2. By Victor Lieberman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 947. Maps, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800-1830, vol. 2 By VICTOR LIEBERMAN New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 947. Maps, Notes, Bibliography, Index. This is a giant work in many senses of the word. Physically, it is gigantic. At close to 1000 pages, reading the book is like going on a long journey with its share of hardships and rewards. In terms of ambition, it wants to retell the history of the evolution of the modern world over a millennium. As a work of scholarship, aside from Victor Lieberman's important primary work on the empires of mainland Southeast Asia, it packs in the equivalent of secondary readings from at least six masters programmes in the regional histories of China, India, Japan, Russia, France and island Southeast Asia. The equally vast strengths of the book lie in its impeccable scholarship, the author's indefatigable capacity to carefully synthesise research and debates within each field, and to draw comparisons and contrasts between these regions. The argument is, however, not easy to summarise. It is not in the mode of historical sociology where the materials are organised around the argument. Rather it is a vast comparative history which presents the longue duree of eight regions of the world, more or less. Nor does it have an easily identifiable narrative. Rather, the fruits of this work emerge from the integration of ah older narrative with a comparative methodology that yields new subnarratives of considerable interest. Lieberman's goal remains in large part to understand the distinctiveness of the modern state and society. As such it remains within the Enlightenment-modernisation narrative. His selections are not shaped by Marxist-subaltern goals of conflict and resistance, nor by the telos of a postnational cosmopolitanism, and nor even by the search for alternative modernities--although it would not be incompatible with the last. Thus, his attitude is quite different from, say, Charles Tilly's pioneering work on state-formation in Europe (The formation of national states in Western Europe, 1975), which attends equally to the violence and costs of state-making. Indeed, on occasion Lieberman reveals quite an admiring attitude towards the goals of the territorially centralising state, declaring that the Chinese state developed 'superb homogenising techniques' (p. 534). Ostensibly, Lieberman seeks to explain the 'strange parallels' between different regions of Eurasia over his period of inquiry, 800-1830 CE. The work distinguishes two types of historical states in this region, namely, those in the 'protected zone' and those in the 'exposed zone'. Geographically, the latter include South Asia and China, which have large northern and northwestern areas exposed to Inner Asian invasions, whereas the former zone includes kingdoms in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, France and Japan which are relatively protected from direct massive predation. Maritime or island Southeast Asia belatedly developed into an exposed zone, exposed to the 'white Inner Asians' takeover from the sixteenth century. Historically, the two zones are separated by the presence in China and India of precocious civilisations from which the protected kingdoms later crafted their own 'charter kingdoms' towards the latter part of the first millennium. In Frankish/Camlingian France, the charter state derived its ideas from the Roman empire, whereas Kiev derived its ideas from the Byzantine empire. Lieberman sees two patterns over the millennium. The charter states in the protected zone facilitated a cycle of agrarian and population expansion, commercial growth, and development of new literate elites and charter religious ideologies of integration--in short an early form of agrarian state-building. This pattern was also experienced in China and India, although in these cases, new techniques and cultures of state-formation derived from Inner Asian invasions--such as by the Khitan, Jurchen, Tangut, Turks--combined with the older civilisational forms to create (ironically perhaps) more hybrid forms than the civilisational purity claimed, for instance, by Confucian and Hindu-Buddhist states in the protected zones. …

Lieberman, Victor: Strange Parallels. Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800−1830. Vol. 2: Mainland Mirrors. Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands

Lieberman, Victor: Strange Parallels. Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800−1830. Vol. 2: Mainland Mirrors. Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands

Strange Parallels and the Big Picture: “Asia” Writ Large Over a Turbulent Millennium

Every now and again a book comes along that “shakes foundations”, as it were. Such volumes let us know that something novel has appeared on the scene, in terms of new ways of knowing the shape and landscape of the past, the great “undiscovered country” of the proverb.Strange Parallels– not one book, but two – is this kind of project. In an age of hyperbole it is easy to believe the breathless hype of publishers when they tell us, the reading public, that such work has arrived. Many of us often end up feeling deflated, though, when the volume finally gets to our desks. On occasion, though, such books do live up to the praise, and happily this is the case with Victor Lieberman's absorbing two volumes. Lieberman is a well-respected historian of Burma; in recent years, his tastes have been ranging further afield, however, as he has sought to connect Burma to larger stories and themes.Strange Parallelsis the result of that philandering eye, an occasion when infidelity of one's locus of choice cannot only be forgiven, but applauded because of the result. Lieberman did not just covet his neighbors in this exercise – Siam and Vietnam and the other polities of mainland Southeast Asia. He ended up coveting Eurasia, or the expanse of an entire continent. What happens when you marry a very specific area studies expertise to this kind of vastly expanded vision? What paradigms can be shifted, and what new patterns can be seen? Perhaps most importantly, what new things can be discerned about the “undiscovered country” of the past that previously were hidden, even tocognoscenti?

Response to Comments on Strange Parallels

I am grateful to The Journal of Asian Studies for organizing this forum and to the seven contributors for taking the time to read my volume(s) and to wrestle with the issues raised therein. The resultant essays fall into two categories. Eric Tagliacozzo, Carolyn Cartier, and John Wills, Jr., examine Asia or Eurasia broadly conceived, whereas Robert Hellyer, Victor Mair, Ramya Sreenivasan, and Leonard Andaya weigh the applicability of my work to particular Asian regions. I consider each set of contributions in turn.

What Strange Parallels Sought to Accomplish

Three broad concerns inspired Strange Parallels. First, like many students of Southeast Asia, I was long troubled by the fragmented, kaleidoscopic nature of much precolonial historiography. Curiosity to see if I could detect long term, overarching patterns provided my initial spur.

Strange Parallels: Japan

In chapter 1 of volume 2 of Strange Parallels, Victor Lieberman urges the reader to understand that: “The excitement of Eurasian comparisons derives not from a spurious superficial identity, but from the juxtaposition of overarching similarities with idiosyncratic local outcomes” (Lieberman 2009, 119). In “Creating Japan,” Chapter 4 of the same volume, Lieberman convincingly shows that Eurasian comparisons offer a valuable, and truly exciting, lens to explore Japan from circa 800 to 1830. He identifies numerous and provocative parallels with other states that present not only fresh ways to consider Japan within world history, but also to locate and assess idiosyncratic elements of the Japanese experience.

Strange Parallels: Patterns in Eurasian Social Evolution

Most professional historians have abandoned the search for general patterns and laws of history, but not Victor Lieberman. Strange Parallels II (SP II), following on SP I, proposes that similar mechanisms governed state building in such different, and distant, regions as Southeast Asia, China, Western Europe, and Russia. During the period covered by Lieberman (c.800–1830) the general trend within these regions of Eurasia was towards increasing political and cultural integration. This overall trend was not monotonic; it was periodically interrupted by interregna – periods of state breakdown and territorial fragmentation. However, as time unfolded the interregna became shorter and less disruptive. Remarkably, during the second millennium cycles of political integration and disintegration became increasingly correlated between the widely separated Eurasian regions. Lieberman’s bold thesis is combined with truly encyclopedic scholarship and a breathtaking scope. SP II is a major achievement in comparative world history that will take future researchers years to fully digest. This review essay aims to make a first step in this direction.

Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Vol 2: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia and the Islands

Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Vol 2: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia and the Islands

Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830. Volume II: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands, by Victor Lieberman.

<i>Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830. Volume II: Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands</i>, by Victor Lieberman.

Victor Lieberman. &lt;italic&gt;Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830&lt;/italic&gt;. Volume 1, &lt;italic&gt;Integration on the Mainland&lt;/italic&gt;. (Studies in Comparative World History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xxiii, 484. $65.00

Journal Article Victor Lieberman. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland. (Studies in Comparative World History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xxiii, 484. $65.00 Get access Lieberman Victor. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland. (Studies in Comparative World History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xxiii, 484. $65.00. Craig J. Reynolds Craig J. Reynolds Australian National University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 109, Issue 5, December 2004, Page 1535, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/109.5.1535 Published: 01 December 2004

Coleridge's "Christabel" and Lefanu's "Carmilla"

SEVERAL years ago in a study of Coleridge's poem Christabel' I advanced the then novel theory that the unfinished tale is essentially a vampire story, one of the first and by far the subtlest of the many such stories in the English language. The theory was received with considerable interest and general approval, though there were, of course, some partial or complete skeptics. I now wish to suggest that the long prose narrative published with four other stories in In a glass darkly in 1872 by that once famed master of the Gothic, J. Sheridan LeFanu, contains so many strange parallels to that it seems possible that LeFanu had either made the same interpretation of Coleridge's poem as I was to make, and had reflected it, consciously or unconsciously, in his story; or else he had been reading more or less the same sources as Coleridge read, and applied them with often surprisingly similar results. For Carmilla is openly and admittedly a vampire story, and its author makes much of the way in which he, or at least one of his characters, Baron Vordenburg, has steeped himself in vampire lore. First of all, the antagonists in both stories, Geraldine and Carmilla, are female vampires; and female vampires are comparatively rare, at least in the earlier period of vampirology. More than this, the main victims, Christabel and Laura, are women; and such restriction of sexwomen to women-is even rarer. Kipling's version of the vampire, with her exclusively male quarry, is a purely modern refinement.