A major volcanic eruption in the southern Philippines in late 1640 AD may have led to the collapse of China’s imperial Ming Dynasty years later, according to a new study that upends previous beliefs about the empire’s fall.
Scholarly accounts suggest that a succession of ineffective rulers, famines, corruption, and their economic fallout led to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in the mid 17th century.
Historical records observe that a peasant rebel army led by Li Zicheng captured Beijing in 1644, prompting the last Ming emperor to kill himself and bring an end to 276 years of Ming rule.
But the new study suggests that a massive volcanic event may have amplified existing political and environmental crises in the Ming dynasty and sealed its fate.
The Mount Parker eruption in the southern Philippines, dated to between December 1640 and January 1641, contributed to severe crop failures, famine, social unrest, and a weakening of state finances that aggravated the already existing political crises, researchers say.
“The Parker eruption in the Philippines (1640) led to a prolonged and severe drought that potentially contributed to the collapse of the Ming dynasty,” scientists write in the study published in the journal Climate of the Past.
The study collectively assessed available data on past major volcanic eruptions and the global temperature changes that followed.
It found that such eruptions disrupted monsoons and climate patterns globally, resulting in droughts, floods, and crop failures, and increased famine risk in many parts of the world.
In all these cases, scientists found that volcanic eruptions acted “stress multipliers” of existing civic unrest.
In particular, they found that the Parker volcanic eruption intensified the drought that preceded the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644.
The results align with previous studies’ findings that massive volcanic eruptions are linked to many Chinese dynastic collapses over the last two millennia.
In these cases, volcanic eruptions released large amounts of sulphate aerosols into the upper atmosphere which blocked out the Sun and caused global cooling.
The cooling disrupted East Asian monsoon systems and intensified severe drought already affecting many parts of northern China, researchers say.
Coupled with already growing unrest in the empire faced with silver shortages, military pressure from the northeast, and peasant uprisings, the effects of the volcanic eruption brought down the dynasty even further, they say.
“The findings demonstrate the capacity of major volcanic events to destabilise food systems through coupled climatic and societal pathways,” researchers wrote in the study.