Understanding System Collapse: crisis and recovery in the social-ecological systems of premodern Brandenburg and Greater Poland

• Applicant: Elena Xoplaki, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Medieval History ; Early Modern History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 544556645

Why some societies them have succeeded and survived for hundreds of years, while others have become examples of collapse? A comprehensive answer to this question requires reflection on a number of internal factors (institutions, cultural and material resources, political stability), as well as external ones – environmental (climate, epidemics) and international (wars, markets, etc.). Therefore, we address this problem in a holistic way: demographically, economically, climatologically, and ecologically. We are concerned with changes in population, economic activities, and human pressure on the landscape, taking Brandenburg and Greater Poland in the period of 1200-1800 CE as our case studies. We are interested in the situations when societies cease to function ‘objectively’, based on various phenomena and variables, but also when they fail to function efficiently in their own eyes, ‘subjectively’. What is more, we see crisis as a dynamic process: consisting of triggering mechanisms as well as those that sustain it, and those that prevent reconstruction. Thus, we go beyond the state of the art in historical research, which until now has concentrated on unifactorial models of crisis understood as total collapse, hardly ever taking into account palaeoclimatic and palaeoecological data. Our interdisciplinary approach understands our study regions as socialecological systems, assuming the unity of the population which creates specific forms of organization and institutions, and which shapes a specific landscape according to its own needs. We will combine instrumental weather data with climate information from historical sources and natural proxies, and apply novel methods to reconstruct 800-year temperature and precipitation conditions for our study area. We will analyse sediments from lakes and peatbogs to reconstruct past ecosystems and landscapes. We will use historical sources to reconstruct epidemic outbreaks, population, economy, as well as social and economic inequalities. The Polish-German collaboration is essential to the success of our project. The Polish side brings profound expertise in economic and demographic history, while the German side provides unique experience of interdisciplinary work in climate and environmental history, as well as the modern social science perspective on environmental crises. The partners have already worked and published together.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Poland
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Adam Izdebski