Abstract
This project undertakes a comparative study of the relationship between drought and politics in late medieval Mediterranean cities (c. 1250 to c. 1500), focusing specifically on Siena, Palermo, and Damascus. Despite the Mediterranean's diverse climate zones, these cities shared significant vulnerability to drought – intensified by the climatic instability during the transition from the period of the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age. My analysis will focus around three comparative frameworks: institutions (legislation and regulation in response to water scarcity); patronage (in constructing water infrastructure); and discourses (the ways droughts were recorded and portrayed in chronicles, administrative documents, and religious texts). Through comparative analysis of my case studies, I will evaluate how and why the significance and consequences of drought were so variable, and their interrelationship with urban socio-political and religious cultures and the negotiation of authority. Overall, this project challenges the assumption that drought was merely an environmental issue. Instead, it will demonstrate that the occurrence and impacts of these episodes were made political in each case-study city. Just as urban politics cannot be understood as distinct from pressures surrounding natural resources, drought cannot be seen as separate from urban politics.
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