On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Economic downturns can create conditions for conflict that may occur along religious or ethnic lines. In this paper, we provide arguably the first empirical evidence of this phenomenon in medieval India. Using centuries of geo-referenced data we document a positive relationship between weather fluctuations and the destruction of Hindu temples under Muslim rule. Specifically, during periods of large weather fluctuations a Muslim state is 0.4 percentage points more likely to desecrate a Hindu temple under its rule, compared to one outside its control (compared to no difference in probabilities in non-shock periods). We explore various mechanisms that could drive the ruler’s response including looting and battles, showing that maintaining regime stability by suppressing rebellions resulting from weather shocks is the likely explanation for this relationship.
