Do Eclipses Cause Rebellions

Rob Kurzban at Living Fossils Do Eclipses Cause Rebellions? would say they do not cause rebellions, nor do they cause the necessary cooperation for a rebellion, but they do have a strong influence on coordinating the time of a rebellion. 

 A recent paper (by Miao et al.) reports an analysis having to do with how often areas rebelled over the course of centuries of Chinese history. Do provinces in which people see total eclipses more rebel more often?

It turns out that they do.

And it’s not a tiny effect. The researchers pin down how much more likely this is, writing that “counties in the totality zone of a solar eclipse are about 18 percent more likely to experience a rebellion in the eclipse year relative to counties that are outside of the totality zone.”

His (shared) theory of how that happens is fascinating. He relates it to the experiment of two people tasked with meeting at the same time and place in a city without any communication succeed much more often than chance would dictate. In NYC, many people choose to go to Grand Central Station at noon.  If I told you that you and Francine both need to show up at the same place in England within a calendar year, you - knowing nothing about Francine - would evaluate in terms of "What is a place and time that many people would know about?" You might go to Stonehenge at sunrise on the Summer Solstice. 

If there is joy and prosperity, an eclipse is less likely to portend doom.  But if there is already unrest, the blotting out of the sun will seem a portent, and many folks will think "Now must be the time."