Yes, I do. Are you sure you do? Methinks you place too much credibility in the latest pop history theory of climatological determinism. Just as the Marxists wanted to attribute everything to economic class struggles, the current Ecofanatic greenie movement wants to attribute everything to climate, usually on very scant evidence.
BTW, about that "spur" part you put in there ~ let's add = "half a millenium later".
Hardly. The population crash from the plague if the 1300's led almost immediately to the rapid decline of feudalism, the rise of trade guilds, thence to the beginnings of large mercantile powers that spurred the Renaissance.
Feudalism itself was a social response to the retreat of Imperial Roman power and widespread trade. It consolidated local power hierarchies and allowed large territorial organization, quite in contrast to your idea of roving bands of Frankish "bandits".
Boys at Mecca were virtually untouched by the whole thing, but Byzantium seems to have had one serious economic catastrophe for about 80 years.
The city of Constantinople suffered a series of plague outbreaks from 540-600 AD, which more than accounts for any economic downturns in Byzantium.
Yup, most of Europe was pretty much like Africa circa 1300 ~ but even worse ~ the only folks left were those who lived on or very near the ocean; e.g. the Friesians, the Irish, the coastal Britons, the Sa'ami, the Romans, etc.
Evidence? How about the fact that there are numerous inland European cities and towns that have had continuous populations from Rome to present?
As it is I'm going to take the word of my ancestors for what happened in Brittany ~ all the grapes had to be replanted because all the people who'd lived there before died.
You can believe what you want, but please, please, please don't call my ancestors Ecofascists.
I am sticking with Northern and Western Europe and excluding Southern Italy, Greece, and most of the Balkans (as we now know them).
Even before the catastrophe of 538/540 there really weren't many cities anywhere (as we understand cities). The American Indians had some, but even the Mayans came to an end with a shifting of the Bermuda High for 500 years (and that change is reflected in deposits laid down in lakes as far away as Virginia).
Now, to the great plagues in Byzantium, they are referred to as The Plague of Justinian. Had a high death rate, etc., Could have been plain old black death, or maybe even ebola ~ the jury is still out, but that part of the world has had ebola and ebola-like disease in the past.
We now know that when you have a cool, dry period, grass thrives. Rats thrive under those conditions. Rats carry plague.
We even have a rat/pinion cycle in the Western United States. If there's a period of cool, dry weather, the pinion trees produce more pinion nuts. The rats thrive. Plague spreads, but in this case it's the hanta virus!
In earlier times hanta virus could virtually exterminate local populations all over the desert South West.
Same with Byzantium. There was cool, dry weather and folks died of plague.
One of the reaons there was this cool, dry weather was that Northern and Western Europe was in the grips of a profound period of cold, dry weather. Crops died. People starved.
We also have the lesson of the 1800s. The first great drought in modern times to affect Europe was in 1813. Most folks don't know it happened because the only part of Europe affected was in the far North as far as you can go in the Pechanga valley. I have ancestors who fled that drought and came to America.
It was far worse in China ~ killed untold tens of millions of people. Europeans had been distracted by the Napoleonic Wars and didn't particularly pay attention to distant parts.
The next major weather change was exceptionally cold and wet. It facilitated fungal infections of the Irish and German potato crops. People starved.
For most of the 1800s Europe was in the grip of a weather cycle with wide fluctuations ~ from cool and wet to exceedingly dry. This had happened in an earlier century, but populations were far less and the death rate was lower.
By the end of the end of the 19th century hundreds of millions of people around the world had died from these fluctuations, whole empires had evaporated (see MING, FRANCE), and America was definitely on the march recently beefed up with millions of young, healthy, hardworking immigrants.
You said weather has no impact?