Geoffrey Parker, "Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century":\\"‘The times here are so miserable that never in the memory of
man has the like famine and mortality happened’
(East India Company officials, letter, Surat, India, 1631)
Few areas of the world survived the mid-seventeenth century
unscathed. North America and West Africa both experienced famines and savage
wars. In India, drought followed by floods killed over a million people in
Gujarat between 1627 and 1630; while a vicious civil war in the Mughal empire
intensified the impact of another drought between 1658 and 1662. In Japan,
following several poor harvests, in 1637–8 the largest rural rebellion in
modern Japanese history broke out on the southern island of Kyushu. Five years
later famine, followed by a winter of unusual severity, killed perhaps 500,000
people.
Voltaire went on to consider the careers of Cromwell in
England, Li Zicheng in China, Aurangzeb in India, and others who had seized
power by force, concluding that the mid-seventeenth century had been ‘a period
of usurpations almost from one end of the world to the other’."
कै. दिलीप पुरुषोत्तम चित्रे , 'पुन्हा तुकाराम', १९९० :
"... इ स १६२९च्या दुष्काळात तुकोबांची पहिली पत्नी अन्नान
अवस्थेत त्यांच्यासमक्ष तडफडत मेली. देहूतील अनेक नात्याची आणि ओळखीची ,
इतर लोक , गुरेढोरे सर्वच जीव दुष्काळात होरपळून निघाले...."
रा भा पाटणकर, 'अपूर्ण क्रांती', १९९९:
"...शिवाजीने रयतेच्या भल्यासाठी केलेल्या
गोष्टी सर्वश्रुत आहेत. पण
तरीही तेथील सामान्य
रयत सुखात होती
असे म्हणता येणार नाही...
अव्वल दर्जाच्या जमिनीची कमतरता , पावसाची अनिश्चितता , नेहमीच युद्धाचा
प्रसंग, २/५ सारा व वतनदारांच्या विविध पट्ट्या , सावकारांचे मोठे दर- अशा
परिस्थितीतला शिवकालीन शेतकरी संपन्न असू शकेल का? "
कमल गोखले, 'शिवपुत्र संभाजी':