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Understanding of long-term climatic change prior to instrumental records necessitates reconstructions from documentary and palaeoclimate archives. In southern Africa, documentary-derived chronologies of nineteenth century rainfall variability and palaeoclimate records have permitted new insights into rainfall variability over past centuries. Rarely considered, however, is the climatic information within early colonial documentary records that emerge from the late fifteenth century onwards. This paper examines evidence for (multi-)seasonal dry and wet events within these earlier written records (c. 1550–1830 CE) from southeast Africa (Mozambique) and west-central Africa (Angola) in conjunction with palaeoclimate records from multiple proxies. Specifically, it aims to understand whether these sources agree in their signals of rainfall variability over a 280-year period covering the ‘main phase’ Little Ice Age (LIA) in southern Africa. The two source types generally, but do not always, show agreement within the two regions. This appears to reflect both the nature of rainfall variability and the context behind documentary recording. Both source types indicate that southeast and west-central Africa were distinct regions of rainfall variability over seasonal and longer timescales during the LIA, with southeast Africa being generally drier and west-central Africa generally wetter. However, the documentary records reveal considerable variability within these mean state climatic conditions, with multi-year droughts a recurrent feature in both regions. An analysis of long-term rainfall links with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in southeast Africa suggests a complex and possibly non-stationary relationship. Overall, early colonial records provide valuable information for constraining hydroclimate variability where palaeoclimate records remain sparse.

Climate variability has been causally linked to the transformation of society in pre‐industrial southeast Africa. A growing critique, however, challenges the simplicity of ideas that identify climate as an agent of past societal change; arguing instead that the value of historical climate–society research lies in understanding human vulnerability and resilience, as well as how past societies framed, responded and adapted to climatic phenomena. We work across this divide to present the first critical analysis of climate–society relationships in southeast Africa over the last millennium. To achieve this, we review the now considerable body of scholarship on the role of climate in regional societal transformation, and bring forward new perspectives on climate–society interactions across three areas and periods using the theoretical frameworks of vulnerability and resilience. We find that recent advances in paleoclimatology and archaeology give weight to the suggestion that responses to climate variability played an important part in early state formation in the Limpopo valley (1000–1300), though evidence remains insufficient to clarify similar debates concerning Great Zimbabwe (1300–1450/1520). Written and oral evidence from the Zambezi‐Save (1500–1830) and KwaZulu‐Natal areas (1760–1828) nevertheless reveals a plurality of past responses to climate variability. These were underpinned by the organization of food systems, the role of climate‐related ritual and political power, social networks, and livelihood assets and capabilities, as well as the nature of climate variability itself. To conclude, we identify new lines of research on climate, history and society, and discuss how these can more directly inform contemporary African climate adaptation challenges.

Atmospheric circulation in the oceans surrounding southern Africa plays an important role in determining its precipitation. This study uses wind information recorded in ships’ logbooks in order to statistically reconstruct summer and winter season precipitation at four southern African weather stations from 1796 to 1854. The reconstruction was obtained by first relating gridded 8° × 8° NCEP-DOE reanalysis seasonal mean wind vectors in the adjacent oceans to station precipitation. Over a 30-year calibration period (1979–2008), significant correlations between wind and precipitation at Cape Town, Mthatha and Royal National Park showed particular correspondence with those areas with the greatest concentration of logbook observations. Principal component regression was used to assess the potential of the dominant patterns of variability in the wind vectors as predictors to reconstruct precipitation. Cross-validation in the calibration period gave confidence that precipitation could be reconstructed at several stations across South Africa, meaning the regression relationships derived in the calibration period could be applied to the gridded seasonal mean logbook data to produce reconstructions of precipitation from 1796 to 1854. The reconstructions show a degree of correspondence with other regional data sets. For instance, the decade beginning in 1810 was the wettest of the period at Mthatha and Royal National Park, while the 1820s were the driest. At Cape Town, the 1820s were the wettest decade, with drier conditions observed in the 1830s. An index of west–east circulation in the summer season revealed correspondence with two documentary reconstructions of El Niño events and increased westerliness, although this did not always result in drier conditions. Attention is also drawn to the remaining 3000 yet to be digitised English East India Company logbooks which would provide a high-resolution picture of atmospheric circulation back to 1700 in the region under consideration.

Over the last two decades, the causal role of climate in African history has been the subject of renewed debate. In many cases, however, the limitations of extant methodological approaches have contributed to a tendency to view climate as a monocausal factor in past human events, leading to revived criticism of the concept of climatic causation. Similar claims have also surfaced regarding approaches to evaluating the potential impacts of future climate change, where it has been suggested that the predictive hegemony of modelling has left the future of humankind “reduced to climate”, thereby overlooking the human factors that determine the magnitude of its impacts. In the context of urgent present and future African environmental challenges, questions over the concept of causation underline the need for further interdisciplinary research at the climate-society interface. One approach that can contribute to this discourse is assembling well-founded historical perspectives on climate–society interactions through the analytical framework of climate history. Indeed, studying the past is the only way we can examine the effects of and responses to shifts in physical systems. The aim of this paper is to provide an up-to-date starting point for such analyses in an African context. Using selected southern African case studies, previous approaches relating to climate and societal dynamics are first evaluated. Climate history is subsequently posited as a paradigm which is well-placed to deepen knowledge on long-term climate-society interactions, fitting alongside and incorporating key established paradigms such as vulnerability and resilience. Three key areas are highlighted for this challenge: climate reconstruction; understanding past human–climate interaction and vulnerability, and examination of societal resilience to climate change impacts. New research areas are then presented where studying the past can inform consideration of important future challenges, and the paper concludes by calling for the development of African climate histories on various spatial and temporal scales.