The Field and the Forge
Population, Production, and Power in the Pre-industrial West
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 13 January 2005
- ISBN 9780199279579
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages464 pages
- Size 233x157x24 mm
- Weight 700 g
- Language English
- Illustrations numerous tables and figures 0
Categories
Short description:
The Field and the Forge offers an innovative approach to the pre-industrial history of Europe and the Mediterranean basin from Roman times through to the Industrial Revolution. This wide-ranging analysis demonstrates how technology changed the scope of state and empire building, and explores why this scope was realized in the ancient world rather than the medieval west. This work not only considers the who and what of history, but provides a clear demonstration of why things happened.
MoreLong description:
The Field and the Forge offers a new approach to the pre-industrial past in Europe and the Mediterranean basin from the Roman Republic to the fall of Napoleon. Based on an original synthesis of 'structural' economic and demographic history with traditionally 'event driven' political and military history, it takes as its starting point E. A. Wrigley's concept of 'organic economies' and their reliance on the land for energy and raw materials. The opening section considers the ensuing constraints on productivity, transportation, and the spatial organization of the economy. The second section analyses the constraints imposed by muscle-powered military technology and by the organic economy on the tactical, operational, and strategic use of armed force, and the consequences of the spread of firearms in recorded history's first energy revolution. This is followed by an analysis of the military and economic constraints on the political integration of space through the formation of geographically extensive political units, and the volume concludes with a section on the demographic and economic consequences of the investment of manpower and resources in war.
Existing accounts of organic economies emphasize their restricted potential to support economic and political development, but this volume also considers why so much potential remained unrealized. Endemic mass poverty curtailed demand, limiting incentives for investment and innovation, and keeping output growth below what was technologically possible. Resource shortages prevented rulers from establishing a fiscal apparatus capable of appropriating such resources as were physically available. But economic inefficiency also created a pool of under-utilized resources that could potentially be mobilized in pursuit of political power. The volume gives an innovative account of this potential - and why it was realized in the ancient world rather than the medieval west - together with a new analysis of the gunpowder revolution and the inability of rulers to meet the consequential costs within the confines of an organic economy.
Review from previous edition History Today: Book of the Year Prize: Highly Commended
Table of Contents:
Introduction - Time, Space, and Population
Part I: The Organic Economy and Demographic Space
Population Dynamics
Production and Technology
The Means of Transport
Trade and Traffic
Part II: Military Technology
Battlefields before Gunpowder
The Gunpowder Revolution
Military Capital: Oars, Sails, Walls, and Guns
Part III: Force, Power, and Space
War and the Organic Economy
Power and Space I: Expanding Control
Power and Space II: Maintaining Control
Part IV: War, Population, and Resources
The Cost of War: Manpower and Resources
Population, Production, and Technology
The Cost of War: Mortality and Population Loss
Spending, Taxing, and Borrowing
Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendixes
