Description
Oxford The Field and the Forge Population Production and Power in the Pre-industrial West by John Landers
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_x000D_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_x000D_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._x000D__x000D_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. _x000D_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_x000D_analysis of the gunpowder revolution and the inability of rulers to meet the consequential costs within the confines of an organic economy._x000D_ Table of contents :- _x000D_
1. Introduction - Time, Space, and Population ; SECTION I: THE ORGANIC ECONOMY AND DEMOGRAPHIC SPACE ; 2. Population Dynamics ; 3. Production and Technology ; 4. The Means of Transport ; 5. Trade and Traffic ; SECTION II: MILITARY TECHNOLOGY ; 6. Battlefields before Gunpowder ; 7. Gunpowder Revolution ; 8. Military Capital ; SECTION III: FORCE, POWER, AND SPACE ; 9. War and the Organic Economy ; 10. Power and Space I: Expanding Control ; 11. Power and Space II: Maintaining Control ; SECTION IV: WAR, POPULATION, AND RESOURCES ; 12. The Cost of War: Manpower and Resources ; 13. Population, Production, and Technology ; 14. The Cost of War: Mortality and Population Loss ; 15. Spending, Taxing, and Borrowing ; 16. Conclusion ; Bibliography ; Appendixes_x000D_