The Danish Revolution, 1500-1800: An Ecohistorical Interpretation

by Thorkild Kjærgaard, David Hohnen

Overview

This book tells the story of a fertile European country that, as a result of over-population and military armament, over-exploited its fields and forests in a nonsustainable fashion. By the eighteenth century, Denmark, along with other European countries, found itself in an ecological crisis: clear felling of forests, sand drift, floods, inadequate soil fertilization and cattle disease. This book explains how the crisis was overcome, and is the first attempt to understand early modern Europe from a consistently ecological viewpoint.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521442671
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/25/1994
Series:	Studies in Environment and History
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; Introduction; Part I. Denmark, 1500–1750: A Country in an Ecological Crisis: 1. The road to the crisis; 2. The anatomy of the crisis; Part II. The Ecological Revolution: 3. The green revolution; 4. The energy and raw materials revolution; Part III. The New Denmark; 5. Landscape; 6. Labour burden and social structure; 7. The disease pattern; 8. Power; Part IV. The Driving Forces Behind the Danish Revolution, 1500–1800; 9. Agrarian reforms; 10. Technology and communications systems; Part V. The Inheritance: 11. The social and political inheritance: individualism and the liberal democratic society; 12. The ecological inheritance; Appendices; Sources and bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"The author presents a great number of data to support his theses, and this reviewer is convinced that Kjaergaard is on the right track. It is to be hoped, that scholars outside Denmark will read the book and make it part of a fruitful debate on an ecohistorical interpretation of history. It deserves it." Sixteenth Century Journal

"...a persuasive case for an ecological interpretation—a conclusion supported by an impressive body of primary evidence, as well as chronological logic." John D. Post, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

From the Publisher